Ironman South Africa 2016 – Analyzing Results

Race Conditions

After a typically slow swim the new bike course proved to be much quicker than the old one. It remains to be seen if this was because most of the harder hills were cut from the course or because conditions were favorable this year – reportedly there wasn’t much wind. Even with the fast conditions we didn’t see any new course records – even if Ben Hoffman would probably have been able to find 3 seconds somewhere to break Gerrit Schellens run course record from 2007!

Male Race Results

After leading out of the swim, Marko Albert was at the front for the bike as well, even if he had some company with Bas Diederen and Ben Collins. Bas was the first into T2, but he struggled on the run, and Marko was leading the race until 15k. He then dropped back into fourth place, but rallied in the final stretch to pass Matt Trautmann and claimed the third spot on the podium. The quickest runners were Ben Hoffmann and Tim Van Berkel who had reached T2 just three minute behind the leaders, and Ben proved to be the stronger of the two. With 2:45:50 he posted the fastest marathon of the day, missing the run course record by only two seconds! Tim finished in second place.

Ben received an Automatic Qualifier slot for Kona, and both Tim and Matt should have enough points for Kona, as do fifth and sixth place finishers Boris Stein and Ruedi Wild (who had the best relative performance of the day, more than an hour quicker than expected!). Marko will still need a few more points to qualify for Kona.

Female Race Results

As expected Jodie Swallow was the fastest swimmer and in the lead on the bike. But at about 110k into the ride she fell hard without being clear what caused the crash. She was able to continue on the bike but had hurt her elbow and was loosing time to Annabel Luxford who was leading in T2 by 6 minutes over Jodie. Jodie started the run but had to call it a day after 8k. (I’m wishing her a speedy recovery and look forward to see her again at the front of her next race!) Bella had the fastest bike split by more than six minutes, but she posted after the race that she might have ridden a bit too hard. After Jodie withdrew Bella had a gap of more than 12 minutes to the speedy runners behind her, but that was only good enough for 20k. Kaisa Lehtonen proved that her second place at IM Barcelona was just the start and claimed her first Ironman title with the fastest run split. The second and third from last year took repeated this year but traded places: Susie Cheetham again had the better run and claimed second place, but Lucy Gossage’s third place only four weeks after her second place at IM New Zealand is an amazing result. Asa Lundstroem in fourth place had a solid race all day, she also passed Bella who ended up in fifth place.

As a Regional Champion Kaisa receives an Automatic Qualifier slot. After their great results in Kona and in Port Elizabeth Susie, Lucy, Asa and Annabel have enough points to be safe for a July slot.