ITU World Triathlon Series

Belaubre and Fernandes win in Madrid

19 September 2004

Fernandes and Belaubre Win Madrid World Cup

Madrid, Spain: 19 Sept, 2004: The Spanish Triathlon Federation and the City of Madrid combined forces to produce one of the finest World Cup events ever staged on the ITU World Cup Circuit.

Air temperature during the night dropped to 14oC, causing the water temperature in Lake Casa de Campa to drop below the magic 20oC mark, so the women were allowed to wear wetsuits for the 2 lap, 1.5km swim.

Pip Taylor of Australia, Leanda Cave of Britain and Pilar Hidalgo of Spain moved to the front after the start signal and stayed there through the first turn buoy, when Sylvia Gemignani of Italy moved to the front and led through to the swim to bike transition.

Annabel Luxford of Australia and the defending Madrid World Cup Champion Vanessa Fernandes from Portugal followed Gemignani from the transition. Next out was Taylor, Luxford, and British team-mates Anneliese Heard and Jessica Harrison and Pip Taylor (AUS).

A tidy group of 5 formed at the front including: Harrison, Heard, Gemignani, Luxford and Heard. Liz Blatchford was able to bridge to the leaders on the first lap, as Heard dropped off the back and retired from the event. A strong chase pack of 9 formed which included 2000 Sydney Olympic Champion Brigitte McMahon and an emerging French athlete Camille Cierpik. Spanish Olympians Ainhoa Murua, Pilar Hidalgo and Ana Burgos were also all in this group as well as Germany’s Anja Dittmer, Leanda Cave, Vendula Frintova of the Czech Republic, and Samantha Warriner from New Zealand. Although they seemed to be working well together, they lost time on each lap and by the fourth lap of eight laps on the 40km bike course they were over 1 minute behind.

The lead group continued to pull ahead of the chasers and by the bike to run transition they had just under 2 minutes on the large chase group. Liz Blatchford and Annabel Luxford were the first to park their bike and start the 4 lap, 10km run course. The youngster of the sport, twenty year old and defending champion Vanessa Fernandes had a bit of a problem getting through Transition Two, but once on her feet, she sprinted up to the leaders and never turned back.

Liz Blatchford held onto the young Portuguese athlete through the first 3 laps, but by the bell lap she was worn down and dropped off the pace. Fernandes ran a 35.22 10km to win by a margin of 25 seconds over Blatchford. Annabel Luxford was 3rd , 1:09 back. Vendula Frintova and Ana Burgos came from the chase group off the bike to place 4th and 5th.

Elite Men
In the men’s event, ITU new heart-throb Ivan Vassiliev of Russia led the large field through the 2 lap swim. Germany’s Christian Ruderer, Frederic Belaubre and Stephane Poulat of France, Stuart Hayes of Britain, Zvonko Cubric of Croatia and Volodymyr Polikarpenko of Ukraine exited the swim within 10 seconds of Vassiliev.

The seven swim leaders were joined on the first lap of the bike by the new generation of triathlon stars from Belgium Peter Croes, plus Spanish team-mates Javier Gomez and Xavier Llobet, along with David Dellow of Australia. Despite its size, the group at the front slowly pulled away from the large chase group behind, thanks to the hard core cyclist in the group like Stephane Poulat and Xavier Llobet. By the second lap the leaders had a 40 second lead on the chaser group of 12 which included French athlete Sylvain Sudrie and Cedric Deanaz, Kris Gemmell of New Zealand, current European Champion Rasmus Henning of Denmark, Spanish team-mates Raul Cordoba and Jose Merchan, Filip Ospaly of the Czech Republic, Italy’s Leonadro Fiorella, Former World Champion Dimitry Gaag of Kazakhstan, Richard Stannard of Great Britain and Andreas Raelert of Germany.

By the seventh lap, the leaders had appeared to be slowing down as a small desperate quartet broke from the chase pack led by Joe Umphenour of the USA, Deanaz and Sudrie of France and Anton Chuchko of Russia. Although they took some time out of the leaders before the bike to run transition it was not enough to impact the results.

Zvonko Cubric was the first to start the 10 km run followed by Frederic Belaubre, Peter Croes and Stuart Hayes.

By the end of the first lap 9 athletes from the lead were still in contention, but by the end of the second lap Croes, Gomez, Dellow, Ruderer and Cubric had all been dropped which left Belaubre, Polikarpenko, Hayes and Vassiliev running together at the front.

The quartet at the front stayed intact through the third lap when Frederic Belaubre found that extra gear and slowly pulled away leaving the others to fight for the 2 remaining steps on the podium. Vassiliev was dropped by Polikarpenko and Hayes, and Hayes broke from Polikarpenko with 1 kilometre to go. It was probably too early as the big Ukrainian lad with years of experience out-sprinted all challengers to place second while Hayes settled for third.