For half a dozen years, Sharm El Sheikh has been the de facto home of triathlon in Egypt.
Upon the return to the beachside town, a Sprint distance triathlon was on the cards in the morning sun. While the athletes got their opportunity to hunt points towards their rankings in the resort, for the Egyptian Federation it was a perfect trial ahead of hosting the African Championships in the same location in October.
Men’s race
After a slight delay to the start of the race, the men got underway. Although the water was warm enough, the bumpy waves were hardly forgiving. The chop thus made for a more unpleasant swim than for what many had bargained.
Around one buoy, one particularly ill-timed wave caught out several athletes as they were stranded on the spot for a moment. Once the buoy had been navigated, the carnage continued as different athletes veered in multiple directions, some of which were vaguely in the right direction.
It took good timing to be able to sight ahead with the lift of the wave and Lukas Pertl and Henry Räppo managed it better than most. They emerged towards the head of the front pack out of the water.
Panagiotis Bitados and Matthew Wright were also close by. Both were fresh off winning silver and bronze medals, respectively, at the African Cup in M’Diq.
The swim had split the field in half but there was no respite on the bike. As the likes of Ayan Beisenbayev and Gaspar Riveros lurked behind the leading wheels, there were a series of attacks.
The Austrians Tjebbe Kaindl and Martin Demuth joined the attacks with Pertl and the field lost a couple of men with each power spike. No one, though, could quite generate a complete break as every move was countered.
Out of T2, the field were still fairly tucked together. Räppo and Kaindl looked confident however Beisenbayev did not quite have the sharpness of earlier in the year.
With only 5km of road to separate the group, any move required delicate timing. Experience then told as Wright made the decisive kick.
Perhaps no one wanted to take up the responsibility of bringing the group back up to Wright’s feet, only to be out-sprinted, or maybe no one could quite react.
After waiting that bit too long, Bitados set off in pursuit of Wright. Bitados already had two African Cup silver medals to his name from earlier in the year, including his startling debut in Nelson Mandela Bay. This time, he had the win fixed in his sights.
However Wright did not crack as the sun beat down and defended his lead. Even as Bitados pushed harder, Wright was equal to anything the Greek athlete could throw at him.
When Wright closed the line, then, he did so with a healthy 20 second lead. For Bitados, it would be a third silver medal of the season.
Kaindl edged out Demuth and Räppo at the finish to win bronze.
Women’s race
In the non-wetsuit swim, the froth of the athletes’ kick was all that could be seen for a spell amid the waves of the Red Sea.
Margot Garabedian arrived in Egypt off a recent win at the South East Asian Games however she could expect close competition from Ekaterina Shabalina and Romana Gajdošová. In the water the three favourites were together with Garabedian trying to push the pace.
The trio of Noémi Sárszegi, Macarena Salazar and Hagar Cohen Kalif all swam well and gradually Salazar began to take control of proceedings. In a similar fashion to the men’s field, the swim roughly bisected the field.
One of the first to emerge at the front of the bike was the young Canadian athlete, Isla Britton.
As Salazar and Shabalina came through to take over the lead, the lead pack slimmed down from a dozen. Also within the lead group was Irina Juldibina. She was racing under the World Triathlon colours after beginning the process to switch her nationality from Russia to Uzbekistan in April.
In the final push towards T2, Juldibina made a surge to test the legs of those around her. The rest of the pack were equal to her, though, as Garabedian followed with Shablina and Cohen Kalif on her wheel.
A fast T2 kept the lead pack mostly bunched together. The run then quickly became a test of who could suffer the pace for the longest. Salazar and Cohen Kalif were the first to slip behind, their tanks emptied after their hard efforts on the bike.
Slowly the field whittled further until only Garabedian, Shabalina, Gajdošová and Sárszegi remained.
Sárszegi gritted her teeth but could only grasp at the expanding emptiness of the gap that emerged between her and the lead trio. Slowly but surely, she fell behind. With the medals all but determined, all that remained was to work out which colour each of the leading three would take.
Garabedian tried to up the tempo but Shabalina and Gajdošová were equal to her. With the final kilometre upon them Shabalina nudged to the front but the other two were all over her.
With the finish line in sight, the sprint began.
Garabedian had the speed and snatched victory from Shabalina at the line. In turn, Shabalina held off the charge of Gajdošová to come away with the silver medal as the Slovakian athlete took bronze.
A win marked the perfect stepping stone for Garabedian ahead of making her WTCS debut in Cagliari next weekend. Waiting for her on the start line in Sardinia for the next round in their battle, though, will be none other than Ekaterina Shabalina.
View the full results here.
