After three days of racing over various formats, current WTS champs Javier Gomez and Gwen Jorgensen further cemented their position as the top triathletes in the world at the moment, with convincing overall victories at the Island House Invitational Triathlon.
Advertisement
With prize money awarded for each individual race, the fastest overall swimmers, cyclists, and runners and overall classification winners, it amounted to a huge payday for multiple winners Gomez and Jorgensen. Gomez picked up $1000 for winning two races, $250 premiums for fastest swim and run splits and $60,000 for his overall victory, with Jorgensen picking up almost as much due to finishing 2nd in the final day non-drafting event to Lisa Norden. Gomez was only defeated by bike specialist Cameron Dye in the sprint event.
Short-course specialists dominated the opening day ‘prologue’ event, which consisted of a fast and furious 300 meter swim, 7k bike and 2k run. Surprisingly Tim Don managed to finish in 3rd despite competing in long distance events for large parts of his season.
The second day was a draft-legal Olympic distance race, and was the one most similar to ITU racing. After a mass swim start on the beach, it was again Jorgensen and Gomez who were victorious, with Richard Murray and Tim Don finishing second and third males, and Flora Duffy and Lisa Norden taking the positions in the women’s race.
The third day was a 750m swim/20km bike/5km run race with a non-drafting bike course. Jorgensen started with a 41 second advantage over Duffy in second current leader on general classification, and extended this coming out of the water. Behind the leaders, American athlete and winner of the Roka swim competition, Lauren Brandon, recorded the fastest swim time of the women, 9:56. That time beat all but three of the male competitors. Despite Norden hitting the front on the bike and recording the fastest time of the day, it was Jorgensen who claimed the overall victory, as she ran a blistering 5km and bridged the gap.