Lotte Miller of Norway wins 2021 European Triathlon Cup in Quarteira
Lotte Miller of Norway put on a dominate display of courage and conviction as she raced her way to victory at the 2021 European Triathlon Cup in Quarteira, Portugal on Sunday Nov 7th in a time of 02:02:52.
The Norwegian is a big believer in Karma holding to the mantra of ‘You reap what you sow’ but not even Miller could predict that she would have to harvest a bike crash and pull up on the run with cramp to became victorious.
The day started well enough for Miller exiting the water in third place 5 seconds behind the versatile Italian Sharon Spimi in the Olympic distance swim. Out onto the 40km bike leg and a group of four made up a front pack but Miller and Spimi put the power down and the duo started to pull away making almost a 3-minute gap to the bunching chasing pack. Then events started to unfold as Miller clipped the kerb on a roundabout and crashed giving Spimi a 30 second lead by the time the Norwegian had remounted her bike. Now the Norwegian was going to have to put her mantra into action and power down. This she did to take the lead into T2.
Onto the run and more Karma! It was Italian Spimi who set out onto the 10k run section first but Miller is a strong runner from the ‘Blummenfelt Stable’ and soon overhauled the Italian to what, for all intense and purposes, looked like an easy win.
However, for this race Lotte was going to have to sow in tears before she could reap joy as she pulled up to a virtual standstill with cramp at the halfway point. As Miller got underway again, she was lucky to find the time gap between her and second place Spimi was still 00:01:15 minutes with Switzerland’s Gmur moving up to third a few seconds behind the Italian with the fast-moving Italian Zane all now vying for a medal and podium spot.
Lotte Miller speaks about her Triathlon Journey to the TriNation Podcast Crew
By this stage Miller had planted the seed of fearlessness to reap the success of crossing the blue tape with a surety to take gold and win the 2021 European Triathlon Cup Quarteira.
The Italian Spimi who pushed really hard for the win began to pay the price for her early effort and started to fade in the last kilometre of the run allowing her fellow compatriot Zane to run through and take home the Silver with Gmur taking the bronze.
That was some way for the Norwegian to win a race – maybe Lotte Millers mantra has meaning for us all, in that we will not receive a harvest of success if we don’t put the effort into planting the seeds for that success.
