Nov. 4, 2006 -- The Italian triathlon team of Daniela Chmet, Beatrice Lanza and Nadia Cortassa has won the women's ITU Team Triathlon World Championships in Cancun, Mexico, on Nov. 1. Standing atop the podium with them was the American men's team of Brian Fleischman, Matthew Reed and Andy Potts.
In the women's event, Italy was able to open a large enough gap over second place United States and third place Spain over the first two legs to enable Italian anchor Cortassa to bring home the gold medal for her country. Italy's time of 1:05:11 managed to top the United States by 52 seconds and Spain by a further minute and 11 seconds.
The championship consisted of 3 x(a 250-meter swim, 6.6-kilometer bike and 1,600 meter run) - with each of the three members on a team completing the swim/bike/run distances in succession before tagging off to the next athlete.
Daniela Chmet led the charge for Italy, crashing through the opening 250-meter swim and heading onto the two-lap flat and fast bike course with America's Sarah Groff and world junior champion Kirsten Sweetland of Canada hot on her heels. However, it was the Canadian Sweetland that built an early lead on the one-mile run course before handing off to her teammate Lauren Groves to start the second leg of the race.
World-ranked number five Groves quickly put more time between herself and her two competitors during her leg, but her effort was in vain as an absence of a third teammate meant that Canada would have to withdraw from the race.
It was during this second leg that Italy's Lanza made the decisive move, pulling away from American Mary Beth Ellis, setting up her Italian teammate Cortassa to cruise home to victory and the lion's share of the US$50,000 prize purse.
"I have to thank Daniela and Beatrice because they made the race very easy for me," said Cortassa. "They worked very hard before me, and I just had to not get caught."
Michelle Lindsay anchored the American team and managed to hang onto second place for the United States to claim the silver medal.
"It was tons of fun," exclaimed American anchor Michelle Lindsay. "Hopefully this is the first of many times this team gets to race together."
Despite a slow start, Spain was able to come together during the later stages of the race to take third spot.
In the men's event, the three American triathletes claimed the gold medal in a time of 57:11. Fifty-two seconds down was second place Germany, with Canada rounding out the podium a further 37 seconds back.
"The dynamics are so different in a short-distance race like this, and the key is to make no mistakes", remarked American anchor Potts. "And today we made no mistakes."
The first leg lined up for the starter's horn with Fleischman, Germans Jan Frodeno and Spain's Javier Gomez exiting the water only seconds ahead of Canadian Kyle Jones.
Heading into the exchange area and onto leg two it was Frodeno, who held his lead, coming in first, followed by Gomez, Fleischmann and Jones only seconds behind.
As the wind picked up and the surf roughened, the order did not change through the second swim, but the American Reed made his move early in the bike, catching Germany's Daniel Unger and powering through onto the run where his lead increased to almost a minute over Unger. Just behind were a fast-approaching Canada and Spain, neck in neck.
"I love the short stuff and when I caught Daniel [Unger] I wanted to make him hurt," exclaimed Reed.
Onto the third leg there was no doubt who would finish first-second, but there was a battle brewing for third. Canada's Paul Tichelaar was able to power away from Spain's world champion Ivan Raña on the bike, putting a decisive 20-second gap between himself and the Spaniard.
"I knew I had my hands full with Ivan [Raña]," said Canadian anchor Tichelaar. "I knew I had to put a gap on him on the bike. I just put my head down and went."
Onto the run Tichelaar continued to push the pace, and despite taking a wrong turn only meters from the finish he was able to cross the line to claim the final podium spot for Canada.
Spain finished in fourth with a young Hungarian team rounding out the top five.