Bahrain Endurance 13’s Daniela Ryf completed a hat-trick by claiming the crown at Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii yesterday for the third consecutive time.
She joins the ranks of Chrissie Wellington, Paula Newby-Fraser, Natascha Badmann, Dave Scott and Mark Allen with three consecutive wins in this event.
This is also the second time she has won both the Ironman 70.3 World Championship and the Ironman World Championship in the same year, duplicating her 2015 feat and surpassing Craig Alexander and Leanda Cave who have one double apiece.
While Ryf finished nearly 10 minutes ahead of the field over the 3.8km swim, 180km bike, and 42km run, she did not find the front until late on the bike leg. Coming out of the water over four minutes down, she had to work through a bad patch where she could not make any inroads on the leaders.
Fastest
She made up for lost time with the day’s fastest bike split to take over the lead in the closing kilometres.
She still ran the fastest marathon on the day, effectively shutting out all challengers.
It was also a hard-fought race on the men’s side for Bahrain Endurance athletes. Terenzo Bozzone locked out a career-high 6th place after a disappointing DNF last year. Ben Hoffman followed in 9th place after battling for a podium spot in the opening half of the marathon.
The Kona gods were unfavorable to Brent McMahon and David Plese, who both pulled out of the race during the bike leg. McMahon had a bad reaction to a box jellyfish sting, while Plese struggled with overheating and the after-effects of a bike crash three weeks prior to the race.
2016 Ironman World Champion Jan Frodeno soldiered on to a 35th place finish, overcoming lower back pain that threatened to make him pull out as he started the marathon in fourth position.