After already taking a stunning victory at Challenge Canberra last week, Daniel Baekkegard just recorded his second Australian victory within a week. After a race in which he raced at the front from start to finish, he triumphed at Ironman Busselton. He did so in a lightning-fast time of 7:34:23.
Right from the swim, Baekkegard was in a good position, although he was surrounded by six other men at the time. Once out of the water, after 47:40 minutes, the Dane saw the likes of Sam Appleton, Steven McKenna, Jack Sosinski, Caleb Noble, Aichlinn Oreilly and Scott Steenberg with him. Even on the bike, these men stayed together for quite a while.
Noble and Sosinski were the first to drop off, after about sixty kilometers, and thus the first shuffle within the leading group occurred. Meanwhile, the pace at the front was getting faster and faster, and after 120 kilometers this resulted in a situation where only McKenna, Baekkegard and Steenberg were in the lead.
When Baekkegard also left McKenna and Steenberg behind after 140 kilometers, it looked like he would ride to T2 on his own. Nothing was further from the truth, because from the back Matt Burton suddenly came riding to the front in a very impressive way: he made up 4:30 minutes of him swim deficit, closed in on Baekkegard and eventually the two returned to T2 together. Meanwhile, Nick Thompson, also biking very strongly, had advanced to third place and was allowed to start his marathon 50 seconds behind the leaders.
While Thompson lost a lot of time right from the first running kilometers, Burton was also able to catch up with Baekkegard for only a few kilometers. The Dane proved to have far too strong running legs and eventually ran impressively to victory: 7:34:23. Burton (7:40:28) and Thompson (7:48:23) finished second and third.
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