Moffatt superb in Washington, DC
In this auspicious first-ever Washington DC World Championship Series race, the women's race came down to Emma vs. Emma. This time, the up-and-coming Emma Moffatt added to her growing resume, which includes a recent Olympic bronze medal, when she outran the legendary Emma Snowsill, the 3-time ITU World Champion and 2008 Olympic gold medalist who is also not coincidentally Moffatt's training partner.
Moffatt thus reversed her 2-1 finish behind Snowsill at round one of the World Championship series at Tongyeong, South Korea last month and took the points lead in the eight-race series.
Moffatt started the run with a 40-second deficit to the American breakaway duo of Sarah Haskins and Mary Beth Ellis, but passed them both two-thirds through the first of four 2.5km run laps and opened a gap on all her chasers.
"Once I started to run, I felt good and confident I could run those girls down," said Moffatt, who won the Mooloolaba World Cup convincingly to start her 2009 season with a bang.
But despite training mate Snowsill's off-form, rocky start, Moffatt ran like a burglar with the police breathing down her neck. "There's no relaxing with Emma Snowsill behind you," said Moffatt, who clocked a race-best 34:24 run, 22 seconds faster than Snowsill. "I ran hard all the way".
Snowsill, who broke a rib surging during her post-Olympic time off, said she was surprised to nab a dominating win at the Round One of the World Championship Series in Tongyeong. She said she had similar doubts coming into this race due to a painful hip injury she recently developed. "It does hurt, but I'll try to get it sorted out before we race Hy-Vee (and its $1 million purse) next week. I must say that Washington, DC is one of the great races I've done and it's a grand stage to showcase our sport."
There was a worthy struggle behind the two Emmas. After swimming in a loose pack of 15 women ranging from Emma Moffat' 20:06 to Magali di Marco Messmer's 20:46, Americans Sarah Haskins and recently crowned Escape From Alcatraz champion Mary Beth Ellis managed the difficult feat of breaking away from an Olympic-class field on a dead flat course in a draft legal race.
"With all those 33-minute 10k runners, I figured my only chance was to push the bike," said Ellis, who is coming into her own with a second at the 2008 Ironman 70.3 World Championship in Clearwater and a win at the 2009 Pan Am Championships in Oklahoma City. "And Sarah was up to the challenge."
Haskins, who scored a silver medal at last year's ITU World Championship in Vancouver thanks to a brave two-woman bike breakaway with Helen Jenkins of Great Britain, had similar thoughts about avoiding sprint finishes. Her case was made more acute recently by a February operation to fix a nerve sheath problem that left her unable to push off with her stricken forefoot. Now the foot doesn’t hurt, but she is still several months away from 100 percent.
"I have to thank Mary Beth Ellis for pushing us to break away," said Haskins. "She did a lot of work. But after we finished that ride with a 40-seconds lead, I had nothing left to fight back when the Emmas went by."
Still, an off form Emma Snowsill ran for a while at Haskins's elbow before taking sole possession of second place. Similarly, Swiss 7th place Olympian Daniela Ryf ran hard to pull even with Haskins but held off the pass for one kilometer.
"The wind was hard in our face coming back from the turnaround," said Ryf. "So I let her catch the wind and saved some energy." Then Ryf took off and finished with a third-best 35:29 that was 45 seconds faster than Haskins' run and gave the Swiss a 17-second margin over Haskins at the line.
Although it was small consolation, Haskins held on to finish 9 seconds ahead of Helen Jenkins, the Brit who out sprinted her for the ITU World Championship gold last June in Vancouver.
For all her heroics on the bike, Ellis used up all her energy on the bike and faded to a 38:36 run and a 14th place finish in 2:03:38.
2009 Washington, DC Dextro Energy Triathlon – ITU World Championship
Washington, DC / June 21
1.5km swim, 40km bike, 10km run
Top 10 women
1. Emma Moffatt (AUS) 1:59:55
2. Emma Snowsill (AUS) 2:00:20
3. Daniela Ryf (SWI) 2:01:01
4. Sarah Haskins (SWI) 2:01:18
5. Helen Jenkins (GBR) 2:01:27
6. Andrea Hewitt (NZL) 2:01:44
7. Jessica Harrison (FRA) 2:02:05
8. Yuri Ide (JAP) 2:02:28
9. Sarah Groff (USA) 2:02:52
10. Lauren Groves (CAN) 2:02:59
