Kaleb Van Ort passed fellow U.S. elite Eric Lagerstrom with a race-best run and Sarah Haskins leveraged her better bike split over Summer Cook’s better run to win the elite titles at the Clermont Draft Legal Challenge sprint triathlon.

Vanort combined a 15th-best 9:35 swim, 12th-best 28:43 bike leg and a race-fastest 15:30 5k run to finish in 55:24 with a 7 seconds margin over runner-up Eric Lagerstrom and 19 seconds better than 3rd place Eli Hemming.

Lagerstrom started the day with a race-best 9:08 swim split that gave him a 27 seconds advantage over Vanort, gained 2 more seconds in T1, and gave back 11 seconds with a 28:54 bike split. Vanort tied Lagerstrom in T2, and then erased his 18-seconds deficit with a run that was 24 seconds better than Lagerstrom’s 15:54 effort.

Haskins combined a 5th-fastest 10:08 swim, a by far race-fastest 31:28 bike split and a tied for 3rd-best 18:45 run to finish in 1:02:16 with a 23 seconds margin on fellow U.S. competitor Summer Cook and 1:25 on 3rd-place finisher Hideko Kikuchi of Japan.

Cook’s 2nd-best 10:04 split was 3 seconds slower than swim leader Taylor Spivey and 4 seconds better than Haskins. Haskins then threw down a smoking hot 31:28 bike split that was 1:07 better than the next-best effort by Japan’s Chika Sato and 1:34 better than Cook’s 12th-best 33:02. Working on a 90 seconds deficit to Haskins, Cook posted a women’s-best 17:44 run that was 1:01 better than Haskins’ split but left Cook 23 seconds short of the winner.

Haskins defended her 2014 Clermont win which served as the ITU Pan American Cup and marked Haskins’ return to competition after the birth of her daughter Caroline in 2013.

ITU CAMTRI Clermont Draft Legal Challenge
Clermont, Florida
March 7, 2015
S 750m / B 20k / R 5k

Results

Elite Men

1. Kaleb Van Ort (USA) 55:24
2. Eric Lagerstrom (USA) 55:31
3. Eli Hemming (USA) 55:43
4. Jeremy Briand (CAN) 55:58
5. Eduardo Moreno (MEX) 56:04
6. Ryan Bice (USA) 56:23
7. Xavier Grenier-Talavera (CAN) 56:30
8. Alex Libin (USA) 56:38
9. Ricardo Cardenas (MEX) 56:42
10. Hunter Lussi (USA) 56:45

Elite Women

1. Sarah Haskins (USA) 1:02:16
2. Summer Cook (USA) 1:02:39
3. Hideko Kikuchi (JPN) 1:03:41
4. Lizeth Rueda Santos (MEX) 1:03:54
5. Dominika Jamnicky (CAN) 1:03:58
6. Taylor Spivey (USA) 1:04:17
7. Chika Sato (JPN) 1:04:21
8. Emy Legault (CAN) 1:04:59
9. Karol-Ann Roy (CAN) 1:05:01
10. Heather Lendway (USA) 1:05:08