Kona 09 – Women’s bike

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Kona 09 – Women’s bike

Written by: Timothy Carlson
Added: Wed Oct 14 2009
Last Modified: Wed Oct 21 2009

There were a lot of good women cyclists in Kona trying to challenge Chrissie Wellington’s domination. But at the end of the day, the Wellington Express left the station by Mile 20 on the Queen K. Wellington built a Newby-Fraser-esque 15-minute lead by T2 after a 5th-best-ever 4:52:07 bike. What the day required was beating a sneakily irritating, albeit not-quite-mumuku strength wind that rotated to be always in the face, and a salt-sucking heat and humidity. It was a measure of Wellington’s obvious greatness that the bike splits of certifiable Hall of Famers like 6-time champion Natascha Badmann (5:19:48) and 2006 champion Michellie Jones (5:23:11) and 2008 runner-up Yvonne Van Vlerken (5:16:41) and double-digit Ironman winners Belinda Granger (5:18:05) and Bella Bayliss (5:17:23) not only were 20 or more minutes in Wellington’s wake, the effort to produce those times left every of them in the DNF column.

Still, while Wellington flew through her third Ironman bike swiftly and without a flat tire incident, it was still behind Newby-Fraser 4:48:30 and Erin Baker’s 4:50:16 bike splits in 1993, Olympic gold medalist cyclist Karin Thurig’s 4:50 splits in 2003 and 2005, and Natascha Badmann’s 4:52:00 in 2005. “Records,” said Wellington, putting her deeds to back up her mouth, “are made to be broken.”

Photo Gallery by Timothy Carlson

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Kona 09 – Women’s bike