In her first outing after her Ironman 70.3 Worlds triumph, Holly Lawrence survived a crash with a dog to win the women’s title and in his first race after his second straight Olympic gold, Alistair Brownlee won the pro men’s division at the Beijing International Triathlon.
Women
The pro women's division was a close contest with Holly Lawrence staving off Gentle’s run to win by 7 seconds.
Lawrence led the swim in 18:15, which gave her a 41 seconds advantage on defending Beijing International champ Lauren Goss of the U.S. and a 1:05 to 1:08 lead on a trio that included Gentle, Barbara Riveros of Chile, and Radka Vodickova of the Czech Republic.
On the 40km bike leg, Lawrence pulled away with a women’s-best 1:04:54 split despite crashing into a dog and sustaining a bloody elbow. This gave her a 1:11 lead on Gentle and a 2:10 to 2:14 advantage on Goss, Vodickova and Riveros.
With a decent lead in the bank, Lawrence cruised home with a 4th-best 39:58 run to finish in 2:07:39 with a 7 seconds margin of victory. Gentle, the 2014 Beijing International winner, cut 6 seconds off Lawrence’s lead in T2 and 57 more seconds with a 2nd-best 39:01 run to take 2nd. Riveros took dead aim on Gentle with a women’s-best 37:57 run but fell 2 seconds short of the silver. Goos ran 39:10 to take 4th, 1:06 back of Riveros and 1:42 ahead of 5th-place finisher Vodickova.
Men
Brownlee started his day with a 16:46 swim split that put him 3 seconds behind Josh Amberger of Australia and a few ticks of the clock ahead of a talented pack that included Cameron Dye, Joe Maloy, Eric Lagerstrom of the U.S., and Vicente Hernandez of Spain.
After a race-best 55:47 bike split, non-drafting ace Dye arrived at T2 with a 2 seconds margin on Brownlee (55:57 bike split) and 2 to 4 minutes on chasers that included Lagerstrom, Amberger, Maloy and Hernandez.
Playing it cool after his great effort at Rio, Brownlee ran a 4th-best 35:54 10k split that brought him to the finish in 1:52:30 with a 57 seconds margin on runner-up Maloy, who closed fast with a 2nd-best 34:23 run. Dye gave back 1:24 to Brownlee on the run but that was good enough to hang on to the bronze, 21 seconds back of Maloy and 13 seconds ahead of 4th-place Lagerstrom (35:15 run). Hernandez made up ground for his 6th-best 59:52 bike split with a race-best 34:19 10k run to take 5th place.
Beijing International Triathlon
Beijing, China
September 11, 2016
S 1.5k / B 40k / R 10k
Results
Pro Women
1. Holly Lawrence (GBR) 2:07:39
2. Ashleigh Gentle (AUS) 2:07:46
3. Barbara Riveros (CHL) 2:07:48
4. Lauren Goss (USA) 2:08:54
5. Radka Vodickova (CZE) 2:10:36
Pro Men
1. Alistair Brownlee (GBR) 1:52:30
2. Joe Maloy (USA) 1:53:27
3. Cameron Dye (USA) 1:53:48
4. Eric Lagerstrom (USA) 1:54:01
5. Vicente Hernandez (ESP) 1:54:54
6. Josh Amberger (AUS) 1:56:57
7. Kevin Collington (USA) 2:02:13
