Weekend Wrap-Up: Ironman Canada and Ironman Switzerland

By Wires August 1, 2017

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Corbin Wins Ironman Canada

Linsey Corbin (USA) has struggled for the past three years to find her IROMAN winning ways. She hasn’t hoisted a finish line banner over her head since 2014 when she notched IRONMAN wins in Los Cabos and Austria. Poor results compounded by untimely injuries had Corbin’s aspirations of climbing to the top of an IRONMAN podium seem unobtainable. Well, all those months of self-doubt came thundering down in Whistler as the American laid down solid performances in all three distances to claim the win at IRONMAN Canada.

Rachel McBride (CAN) exited the water in a remarkable 51 minutes, then punched up the pace on the bike playing into her strength on two wheels. Corbin, in second was as far back as 10 minutes at one juncture of the bike, but managed to reel in McBride down to less than seven minutes in the closing km’s.

Once on the run, Corbin dominated the race. At 16 km’s Corbin took the lead and built upon her advantage taking the win by a 7:44 winning margin over Jen Annett (CAN).

When asked how it felt to win an IRONMAN again, Corbin said, “I had a really frustrating few years and you start to wonder, what’s the point? So even today when I took the lead I just held onto that feeling. It’s getting harder and harder to win these.”

Top 5 Pro Women

1	Corbin, Linsey	USA	9:17:12
2	Jen Annett	CAN	9:24:55
3	McBride, Rachel	CAN	9:27:15
4	Joyce, Rachel	GBR	9:43:34
5	Whiting, Fawn	CAN	9:46:07

Kastelein, Schaerer Take Titles in Ironman Switzerland

When you heard people talking last Sunday about an athlete who is pushing IRONMAN world champion Jan Frodeno to his limits in training, you might have followed discussions along the race track of IRONMAN Switzerland. Australian Nicholas Kastelein took the first IRONMAN victory of his career and he did it in a dominating style. First, he nailed the second-fastest swim split directly behind his fellow countryman Alexander Polizzi in the Zurich. Then, Kastelein set his marks on the bike. Only Cameron Wurf (AUS) was able to follow his pace, the strong Swiss fraction including nine-time champion Ronnie Schildknecht who was more than six minutes down at T2. Strong winds during the bike and hot and humid weather on the run made a lot of athletes suffer cramps. Schildknecht was in fourth position when he had to drop out the race after 7.5 kilometers. While Swiss Ruedi Wild and Jan van Berkel battled out the fastest Swiss, Kastelein was never seen again by his pursuers.

In the men’s race, the winner was non-Swiss for the first time since 2014. It was on the Swiss women though to bring up a homemade champion this year. Strong swimmer Celine Schaerer led the race right from the start as expected and managed a five-minute lead out of the water. She didn’t struggle at all during the bike and run, and was focused enough to bring her first IRONMAN victory home. More Swiss to shine in the women’s race were Regula Rohrbach and Martina Kunz who were in second and third place after the bike. 2016 IRONMAN Lanzarote champion Tine Holst was expected to be among the best bikers, too. But the Danish appeared strong on the run: First, she passed Rohrbach and then Kunz to take the runner-up position.

Top 5 Pro Men