1,500-Meter Swim In Lake Michigan, 40-Kilometer Bike Ride And 10-Kilometer Run
“Gwen Jorgensen won the ITU World Triathlon Series’ Grand Final [in Chicago] on Friday for her second straight season championship,” KSTP-TV reports.
“Jorgensen, from St. Paul, Minnesota, has won 12 straight events. She finished the 1,500-meter swim in Lake Michigan, 40-kilometer bike ride and 10-kilometer run in 1 hour, 55 minutes, 36 seconds.”
Highlights:
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“It is hard to picture Gwen Jorgensen as a menacing presence,” Philip Hersh reports for the Tribune.
“She is a former accountant from Wisconsin, a willowy 29-year-old with 125 pounds stretched over a 5-foot-10 body, a woman given more to bashfulness than bravado.
“‘I’m just Gwen, just an ordinary person in my mind,’ she said.
“She may not look or feel the part, but Jorgensen has morphed into the Triathlon Terminator.
“Jorgensen runs rivals into the ground so thoroughly during the last of the sport’s three phases that she is dominating the scene as no other woman has in the 15 years since triathlon made its Olympic debut.”
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Meanwhile, U.S. men fall short:
“It has been an increasingly rough ride for the top U.S. men on the international triathlon circuit in the 26 seasons since Mark Allen became the sport’s first official world champion and the last from the USA,” Hersh reports.
“It got even rougher last month for the top U.S. man much of the last eight seasons, Jarrod Shoemaker. A day before a qualifying race for the 2016 Rio Summer Games on the Olympic course, Shoemaker crashed while training on his bike, broke his collarbone and underwent surgery that involved inserting a plate to stabilize the bones.
“Seven weeks later, he was racing the triathlon World Series final Saturday in Chicago, where an Olympic qualifying spot was the reward in the unlikely event a U.S. man finished in the top eight.
“No one claimed it, meaning none of a probable three U.S. men’s spots for Rio will be awarded until the spring.”
Men’s highlights:
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Comments welcome.
Posted on September 22, 2015