ITU World Champions Lead Island House Tri, Day One
The winners of the first stage—Gwen Jorgensen and Javier Gomez—each received $1,000.
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It was no surprise that the short-course specialists dominated the leaderboards at the prologue of today’s Island House Invitational Triathlon, which featured a fast and furious individual time trial of a 300-meter swim, 7K bike and 2K run, amounting to about a 20–25 minute race. The winners of the first stage—Gwen Jorgensen and Javier Gomez—each received $1,000, and race sponsors Roka, Cervélo and Coca-Cola gave out an extra $250 premium for the fastest swim, bike and run, respectively.
Today’s prologue determined the overall general classification, which will mostly affect Sunday’s race, a non-drafting sprint event where athletes start behind the leader according to their deficit. Tomorrow’s race is draft-legal and will have a mass start for the Enduro—a swim-bike-run times three that totals an Olympic distance.
Each athlete was sent off in 60-second increments, and position was determined by a hat number pull the previous night.
Women
Leanda Cave started the women out and Gwen Jorgensen was in the last position heading into the water.
Lauren Brandon won the swim premium with a split of 4:05, Lisa Norden held the fastest bike split in 11:30 and Jorgensen ran the 2K in the fastest time of 7:29. Jorgensen won the overall stage in 23:51, with 2012 Olympic silver medalist Norden six seconds back in 23:57 and recent XTERRA world champion Flora Duffy coming in third in 24:00. The times from first to 10th were only separated by less than two minutes.
Women’s results, with deficits to leader:
1. Gwen Jorgensen 23:52
2. Lisa Norden + :07
3. Flora Duffy + :09
4. Alicia Kaye + :27
5. Rachel Klamer + :55
6. Lauren Brandon +1:03
7. Mirinda Carfrae +1:07
8. Heather Wurtele +1:16
9. Rachel Joyce +1:37
10. Leanda Cave +1:42
Men
On the men’s side, it was race director Luke McKenzie who started the swim first, with Tim Don chasing from the back in 10th. Gomez swam and ran the fastest to win both premiums (3:51, 6:46) and Cam Dye biked a 10:30 to win the bike premium. Gomez beat fellow top ITU athlete Richard Murray by 25 seconds; former short-course-turned Ironman Tim Don held on for third position only 7 seconds behind Murray.
Men’s results, with deficits to leader:
1. Javier Gomez 21:35
2. Richard Murray +:25
3. Tim Don +:32
4. Cam Dye +:35
5. Leon Griffin +:57
6. Ben Hoffman +1:03
7. Trevor Wurtele +1:09
8. Barrett Brandon +1:12
9. Luke McKenzie +1:26
10. Tim O’Donnell +1:27
Full splits can be found here.