Taylor Knibb and Marten Van Riel threw down the gauntlet to their triathlon world championship rivals by making it two wins from two starts in the Ibiza T100 at the weekend.
Olympic silver medallist Knibb impressed with a commanding victory over a stacked field in the women’s race after Belgian Van Riel out-sprinted London winner Sam Laidlow in the men’s race.
The results put the unbeaten pair in striking distance of the top of their respective standings with just one more race to go, in Las Vegas next month, before the Dubai grand finale.
US road cycling time trial champion Knibb opened up a healthy lead on the bike stage and held off fellow Olympian Julie Derron on the run to win by one minute and 43 seconds.
Briton India Lee was a further three-and-a-half minutes back in third, a result that lifted her to second in the women’s standings behind Australian Ashleigh Gentle, who was fourth in Ibiza.
Knibb is a close third in the standings despite having completed just two races on the T100 Triathlon World Tour.
She also won the San Francisco leg in June and is relishing another home race at Lake Las Vegas on 19 October.
“I’m excited to race at home with a less than two-hour flight,” said Knibb.
“You always want to execute the best of your ability on any given day and you want to do the best you can so each race counts.”
Lee was pleased to continue her superb T100 campaign having suffered the disappointment of failing to finish at the Ironman World Championships a week earlier.
“I was so motivated to prove that I had put in all the work for this week and I didn’t want it to be a waste of time,” she said. “To pull off a solid result, I am really chuffed.”
Van Riel, meanwhile, made no secret of the fact that he wants to be the T100 Triathlon World Tour’s inaugural men’s champion after adding to his win from San Francisco.
He was first out of the water but lost ground to Rico Bogen on the bike before he and English-born Laidlow duelled it out on the run to Ibiza’s old town.
“It was my biggest goal before this year to become the first T100 Triathlon World Champion and I am all in for it,” he said.
“If I do my best for every single race and if I keep getting good results like this I’ll be very close. Naturally I’m quite a fast guy, but I still have endurance. For now, this format is perfect for me.”
Van Riel pushed his heart rate to 94 per cent of its maximum to drop Laidlow with just over 3km to go and climb to fourth in the men’s standings.
Britain’s Alistair Brownlee earned his best result of the T100 season in fourth, behind German Mika Noodt, despite taking a one-minute penalty for drafting.
“It was a fair decision,” he said. “I then rode the last lap on my own and ran trying to catch people – and I was pleased to feel good right to the finish.”
