Teagle and Hall Command Wins at Ironman 70.3 Gdynia
Great Britain’s James Teagle and Lucy Hall command wins at IRONMAN 70.3 Gdynia. Hosted in the young and dynamic seaport town of Gdynia on the south coast of the Baltic Sea in Poland, both Teagle and Hall were triumphant in their respective race.
Featuring a 1.9 km swim in the Gdańsk Bay, a challenging 90 km bike ride through the Kashubia region and a 21.1 km run traversing the sea boulevards and the busiest streets of Gdynia this was a race of stiff competition.
Both Teagle and Hall were to dominate their races to take top spot on the podium and follow in the footsteps of previous race winner Jan Frodeno, Daniela Ryf, Lisa Norden and Magnus Ditlev
You can listen to both James Teagle and Lucy Hall talk about their transition from short-course to long-distance triathlon on the TriNation Podcast (links below)
The TriNation Podcast Ep40 – James Teagle
The TriNation Podcast Ep14 – Lucy Hall
Pro Men
Bence Lehmann of Hungary exited the swim first with JamesTeagle, in his weakest discipline, coming out of the water in sixth place only seconds down. Out of T1 and Teagle renowned for his bike strength dropped the watt bombs and was soon in the mix with the leaders Robert Kallin of Sweden and Chris Mintern of Ireland. Further back Kacper Stepniak (POL) and Sergiy Kurockin (UKR) tried to hunt down Teagle but were still some 1:30 behind.
Out of T2 onto run with a 30 second advantage is where Teagle brough out his never say die attitude and superbly conquered the run. Running 1:16:34 for the 21.1 km, Teagle maintained his first place crossing the line in first place (3:51:54) with Kallin taking second and Chris Mintern completing the top three spots.
Pro Women
Lucy Hall is an Olympian and known for being one of the fastest swimmers in the sport medalling gold at both European and World Cup short course triathlon competitions. So, it was no surprise to see Hall exit the water first with a gap of nearly five minutes.
Hall is also renown as a bike-beast and can power down with best of them. And she did exactly that as she extended her lead to over 10 minutes. Her run was never really suited to sprint distance but her style of endurance running fits well with the longer distance so it was just a matter of maintaining her gigantic lead over the half marathon from the chasing pack. And that she did, crossing the finishing line in a time of 4:18:45, with local hero Aleksandra Jedrzejewska of Poland finishing second 00:03:59 behind and Katrien Verstuyft of Belgium crossing the line in third some 11 minutes behind.
This race offered qualifying slots for the 2022 IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship in Taupo, New Zealand.
