The racing continued at the World Multisport Championships in Ibiza with the elite aquathlon races.
With a 1km swim and a 5km run, the athletes were confronted with a slightly different challenge to the standard triathlon fare. Without the need for a bike or drafting considerations, the Senior, U23 and Junior fields all raced as one with the category results extracted after the event.
Having won a silver medal in the duathlon already at the championships, Zsanett Bragmayer was an early favourite. Meanwhile, Margareta Vrablova was the prohibitive favourite in the Junior women’s category after arriving on the back of consecutive European Junior Cup wins in Melilla and Quarteira.
It was Márta Kropkó that led the way in the swim as she recorded a time of 14:41. Bragmayer emerged next, only 2 seconds behind, with Giada Stegani of Italy a further second behind.
After a quick T1, Bragmayer cruised into the lead in the early stages of the run.
After clocking a time of 14:53 in the swim, Vrablova had to work her way through the field. She soon picked off Stegani and Laura Holánszky on the run and began to laser in on the podium. Sara Perez Sala had been sixth out of the water but Vrablova passed her too.
In the end Vrablova matched Bragmayer’s run split of 17:18 to the second as she vaulted herself into 2nd place. In doing so, she also won the Junior world title.
From even further afield, though, another athlete was making a dramatic surge through the field.
Celine Kaiser had swam 15:29, losing over 45 seconds to the leaders. As she departed from T1, it seemed her chances of medalling had already passed.
However she crushed a 16:40 5km to rise to 3rd place. Her split was 38 seconds faster than that produced by Bragmayer and Vrablova and was enough to overhaul Perez Sala in the late stages of the race.
Perez Sala had to settle for 4th while Kropkó took 5th. In doing so, Kropkó won the U23 category. The rest of the U23 podium finished close behind her as Stegani earned 6th place (and 2nd in the U23 ranks) and Holánszky finished 7th (and 3rd in the U23 race).
Nora Romina Nádas won silver in the Junior race, just over a minute behind Vrablova. Cassilda Carvalho of Portugal earned the Junior bronze medal.
In the men’s race, Richard Varga had been the early favourite after claiming four previous world aquathlon titles in his career.
However, the Hungarian pair of Gergő Dobi and Márton Kropkó set the pace in the swim. Both swam times of 13:16, putting themselves 7 seconds clear of Varga. Part of Varga’s problem, though, seemed to be that he was led wide in the final stages of the swim. Badr Siwane also suffered from the same issue as Christopher Perham lost time after making contact with a canoe.
With valuable seconds lost, they were forced to chase as Cristian Fernandez Nieto jumped from third in the water (after swimming 13:17) into an early lead on the run.
Jimmy Lund of Britain initially led the charge to shut Fernandez down but could not quite manage it. As Perham also made up ground, the two Brits tried to find a way past their Spanish rival. Fernandez, though, was in irrepressible running form.
He clocked a split of 14:58 to hold on for the win, finishing 4 seconds ahead of Perham. Perham ultimately managed a time of 14:51 so will have been left wondering what could have been had he not made contact with the canoe.
For a brief moment it seemed like Jannik Schaufler of Germany would run through to the medals having lost over 20 seconds in the swim. In the end, though, it was not to be. Despite a field-leading 5km split of 14:46, Schaufler finished 4th behind Lund.
Dobi was rewarded for his fine swim as he took the U23 title. Likewise Kropkó saw the benefits of his fast time in the water as he won the Junior title. Kropkó finished 5th overall while Dobi placed 6th.
Michele Bortolamedi and Kyotaro Yoshikawa rounded out the U23 podium (by finishing 8th and 13th, respectively).
Michael Gar and Ilio Kopriva won the Junior silver and bronze medals after finishing 14th and 17th overall.
View the full results here.
