A men's and women's double act ensured that the IRONMAN UK titles remained in British hands with Lucy Gossage racking up her fifth title and Joe Skipper fighting hard to come out on top at the 10th edition of the event in Bolton.
Coming into the women's race as the overwhelming favourite, Lucy Gossage wasted no time in establishing control as she moved into an early lead on the swim. At the midway point she was 30 seconds ahead of Canada’s Angela Naeth, eventually stretching her lead to 02:27 heading into T1.
Sweden’s Camilla Lindholm Borg endured a difficult swim coming into T1 with a significant deficit of close to 25 minutes behind Naeth.
With Gossage holding a lead on the swim she was already in a commanding position but with Naeth strongest on the bike, an intriguing tussle was expected.
Gossage however steadily built on her lead as she made inroads into the challenging course to go into T2 with a lead of over 10 minutes over Naeth. Lindholm-Borg was unable to claw back her deficit and trailed Naeth by nearly 27 minutes with the run to come.
With Gossage already over 10 minutes ahead and her strongest discipline in front of her, the result already seemed a formality and so did the podium order with Lindholm-Borg so far back. Gossage was expectedly dominant, winning by a margin of over 30 minutes to claim her fifth IRONMAN UK title, and fourth consecutive win in Bolton.
“It’s just a fun race and it’s really special racing it. The support is incredible. I’m quite sad because I don’t think I’ll be back next year, but it makes it all the more special. I thought Angela [Naeth] was catching me on the bike, so I was biking really hard. It’s a tough run course but the support was absolutely amazing. I’ve done a lot of IRONMAN racing but Bolton will always be very special to me,” said Lucy.
Naeth never looked comfortable on the run but the gap to Lindholm-Borg looked large enough to hold onto second place. Lindholm-Borg maintained a steady pace while Naeth gradually lost time and with a clear momentum swing, the Swede caught up and moved into second place for the first time in the race with less than 5km to go. She duly held on to take second place after looking out of the running midway through the bike.
The professional men had an open race with Hungary’s Balasz Csoke taking the early lead on the swim just ahead of Germany’s Andreas Niedrig followed by New Zealand’s Simon Cochrane and Great Britain’s Will Clarke. Csoke pushed ahead and went into T2 over 2 minutes ahead of Cochrane and Clarke.
Csoke looked good for the early section on the bike but was derailed by a mechanical failure after 25km. The Hungarian tried desperately to get back on track but had lost too much time to get himself back into contention.
France’s Arnaud Guilloux then moved into the lead while Germany’s Marc Duelsen moved through the field into second place closely followed by Fraser Cartmell. Guilloux then suffered a fall before the 50km mark allowing Duelsen to move into the lead with Cartmell less than a minute behind. Joe Skipper moved into third.
By the 100km mark Skipper moved into second place, still trailing Duelsen by four minutes with Henry Irvine in third. The top three positions remained unchanged going into T2 but Duelsen’s lead was cut slightly to 03:23.
With more than 3 minutes to make up, Skipper set out at a faster pace and proceeded to chase Duelsen down. He managed to take the lead halfway into the marathon and from then onwards pressed his advantage to win his first IRONMAN UK title, more than 7 minutes ahead of Duelsen who held onto second place. Fabian Rahn of Germany ran himself into third place, displacing Irvine to round out the podium.
“I’m absolutely over the moon, I’m so happy. It’s my fourth time here and being a Brit at IRONMAN UK is massive,” said Skipper. “When I got off the bike and I was three minutes down, I felt today was going to be my day.
"The support I had was absolutely incredible, I was blown away. I felt good, I didn’t think I was going to blow up and I was doing the maths in my head. I was pretty sure I had [the win] with three miles to go.”