Lisa Norden takes Yokohama
Sweden’s Lisa Norden ran a race-best 35:08 to beat New Zealand’s Andrea Hewitt by 6 seconds and take the seventh round of the Dextro Energy World Championship Series by 4 seconds overall with a 1:55:56 finish in Yokohama, Japan. Home country favorite Jure Ide of Japan ran a second-best 35:13 10k run to advance from 6th leaving the bike-to-run transition and take the final spot on the podium three seconds back of Hewitt.
After the swim in Yokohama, Dextro Energy WCS London winner Nicole Spirig if Switzerland was 80 seconds down and spent the first 30 km of the bike chasing all other contenders. Just as Spirig caught the lead bunch, the pace in the front slowed down as the athletes readied themselves for what promised to be a very hot run and a race of attrition. Spirig though already paid the price for that endless time trial in 100 degree temperatures and after T2 never really had the energy left to push for the medals.
Tons of spectators lined the run course and soon a front group of seven athletes emerged, containing both Juri Ide and Kiyomi Niwata from Japan, much to the joy of the enthusiastic home crowd. Also present in that group were Norden, Hewitt, Sarah Haskins of the United States, Liz Blatchford of Great Britain and Annabel Luxford of Australia. The first to lose contact was Niwata and Haskins followed shortly later. Surges by Norden, Hewitt and Ide eventually dropped Luxford and Blatchford too, and with 5 kilometers to go the medals were virtually decided. The question was which color would go to whom. The remaining three ran pretty much side by side until 400 meters to go, where Norden dropped both Hewitt and Ide with a final big surge.
“I’ve lost two sprint finishes this year, to Hewitt in Madrid and Spirig in London, so I tried to put a couple of surges in during the last lap and got our group down to three,” Norden told ITU media. “They were breathing pretty hard so I decided to put the hammer down to see what happened.”
“I was so far out there on the run that I was just hanging on all the way to the end," Hewitt told ITU media. "It was a long sprint and I think it worked in Lisa’s favor."
Norden joyfully crossed the line first and ended her frustration of three runner-up series finishes and cemented her position as second in World Championship Series points.
This season, Moffat scored three wins (Washington DC, Kitzbuhel and Hamburg) and one second place (Tongyeong) totaling 3140 points, while Norden, the 2007 ITU Under 23 World Champion, has three second place finishes (Madrid, Hamburg and London) to go with her Yokohama win, totaling 3020 points.
The grand finale World Championship Series race on the Gold Coast will award 1200 points for the win – 50 percent more than the seven series races. Norden can thus take the series title if she wins (1200 points) and Moffat finishes third (1027 points) or worse.
Also within plausible distance for the ITU World Championship Series gold at the Gold Coast — if both Norden and Moffat crash or DNF – is Andrea Hewitt, who stands third in the ITU World Championship Series with 2,766 points. Hewitt is 374 points behind Moffat, the difference between first and sixth place points at the Gold Coast.
Effectively out of contention for the series win is Switzerland's Daniela Ryf, who stands fourth with 2,374 points.
Sarah Haskins was top American, finishing 9th in 1:56:57 after a 9th-best 36:06 run. Haskins stands 5th in the World Championship Series with 2,189 points.
ITU World Championship Series – Round Seven
Yokohama, Japan
August 22, 2009
S 1.5k/ B 40k/ R 10k
Results
Elite Women
1. Lisa Norden (SWE) 1:55:56
2. Andrea Hewitt (NZL) 1:56:00
3. Juri Ide (JPN) 1:56:03
4. Liz Blatchford (GBR) 1:56:23
5. Annabel Luxford (AUS) 1:56:30
6. Kiyomi Niwata (JPN) 1:56:31
7. Elizabeth May (LUX) 1:56:45
8. Kirsten Sweetland (CAN) 1:56:51
9. Sarah Haskins (USA) 1:56:57
10. Nicola Spirig (SUI) 1:57:03
13. Debbie Tanner (NZL) 1:58:14
16. Daniela Ryf (SUI) 1:59:14
