Viktor Zyemtsev ran down long time race leader Luke McKenzie with a blistering 2:43:44 marathon to capture the 2009 Ford Ironman Louisville by 34 seconds. Nina Kraft had to reel in Lisbeth Kristensen in a similar fashion to take the women's title.

The men

As expected, John Flanagan had the fastest swim and led the Pro men out of the Ohio River with a new swim course record of 44:54. The next group containing pretty stellar swimmers Luke McKenzie, Andreas Niedrig and Hiroyuki Nishiuchi had lost 4 minutes to the lone leader and were now in pursuit of the Hawaiian. course. Initially Flanagan increased his lead but McKenzie was relentless and started to reel in Flanagan. Shortly after mile 60 McKenzie passed the slowing Flanagan and pushed a hard pace towards T2. Flanagan soon after was caught by Viktor Zyemtsev, Swen Sundberg, Andreas Niedrig and Raynard Tissink and these were now in pursuit of the Aussie. Flannagan eventually could not hang with the other 4 and had to let them go. McKenzie reached T2 with no one else in sight and it took more than 7 minutes before the group containing Niedrig, Sundberg, Tissink and Zyemtsev finally got to the end of bike.

McKenzie ran hard and looked like he might be on his way towards his 3rd Ironman title this year, but his very respectable 2:51:37 marathon was not good enough on this day. The Ukranian Zyemsev uncorked a 2:43:48 marathon and caught and beat the Aussie to the line by 34 seconds.

"PAIN! Lead the race till mile 23, ran stride for stride for 2 miles but had nothing in the tank for the last mile. 35 seconds!!! Damn. Was still a victory in many ways," said McKenzie on his facebook page.

The women

Nina Kraft was first out of the water in first and battled Maki Nishiuchi early on during the bike. The German athlete eventually got away from the Japanese Pro, but not much later Denmark's Lisbeth Kristensen came flying by. Kristensen steadily increased her lead over Kraft and managed to reach T2 with a cushion of almost 9 minutes.

Once on the run, Kraft reversed the trend and slowly reeled in the lanky Dane. By mile 7 the lead was down to just under 5 minutes and by mile 18 Kraft was back in the lead. From there Kraft ran to the 2009 Ironman Louisville title and crossed the line 3.5 minutes up on Kristensen who held on to second place. Kim Loeffler rounded out the podium with the day's fastest female marathon split of 3:05:07.

Ford Ironman Louisville
Louisville, KY / August 30, 2009

Top 10 men

1. Victor Zyemtsev (UKR) 8:25:27
2. Luke McKenzie (AUS) 8:26:01
3. Raynard Tissink (RSA) 8:39:09
4. Swen Sundberg (GER) 8:43:36
5. Maximilian Longree (GER) 8:46:31
6. John Flanagan (USA) 8:53:07
7. Hiroyuki Nishiuchi (JAP) 8:55:00
8. Andreas Niedrig (GER) 9:01:35
9. Dave Harju (CAN) 9:02:33
10. Jason McMillian (USA) 9:09:16

Top 10 women

1. Nina Kraft (GER) 9:20:21
2. Lisbeth Kristensen (DEN) 9:23:57
3. Kim Loeffler (USA) 9:38:23
4. Kate Pallardy (USA) 9:56:45
5. Fernanda Keller (BRA) 10:00:22
6. Mariska Kramer (NED) 10:01:48
7. Maki Nishiuchi (JAP) 10:04:03
8. Rebecca Villers (USA) 10:12:35 * AG F35-39
9. Kelzie Beebe (USA) 10:16:03 * AG F25-29
10. April Gellatly (USA) 10:20:00