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New Zealand’s Beijing-bound Samantha Warriner claimed her sixth world cup title today in the 2008 Tongyeong BG Triathlon World Cup, the 198th world cup ever staged in ITU's history. A strong swim put the top Kiwi at the front of the group and enabled her to utilize her running speed to cruise to gold medal in a time of 1 hour 49 minutes and 49 seconds. In second place was young Hollie Avil of Great Britain, 9 seconds back. This is the second podium in as many races for the 2007 Junior champion Avil. In third, following a strong finish to 2007, was Vendula Frintova of the Czech Republic, a further 22 seconds down.
"I'm pretty stoked," said the 36-year old Warriner. "I was feeling good. In New Plymouth I made lots of mistakes. I made sure not to make the same mistakes here and it worked."
“It’s just great to run with other athletes – like Sam [Warriner],” said the 18-year old Avil, with Tongyeong being only her second Olympic distance race ever. “I’ve never got to run with her before…it was a quick run today, it was ever more experience, more learning in the bag and I’m just loving it out there.”
Very windy conditions greeted the small field of only 32 athletes for the start of the 1,500 metre wetsuit swim in Tongyeong harbour. It was local Yun-Jung Jang from South Korea to hold the lead for the entire swim leg. While Jang and two others led out of the swim, a large group containing all of the top names was close behind and quickly made up this gap early in the bike leg. Because of the windy conditions and two gruelling hills on the bike course, the lead group stayed together and entered second transition as one. Because of safety concerns due to the high winds the bike turnaround was moved back to avoid the channel bridge, shortening the bike leg to 37.5 kilometres.
Within 50 metres of exiting transition, Warriner pushed the pace with only Avil and Frintova able to match her. These three ran together, continuing to put time between them and the rest of the field, until the halfway point where Warriner injected another burst of speed to drop Frintova.
"I was pushed all the way by those two and that was really good practice because you need to be able to control yourself in that sort of state," added Warriner about the torrid run pace. "I decided to go for it around that last corner and went for it and got it and I'm really pleased."
“It was a very tough run for me, because Sam [Warriner] ran very well, she pushed hard in the third and fourth lap and I really couldn’t push more,” replied Frintova.
Avil looked to add to her gold medal collection, trading the lead with Warriner until the final lap. But with two kilometres to go the veteran Kiwi surged again on a slight uphill, this time dropping Avil.
“I was just trying to hang on in there and when she put another surge in I just couldn’t go,” recalled Avil, who moves into a tie for seconds place in the world cup rankings. “I just had to keep strong. I didn’t want to let first place go, but I just hung in there and gave all I had until the end.”
From there is was clear sailing for the former Age Group champion as she glided home for her 11th world cup podium. Warriner becomes just the fifth woman in history to have world cup wins in four straight years, joining Vanessa Fernandes, Loretta Harrop, Emma Carney and Emma Snowsill.
2008 Tongyeong BG Triathlon World Cup
Elite Women - Official Results
1.5km swim, 37.5km bike, 10km run
Gold – Samantha Warriner (NZL)1:49:49
Silver – Hollie Avil (GBR) 1:49:59
Bronze – Vendula Frintova (CZE)1:50:21
4 – Ai Ueda (JPN) 1:50:46
5 – Kirsten Sweetland (CAN) 1:51:06
6 – Olga Zausaylova (RUS) 1:51:19
7 – Irina Abysova (RUS) 1:51:22
8 – Nicola Spirig (SUI) 1:51:25
9 – Lisa Mensink (NED) 1:51:27
10 – Emma Davis (IRL) 1:51:30
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