Find out how Ashleigh Gentle proved that she’s the master of heat and humidity, and the queen of the 100 km distance
Australian star takes another PTO 100 km distance event with dominant performance at T100 Triathlon World Tour Singapore
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PTO
Ever since she turned her sights to long-distance racing, it’s been pretty clear that Australia’s Ashleigh Gentle was going to be a dominant force over the half distance. Then, when the Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO) decided to set its standard distance at 100 km, a bit shorter than the half, things only got better for the two-time Olympian. Since she’s focussed on longer-distance racing, there’s only been two times Gentle hasn’t been on the podium – a fourth at Oceanside in 2022, followed by a fifth at the Challenge Championship a little over a month later. Later that year she would win Ironman 70.3 Andorra, the PTO Canadian and US Opens (with their US$100,000 pay checks) and post the day’s second-fastest time at the Collins Cup. (All the prize money no-doubt helped pay for the wedding with fellow Aussie pro Josh Amberger that year.)
Last year Germany’s Anne Haug beat a “building into form” Gentle at the PTO European Open in Ibiza, while Taylor Knibb relegated her to second again at the PTO US Open before Gentle returned to the top of the podium at the PTO Asian Open in Singapore. (She followed that up with a 70.3 win in Langkawi and her 10th win at the Noosa Triathlon.)
Ashleigh Gentle gets 10th win, Hayden Wilde sets course record at 40th anniversary Noosa Tri
In other words, Gentle is very good at this distance. Add heat and humidity and she’s pretty much unstoppable. She ran down Knibb at the PTO US Open in 2022 in the stifling Texas heat. Singapore was hot and humid last year, and conditions appeared to be tougher this year. Langkawi? That’s the site of Ironman Malaysia, which is typically one of the hottest Ironman races on the planet. (Temperatures have hit 40 degrees C and more.)
All of which leads to today’s result at the T100 Triathlon World Tour Singapore race – a day that featured extreme heat and humidity and the perfect distance was right up the Australian star’s alley.
Charles-Barclay has some company
As is standard for pretty much any triathlon she enters, Great Britain’s Lucy Charles-Barclay led the way out of the 31 C water (yeah, wetsuits weren’t allowed …) in 26:03, but was joined at the front by British 2012 Olympian Lucy Buckingham and New Zealand’s Rebecca Clarke. American Haley Chura was next out at 27:16, with Gentle hitting T2 1:38 behind.
On the bike Charles-Barclay pushed the pace with Buckingham happy to stay close, but the Brit did move to the front about halfway through the 80 km bike, but would be slowed by a cramp a short time later and would relinquish the lead to Charles-Barclay again. The defending Ironman world champ led the way into T2, adding the day’s fastest bike split (2:01:18) to her swim prime. Buckingham hit T2 12 seconds down, with the Netherlands’ Els Visser just over five minutes back, about 25 seconds ahead of Gentle.
Gentle dominates the run
As she typically does, Gentle was unstoppable on the run, posting an incredible 1:09:10 split that saw her pass Charles-Barclay with about four km of running to go and cruising to the win in 3:44:23. It wasn’t as though Charles-Barclay (3:45:58) was slow on the run – her 1:16:18 was the third-fastest split of the day. (Kiwi Amelia Watkinson would run a 1:12:13 to get herself to fourth, just 25 seconds behind Visser, who held on to third in3:51:38.)
Despite the conditions – according to the World Triathlon report the air temperature was 34.3 C and water temperature 30.9 C – only three athletes didn’t finish the race India Lee pulled out on the run while Chelsea Sodaro and Marjolaine Pierre stopped on the bike.
You can find full results here.
The men’s race takes place tomorrow. Find out details on how to watch below.
