Anne Haug shatters 29-year-old record at Ironman Lanzarote
German star returns to racing with record setting performance at the world's toughest Ironman
Photo by:
Kevin Mackinnon
Heading into the race she wasn’t sure of her fitness. At the end we had an answer for her – she’s very fit. Germany’s Anne Haug, the two-time Olympian and 2019 Ironman world champion, missed a number of early season races due to illness, but based on her performance in Lanzarote yesterday, she’s fit and ready to go.
Haug’s 9:06:40 shattered the course record set by Ironman legend Paula Newby-Fraser in 1995 (9:24:39) by almost 18 minutes. Along the way she set new bike (5:17:49) and run (2:49:08) records, too. Her 54:26 swim put her about five minutes up on the rest of the field, and her lead only grew from there. In the end she finished over 43 minutes up on France’s Jeanne Collonge (9:50:24) and two-time defending champ Lydia Dant (9:54:54).
Haug spends about six months of the year here in Lanzarote – she is an ambassador for the race’s title sponsor, Club La Santa, but said before the race that she’d always been wary of competing in the Ironman here because she knew how tough it would be. After the race she said it “was the toughest thing she’d ever done.”
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It certainly didn’t look that way as she flew to a 14th place finish over all. Only two men in the field would run faster.
Next up for the German star is the T100 San Francisco event. We’ll have more from the champion later today.
Vandendriessche takes second win
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Belgium’s Kenneth Vandendriessche has a Club La Santa connection, too. His wife used to work at the famous sports resort, and he’s spent lots of time training on the island. Two years ago, when he knew that he was on his way to winning the race, he was so emotional that he had to stop with 1 km to go and drink a couple of cups of coke to calm himself down.
There was no stopping this year as Vandendriessche hoped to get his run course record back (Arthur Horseau broke the Belgian’s record with his 2:39:19 on his way to a course-record performance last year), but ended up four seconds short. It hardly mattered, though, as Vandendriessche was thrilled to take a second win in 8:29:54, ahead of Spain’s Jordi Montraveta (8:32:26) and Mikel Ugarte (8:36:39).
Great Britain’s Matthew Palmer led off the bike after setting a new bike course record (4:35:24), breaking Cameron Wurf’s previous best time of 4:37:56 set last year.