Giulio Molinari and Anja Beranek are the winners of Challenge Rimini 2017

At the beginning of the fifth edition of Challenge Rimini we have a very nice surprise: the weather aleart that had been announced yeasterday, thanks to the wind blowing in the night, has been lifted off and has left us with a nice day of partly clouded sky and a light breeze.
 
At 10 am sharp, the 31 male athletes are lined up on the starting line. The most anticipated challenge is actually between Giulio Molinari, the winner of last year, and Davide Giardini the italian athlete who lives in the USA.
 
The water this morning is rippled and very challenging. The first out of the water is Davide Giardini, followed to a short leash by Giulio Molinari and by the spanish Baldellou.
The three athletes get together out of T1 but since the first metres the situations seams already clear. Molinari is the one dictating the pace and manages to free from the others and gets to the 17th km with more than 2’ of gap.

Molinari’s gap keeps increasing and he enteres T2 with 5’ on the chasing atlhete: the 25 years old austrian Thomas Steger. Alessandro Degasperi, Elliot Smales and Stefan Schmid follow. During the 21km running Giulio Molinari handles his gap, without ever decreasing his pace.  In second position, the austrian athlete demonstrates his strenght and manteins a security distance between him and his team mates Schmid. On the finish line the position stay the same with Giulio Molinari grabbing the gold, Steger getting the silver and Schmid getting the bronze. 

The women’s race starts right away after the men’s one. All the expectations are on Yvonne Van Verklen, the winner of last year and Anja Beranek, 4th at the World Championship in Kona last year.
Out of the water is Hannah Drewett, a young athlete from GB, who takes the lead, followed by Sonja Skevin from Croatia, Anja Beranek and Nina Derron from Switzerland.

Anja Beranek pushes really hard on the bike, closes the gap on the leaders and frees away. After 17km she has already 1’30 on Hannah Drewett and Nina Derron.

Shortly after the 40km Beranek keeps increasing her gap and has 2’53” separating her from Derron and 4’ on Marta Bernerdi. Now in fourth position is the spanish Judith Corachan Vaquera.

The following 21km running are full of surprises. Beranek isn’t one of those and she keeps her leading role, but Corachan Vaquera with a slow progression takes the second place and Sara Dossena takes the third. Sara Dossena is an incredibly triathlete from italy with an amazing run that takes her into 3rd position even though she got into T1 with 14’ from the leaders.

Anja Beranek finishes first, Judith Corachan Vaquera gets silver and Sara Dossena grabs the bronze medal.