Gomez celebrated his 50th WTS start with his 37th podium and 13th victory in the series. Gomez, at age 33, found himself in a duel with 25-year-old Bishop, whose best previous WTS finish was 5th at WTS Edmonton last September. At 6km into the run, Bishop made an audacious surge to create a 10 meter gap. However, that was the end of Bishop’s reign as Gomez took back control and had a 35 meter lead at the end of the third of four laps on the run.

“On the third lap we slowed down a lot, just trying to save energy for the last lap and I made my move with about three kilometres to go and I won, so it worked well,” Gomez told ITU media.

At the end of a third-fastest 31:23 run split, Gomez crossed the line in 1:52:31 with a 13 seconds margin of victory over Bishop (31:36 run split) and 42 seconds on 3rd-place finisher Vincent Luis of France (32:05 run).

“It is great to come back this way,” said Gomez. “I still had a few mistakes in the race. I did not swim very well and had a bad T2. But I knew that is was going to be a very tough run, and with Tom Bishop pushing hard it was very technical… So I am very happy to be back this way.”

While this was his first WTS race back since his injury, Gomez warmed up for Abu Dhabi with a win at Ironman 70.3 Dubai last month.