Quelle Challenge Roth: a battle for the ages |
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> report filed July 20, 2003 by Amy White
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Two of the great Ironman racers of our day—one a relative newcomer to the distance and one a veteran—staged an epic battle on Sunday, July 6, at the Quelle Challenge Roth, riding and running virtually neck-and-neck in a race that wasn't decided until the final meters of the run.
That was when Lothar Leder, on the course he has ruled over four victories, surged past Chris McCormack of Australia, who'd come to Germany to fulfill his dream of racing on this historic course and challenge Leder's dominance. The final margin at the finish? Ten meters, and three seconds. Truly, it was a battle worthy of some of the great epics of triathlon history, alongside the stories of Mark Allen and Dave Scott in Kona, or Peter Reid and Chris Legh in Australia.
The pair battled all day long, never losing sight of one another on the bike or the run. McCormack put in a surge in the last kilometer, only to have it answered by Leder in the final meters. The crowd went crazy, both in support of Leder and in admiration of the plucky Aussie, who told the crowd later that he'd be back next year, to roars of raucous applause.
France's Francois Chabaud, a feared biker/runner, flatted during the bike and while he was quick with a tire change was not able to bridge back up to the leaders. He finished third, ahead of Finn Tom Soderdahl, a training partner and friend of the sixth-place Mika Luoto. Fifth went to Alex Taubert of Germany, whose strong run was not enough to close more ground to the leaders. After the race, some in the field said the battle would have been even fiercer had Chabaud not had bad luck on the bike. It was likewise a day of bad luck on the bike for Kiwi Bryan Rhodes, who flatted and then suffered a broken valve stem on his spare tire. With no support to hand, Rhodes waited on the side of the road for half an hour, trying to fix it to no avail, before packing it in.
Leder's wife, Nicole, made it a family double by notching a win in the women's race, holding off a late charge from Germany's Heike Funk and Hungary's Erika Csomor. Coming off the bike in fourth place, she turned on the afterburners on the run with a 2:57 marathon, the day's fastest, to take her place on the top step of the podium. Funk, who entered the race along with Lothar Leder as the points leader in the race organization's new World's Best Triathlete competition—which featured contests over the Olympic, half-iron and iron distances—was off of her bike first, more than six minutes ahead of the field, but slowly fell through the standings once on foot to fourth. Undaunted, she dug deep and came back in the waning kilometers of the run for a second-place finish. Csomor, second here last year, came third after struggling a bit on the run, with New Zealand's Karyn Ballance fourth.
Complete results are here: http://www.challengelive.com.
RESULTS
Quelle Challenge Roth
Sunday, July 6, 2003; Roth, Germany
(2.4 miles/112 miles/26.2 miles)
MEN
Lothar Leder (GER), 8:11:50
Chris McCormack (AUS), 8:11:53
Francois Chabaud (FRA), 8:23:02
Tom Soderdahl (FIN), 8:24
Alex Taubert (GER), 8:27:58
WOMEN
Nicole Leder (GER), 9:15:01
Heike Funk (GER), 9:28:33
Erika Csomor (HUN), 9:29:16
Karyn Ballance (NZL), 9:33:24
Heidi Jesberger (GER), 9:37:01