Pros share prize money with disqualified winner of Challenge Budva-Montenegro
Lead bike takes winner off course
Photo by:
Challenge-Family
How good was Denmark’s Maguns Ditlev at Challenge Budva-Montenegro yesterday? Trailing after the swim he blasted through the field on the bike to take the lead by the 15 km point. Through 30 km his lead was up to 1:12 over the likes of two-time Kona champ Patrick Lange and Nils Frommhold. By the end of the bike he was 4:33 up on those two, then opened up more time on one of the sport’s premier runners – Kona marathon record holder Lange. At that halfway point Lange yelled to spectators “how is this possible?”
Ditlev would continue on for the win in 3:41:29 , with Lange coming across the line in second in 3:48:21. Switzerland’s Ruedi Wild ended up taking second in 3:50:43.
Later in the day, though, Challenge-Family issued a press release announcing that Ditlev had actually been disqualified for unintentionally cutting the course “after following the lead bike.”
“All involved regret this decision but the application of the objective rules as set out by our World Triathlon governing body is an important factor in our sport,” race organizers said.
The pros who finished behind the Dane chose to share their earnings “as a token of appreciation of the form Magnus showed today,” the release continued.
That means that officially Patrick Lange is the Challenge Budva-Montenegro champion, with Wild taking second and Frommhold rounding out the podium.
Hall leads from start to finish
Great Britain’s Lucy Hall, a 2012 Olympian, blasted through the swim and never looked back as she took the women’s race. After opening a gap of three minutes on the rest of the field in the water, Hall lost some of that time to Emma Bilham by the end of the bike – she was 1:20 ahead of her countrywoman at that point, with the Netherlands’ Els Visser just under five minutes down starting the run.
That’s the way things stayed through the rest of the race, with Hall taking the win in 4:17:09. Bilham would cross the line 2:14 later, with Visser rounding out the podium 4:32 back.
