IRONMAN Wales is famous for tough conditions. Just like the IRONMAN Lanzarote course, the course in Wales and the weather conditions always make this race a challenging one. At the seventh edition of the outstanding event, the water temperature was not really high when athletes embarked onto their Wales journey in the morning.
The race became a hot battle early on, however, due to a packed lead group in men’s race. British Harry Wiltshire set the pace as expected while Australia’s former cyclist Cameron Wurf proved his strength on the hard bike course shortly after. The rain was on and off, and the longer the race went on, the stronger the wind became. Wurf managed the only sub-5 bike ride of the day and laid the foundation for his first IRONMAN success on the demanding course. He came off the bike with a huge lead in front of the strong biker Philip Graves and Christian Kramer. Although it looked like Kramer could make a decisive pass on the marathon thanks to his running talent, Wurf kept his advantage solid and stood in front all day long. Kramer downsized Wurf’s lead, but he pushed a bit too hard and had to suffer on the final kilometers. Graves eventually passed Kramer for silver and became a happy back-to-back runner-up in Tenby.
In the women’s race, a British day was crowned by an extremely popular champion. Four years after taking her first win in Wales, Lucy Gossage dominated the race in great fashion. As expected, she was far behind the strong swimmer Kate Comber in the water, but there was no other pro woman to control the race on the bike and run later on than Gossage. She moved to the front after 40 kilometers and didn’t worry at any point about the windy conditions or any opponents. Gossage stormed through the course and nailed another demonstrating victory of her career. Different than in the men’s race, the women’s podium was completely British.
Top 5 Pro Men
1 Wurf, Cameron AUS 9:07:03
2 Graves, Philip GBR 9:09:33
3 Kramer, Christian DEU 9:14:26
4 Vistica, Andrej CRO 9:17:41
5 Leeman, Matthew GBR 9:30:14
Top 3 Pro Women
1 Gossage, Lucy GBR 10:11:20
2 Edwards, Parys GBR 10:35:16
3 Comber, Kate GBR 10:44:02