Sam Laidlow shows world championship form with impressive win at T100 London

The reigning Ironman World Champion had no DQ issues this time – just two weeks after crossing the line in second after being disqualified for not stopping at a penalty tent, France’s Sam Laidlow put together a dominant bike and run combination to take his first T100 win in London. And, while he’ll no doubt need to up his game a bit to defend is Ironman world title in October, Laidlow was in surprisingly good form for this point in the season.

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1:09 down after the swim

Australia’s Aaron Royle led the way out of the water followed by a large drop that included pretty much all of the favourites except the two Sam’s – Laidlow, who had chosen not to wear a wetsuit to avoid overheating later in the day, and Long, who was 3:36 behind the leaders (in last place) as he ran into T1.

It wasn’t long, though, before Laidlow was in with the huge group that included the majority of the race favourites – Magnus Ditlev (DEN), Rico Bogen (GER), Daniel Baekkegard (DEN), Allistair Brownlee (GBR) and Kyle Smith (NZL) were all near the front, but the group was tightly bunched. Brownlee would get a flat, which put him out of the picture and suddenly chasing from a couple of minutes back.

Riding clear

When Laidlow is at his best he simply rides away from the rest of the field, and today was no different. The Frenchman (his family is from Great Britain, but he grew up in France) decided it was time to make his move about a quarter of the way into the race, and steadily pulled away from the rest of the field. By T2 he was 90 seconds ahead, with Germany’s Frederik Funk next in, followed by Bogen, Smith and Ditlev. Long was a distant 10:19 back off the bike and would end up starting the run over a lap behind Laidlow. It quickly became apparent that Ditlev was still feeling the effects of his big win in Roth a few weeks ago.

Just call her the Queen of the T100 distance

Once out on the run it quickly became apparent that Smith was the man with the best legs as he ate into Laidlow’s lead. The Kiwi took 30 seconds back after the first lap, but from there things got tougher. With a few laps to go the gap was down to about 24 seconds, but Laidlow continued to hang tough and hold on. (In fact, he would actually get a boost trying to stay with Sam Long as the American went by, upping the pace for a bit and closing down Smith’s final push for the front.)

Just as he did in Nice, Laidlow controlled the race in style, holding off Smith for a 24-second win in 3:13:38, with Smith (3:14:03) taking his second runner-up finish in the T100 series this year (he was pipped in a photo finish by Marten Van Riel in San Francisco). Baekkegard (3:16:41) had an emotional third-place finish after struggling with his health for much of the year, with Ditlev (3:17:41) taking fourth and Funk (3:17:53) taking fifth.

You can see the full results here.

Stay tuned for more coverage from today’s race.