Michael Raelert, Simone Braendli, wins the legendary Laguna Phuket Triathlon

By Wires November 22, 2015

0 Comments

Germany’s Michael Raelert and Switzerland Simone Braendli, were the champions of the 2015 Laguna phuket Triathlon, the most traditional triathlon event in Asia also know as the “race of the legends”, all the triathlon greatest athletes have done LPT in the past such as Mark Allen, Simon Lesson, Paula Newby-Fraser, Chrissie Wellington, Craig Alexander and many more.

Men’s

Former Ironman 70.3 World Champion Michael Raelert was the first out of the water, covering 1.8km in 23:55, he was followed closely by London 2012 Olympian Stuart Hayes of Great Britain. The duo had a twenty seconds lead on Alberto Casadei of Italy and Ruedi Wild of Switzerland.

Raelert quickly took charge of the bike and start to build his lead over the 55km bike course, Stuart Hayes, also a very experienced cyclist who was the domestique for the Brownless at the 2012 Olympics, managed to stay close but still lost four minutes by transition two, along with him it was Ruedi Wild, Challenge Laguna Phuket 2014 champion.

With the large lead and being one of the fastest runners in the circruis, Raelert posted the day’s second best run to take home the win in 02:32:57, Ruedi Wild had the day’s best run covering the 12km in 42:43 taking home the second place in 02:32:57.0 while Stuart hayes come in third in 02:36:17.

Women’s

The pro women saw a much tigher race with the first two athletes racing side by side for most of the competition.

Simone Braendli was the first out of the water in 00:28:14, she ahd Emma Pallant and Deirdre Casey on her toes. The trio had a two minute lead to Dimity-lee Duke, Imogen Simmonds and Katja Rabe.

Simone and Emma quickly dropped Deirdre, and it was a two women race for most of the bike with Simone setting the pace in the front, Emma was able to keep up until the final third of the big leg, when Simone upped the pace to arrive with a two minute lead in transition two and the day’s best bike split of 01:31:45.

On the first out of two laps of 6km, Emma managed to brigde the gap in 20 seconds, the current World Duathlon Champion then faded a little and didn’t make any more ground on Simone, who took the win in 02:48:04, Emma was second in 02:52:43, with Dimity-Lee Duke in third with 02:56:08