Iron champions crowned in Geelong

BELGIUM’S Jelle Geens and Australia’s Natalie Van Coevorden claimed top honours at the IRONMAN 70.3 event in Geelong.

The reigning world champion in Geens crossed the line first at 3:33:23, while Van Coevorden took out the women’s title with a time of 4:05:58.

The pace was on early in Geelong, with just 19 seconds covering the top 12 men following the 1.9km swim.

Geens exited the water in ninth but was able to make up the gap in the bike, and then transition into the lead in the running discipline.

He said he was stoked to start off the year with a win.

“It was a hard-fought win for sure. I wasn’t 100 percent sure how I was going to feel because I got sick a couple of weeks ago.

“Then in the end I actually felt really good but I needed it today because the guys were on fire.

“I tried to really push from kilometre 15 to kilometre 30 on the bike but you could really see that it was too hard to really make a gap and break people so then I decided to not spend too much energy and really focus on that run.”

In the women’s race, Olympian Natalie Van Coevorden finished 30 seconds clear of New Zealand’s Hannah Berry and Melbourne’s Grace Thek.

Van Coevorden sat in the top five during the 90km ride, before pushing ahead early in the run.

After 8km, she steadied and controlled the pace to go on and take out her first IRONMAN 70.3 event.

“I’m pretty ecstatic to be honest, you’re not going to hold up the banner too many times in your career and holding up an IRONMAN 70.3 one so early in my switch is really special, everything played out how I wanted it to today and it couldn’t have gone any more perfectly to be honest,” she said.

“I think all those years of racing, 13, 14 years of doing triathlon now really paid off because my body just knew what to do when I needed it most.”

For full event results, head to ironman.com/im703-geelong