Fernandes and Gomez Continue Dominance on Triathlon World Cup Circuit

Portugal's world champion Vanessa Fernandes today became the ITU's all-time world cup wins leader after winning the Madrid BG Triathlon World Cup. It was a perfect setting for Fernandes who set the record at her favourite race which also happened to be the historic 200th world cup in ITU history, meaning she has won 10 percent of all world cups. Her 20th win comes in just her 31st world cup start, an astounding 0.645 winning percentage.

Fernandes dominated the race notable as the final Olympic qualifying race for the Great Britain and German teams. New Zealand’s only competitor Andrea Hewitt finished in 20th place.

In the men’s race New Zealand’s Clark Ellice was like Hewitt the only Kiwi contestant. An incredible number of athletes were forced out of the event during the bike leg when monsoon like conditions hit the Madrid course, flooding the transition area and seeing temperatures dropping dramatically.

While details are at the time of compiling this release sketchy, it appears that Ellice was amongst those forced off the bike course during this spell, one that incredibly was soon to be replaced by sunshine and calm conditions.

The race was won by local favourite Javier Gomez who once again showed his running prowess in comfortably moving to the lead inside the first couple of kilometres of the run and from that point never looked back, winning from Russian Ivan Vasiliev and Alistair Brownlee (GBR).

Like the women’s race there was much interest in the battle between the Brits and the Germans as each country looked to book berths at the Beijing Olympic Games. For the Brits it will almost be a team made up of Alistair Brownlee, Will Clarke and Tim Don, all of whom finished inside the top five today while Andrew Johns withdrew during the bike leg.