Georgia Taylor-Brown timed her race to perfection to claim her first ever world championship title in Hamburg.
Taylor-Brown, who won the 2019 ITU World Series in Leeds, put in an excellent performance at the first ITU World Series event of 2020 to take her second gold at a world-level event.
She came out of the swim in 10th place and was in the chase pack for the first 6km of the bike leg before the pack caught the leaders with 11km left.
Taylor-Brown worked well alongside team-mate Jess Learmonth to extend the lead on the bike before heading into transition 2.
In the first km of the run leg, Taylor-Brown broke away from Flora Duffy (Bermuda) and Jess Learmonth, and with 3km to go she carved out a seven-second lead.
Taylor-Brown continued her dominant run and crossed the finish line with a nine-second lead to take her inaugural world title.
“I wasn’t particularly confident coming into this race if I’m honest,” Taylor-Brown said. “I did the Superleague Arena Games a couple of weeks ago and I got some serious lung-burn there so I was wondering how it was going to go.
“I wasn’t expecting much from myself today. I was just grateful to be able to race again. I’m actually quite shocked about that performance. I didn’t make a plan to breakaway in the run; it just seemed to happen that way. I felt comfortable setting out on the run. I just thought let’s just go for it.”
Learmonth was overtaken on the run and finished in 7th place while Beth Potter finished in 21st and Vicky Holland finished in 31st place overall.
The men’s race saw the return of double Olympic champion Alistair Brownlee to the ITU start line and he showed his calibre with an excellent swim and commanding bike leg.
Alistair came out of the swim in first place. He left transition alongside his brother Jonathan and were joined by Vincent Louis (Franace) and Dorian Connix (France) in the lead pack. The experienced athletes worked well together to carve out a ten second lead over the chasing pack.
As the athlete’s came out of the second transition, Alistair was in third place and Jonny was in seventh while Alex Yee sat in 27th place.
Yee, who is known for his run speed, excelled to clock the fastest run leg as he completed his 5km in 14.24. Yee moved up 22 places with his strong run to cross the finish line in 5th place.
Alistair finished in 9th and Barclay Izzard completed his first World-level competition in 19th while Jonathan crossed the line in 31st and Grant Sheldon finished in 58th.
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