The Biggest Most Impressive Women’s Triathlon Performance of 2016 went to Gwen Jorgensen for realizing her Olympic Dream, with Bermuda’s Flora Duffy earning the Honourable Mention spot for becoming the World Champion.
If you go back to every WTS interview that Jorgensen did in 2016, you would hear her saying that the year was focused on her race on August 20 for the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games. It was her goal and her dream to win the gold medal at the Olympics, a dream she has not just been fighting for this year, but for the last four years after she didn’t have a good race at the 2012 London Games.
However, It is rare for an athlete to race a perfect race. They train every single day in the hopes to show up on the day of the competition and execute a race that is satisfactory. But in the Cozumel Grand Final, Duffy did that rare thing… she had a perfect race.
Working the WTS circuit all year long, she worked hard to remain at the top of the Columbia Threadneedle rankings for the majority of the year.
But, winning the world title was going to take some legwork, since Jorgensen had risen in the rankings and was less than 200 points away. She needed to win the race in order to earn the title, there was no way around it.
But win it she did, in a race that from start to finish played into her favour. She swam the perfect swim, she biked the perfect bike and was far enough in the front to be able to run the perfect run without any threats.
Impressive to say the least!
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