Australian wins Life Time Fitness Triathlon
Posted Monday, 18 July, 2005
MINNEAPOLIS -- Australian Craig Alexander finished just 27 seconds off of the course record on Saturday on his way to winning the 2005 Life Time Fitness Triathlon.
He finished in 1 hour and 50 minutes, edging second-place finisher Simon Whitfield of Canada by 26 seconds.
"When the gun goes off you know if you're having a good day," Alexander said. "I felt good in warm ups this morning, I felt great in the warm up yesterday and I figured I had a good chance. I was good enough in Chicago, I was good enough in (Los Angeles), why shouldn't I be good enough here? Someone's got to win, why not me?"
Alexander, 32, finished seventh in the event among the men last year and 14th overall, then went on to win the Chicago, Los Angeles and Boston triathlons and the 2004 U.S. Pro Championships.
The Life Time triathlon is among the richest in the sport, with $500,000 divided among the winners. It was an Olympic course with a 1½-kilometer swim, a 40 kilometer bike ride and a 10 kilometer run.
Under the triathlon's unusual format, called the equalizer, the women started 9 minutes and 32 seconds earlier than the men. The idea is to bring the top men and women to the finish line at about the same time, with the overall winner collecting an $80,000 bonus and $40,000 vehicle on top of the $80,000 first-place prize money for each gender.
Second and third place finishers for each gender earned $30,000 and $20,000, respectively.
Saturday was the first time in the four-year history of the equalizer format a woman did not win the event.
The third-place finisher was Hunter Kemper, an American, with a time of 2:00:08.
Alexander was in 11th place coming off the bike and third among the men, but had more than two minutes of ground to make up. Using a strong start to the run, Alexander separated himself from everyone but Whitfield, Kemper and race-leader Emma Snowsill.
"I looked back where there's a turn at about six (kilometers)," Alexander said. "I had about 20 meters on Simon, 100 on Hunter, then no one else was behind us. Then I saw Emma about 100 meters in front and I just tried to relax. It helps running with Simon because he's such a relaxed runner."
Alexander caught and passed Snowsill between the seven and eight kilometer mark and didn't look back.
"Craig was just too strong," Whitfield said. "He ran so strong from the very first step. I thought it was obvious he was the strongest out there."
Snowsill, an Australian, was the first woman to cross the finish line at 2:00:25, good enough for a fourth-place overall finish.
"It was tough, but I was just happy to get to the finish line with no other girls getting in front of me," Snowsill said. "I pretty much ran out of transition as hard as I could. That's my tactic to get out and get clear on the run and I tend to never really look back. But I was hurting so much on that run I really wanted to just get it over and done with."
The second woman to finish was American Joanna Zieger at 2:02:22, good enough to finish sixth overall. The third woman to finish was Annabel Luxford, an Australian, at 2:01:22. She was seventh overall.
This story is from ESPN.com's automated news wire.
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