Florin Salvisberg and Katie Hursey triumph in Tiszaujvaros
Tactical timing pays off for Hursey
Switzerland’s Florin Salvisberg won his first World Cup race last weekend in Tiszaujvaros, Hungary, while Katie Hursey delivered another controlled performance to claim gold in the women’s race, making it back-to-back wins for the US athlete.
After emerging from the water nestled among the leaders, U23 European Champion Salvisberg maintained his momentum to post a time of 53:46mins for the sprint-distance course (750m swim/20km run/5km bike) – 8secs ahead of Francesc Godoy (ESP) and 12secs ahead of Frederic Belaubre (FRA).
Salvisberg enthused: “I feel great it’s so cool to win here, it’s awesome. This year is really going well, I have the run that I didn’t have last year and I feel great. We worked really well together, we had a good group yesterday and today too. The Americans worked very hard.”
In the women’s final, Hursey ran a tactical race and bided her time in the chase group before exploding on the run to take victory with a time of 1:00:25. Following her to the finish line were Aileen Reid (IRL) with 1:00:52 and Austria’s Sara Vilic (representing ITU) with 1:00:58.
Describing herself as “elated”, Hursey said: “To win a World Cup is pretty cool but to win two…I’m so happy right now. Once I got on the right bike path I was quite confident. We had enough of a gap yesterday to take it easy so I always felt confident. I just picked one person off at a time and was able to hold it and stay controlled and it worked out.”