It has been a busy few weeks of triathlon in China. After the Chengdu World Cup took place in late April, the Asia Cup in Taizhou followed in May. Then, at the weekend, another Asia Cup event followed in the country, this time in Lianyungang. Seeing as China will also be hosting a WTCS stop later in the year, after the reclassification of the Weihai World Cup, the country is clearly making moves in the sport.
In Lianyungang, the home team set out to make a statement at the Olympic distance event and came away with a hatful of medals. Indeed, but for the intervention of one athlete, China would have swept both podiums.
Women’s race
Bailee Brown arrived in Lianyungang buoyed by a bronze medal in Taizhou and looked to keep her hopes of claiming the Asian New Flag slot at the Paris Olympics alive. The athlete from Hong Kong got off to a fast start and led the 1500m swim in a time of 20:39.
Qing Wu of China was the next woman to exit the water, 4 seconds back. However, Wu did not finish the bike segment. After losing over half a minute to Brown in the later, Meiyi Lu rode up to the front. For much of the 40km, Brown and Lu rode together and went on to arrive in T2 over 7 minutes ahead of the remaining racers.
Once through transition, Brown ran clear. Her 10km split of 39:04 was the only sub-40 minute effort of the field and she took the win by over 4 minutes. Brown’s gold medal was the first of her international career and draws her closer to Ekaterina Shabalina of Kazakhstan in the New Flag race. A final showdown will be on the cards as both Brown and Shabalina will contest the Asia Cup in Burabay this weekend, although Shabalina’s lead may prove insurmountable.
Lu was the next athlete home and sealed the silver medal while Xinyi Xu earned the bronze medal.
Men’s race
Yangjie Li was the top performer in the men’s swim (17:20) and put much of the field on the back foot. Jonathan Oakley of Ireland was a second behind Li but thereafter a gap of 13 seconds split the lead pair from the next swimmer.
In the early stages of the bike, Oakley and Li were joined by a pack of over twenty men at the front. However, as the race threatened to clump into one main pack, a breakaway switched things up. A trio of Temirlan Temirov, Bo Ma and Yunfeng Teng rode away from the rest and established a lead of around 90 seconds into T2.
Ma did not complete the run while Temirov also faltered. However Teng could not be stopped. The Chinese athlete added the top run split of the field (31:45) to win by 1 minute 19 seconds. To complete a home sweep of the podium, Yunxiang Ma took the silver medal while Junjie Fan, the Asian champion over the Sprint distance, claimed the bronze medal.
View the full results here.
