After the Villarrica Americas Cup hosted the Olympic distance South American Championships earlier this year, the Americas Cup in Lima, Peru, doubled as the South American Championships over the Sprint distance.
With plenty of local support lined up alongside the roads, the athletes made sure to deliver some high quality racing to live up to the occasion.
Men’s race
An impressive field lined up for the men’s race. Wearing number 1 was Diego Moya, the silver medallist from the Viña del Mar World Cup last November.
Gaspar Riveros arrived fresh off a win at a domestic race in Italy while Ramón Armando Matute entered having won the Americas Cup in Salinas last week.
With the winners from the Americas Cup races in La Guiara and Villarrica, Rodrigo Gonzalez and Kauê Willy, also racing, Lima promised to be a close race.
The stone beach was perhaps not the most enticing way to stand. While it provided a great backdrop to the race, some of the athletes may look forward to a sandy beach at their next races. Even with some mats laid down on the swim exit, there were still enough stones for the athletes to avoid.
Matute and Moya were the first men to dance over the stones with careful feet on their way into T1. The pair led the way in the water and used as much of the 750m swim as they could to stretch the field. Riveros was close behind as were Vicente Trewhela and the silver medallist from Salinas last week, Vitalii Vorontsov.
At first only a select dozen managed to make it onto Matute’s and Moya’s wheels out of T1 as much of the field laboured to keep up.
When Mitsuho Mochizuki slipped into the front pack, the likelihood of an attack grew. Mochizuki illuminated the racing at Salinas with a daring attack. Yet this time, the attack came from elsewhere.
Matute seized the initiative on the bike and arrived in T2 with a 30 second lead over Moya, Mochizuki and the chase.
Over the first half of the run, Matute and the chasers were perfectly poised as they matched one another’s paces. As the likes of Gonzalez and Willy slipped behind, the chase was whittled down to five men. After another kilometre, Vorontsov and Trewhela lost contact too, leaving Moya, Mochizuki and Riveros to hunt Matute.
The race leader, though, still had not ceded any ground and cruised to victory.
In the last kilometre, Moya and Mochizuki found a slight gap ahead of Riveros. The two men could only ultimately be separated in a tight sprint finish. Both were awarded the same time but Moya was the one to thrust over the line first to take silver. After missing out on a medal in Salinas, a bronze was a great result for Mochizuki.
Women’s race
The waves made for an exceptionally fast swim in the women’s race as Raquel Solis Guerrero and Romina Biagioli pulled away from the main pack. After winning the Olympic distance South American title in Villarrica, Biagioli was looking to add the Sprint distance crown to her collection for the year.
Neither Solis not Biagioli were quite able to capitalise on their swim speed and the field came back together on the bike. With the experience of Elizabeth Bravo and the likes of Moira Miranda and Maryna Kyryk pushing the pace on the bike, there was no real opportunity for anyone to break clear in the way Matute had in the men’s race.
The youngest athlete in the field, Zoe Adam of Puerto Rico, also rode well after a strong swim. Although she did not go on to finish, Adam showed plenty of promise in the first two disciplines for an athlete only born in 2005.
As Paula Jara took a turn on the front of the bike, the pack spread a little but it soon became clear that the race-deciding action would have to wait until the run.
Having made up time lost in the swim during the bike, Luisa Daniela Baca Vargas hit the front early on the run. With Bravo and Jara for company, Baca set the pace and forced the field to keep up. For a brief moment, several athletes were able to. However Miranda, Kyryk and Biagioli each lost contact with the leaders.
Over the course of the run, the race devolved into a straight shoot-out between Baca, Bravo and Jara, although Jara was beginning to show signs of fatigue.
As much as she fought, Jara could not quite hold on and was dropped. That left Bravo and Baca, an athlete fourteen years her junior, to contend for the win.
Bravo pushed to a new gear but her rival matched her. Baca, in turn, tried to push the pace yet Bravo read the move and covered. As the finish line drew closer, neither could quite snap the elastic band that joined them.
As both launched their sprint for the line, Baca managed to nudge ahead and took the win by 2 seconds. In doing so she claimed her first international win of her triathlon career.
Jara came home in 3rd place, only 9 seconds behind Bravo.
View the full results here.
