Els Visser ends a magical three weeks with an impressive victory in Challenge Taiwan

Els Visser briefly doubted whether she should race that many times in three weeks, but luckily for everyone she ‘just’ did that. Although: perhaps it was less pleasant for her competition, because after a sensational third place at the PTO T100 in Singapore two weeks ago and a victory at Ironman 70.3 Lapu-Lapu last week, Visser has just added another victory to Challenge Taiwan with to gain dominance.

With the victory of Challenge Taiwan, one of the largest races in the world with more than eight thousand participants, Visser concludes the best three weeks of her career as a professional athlete. After swimming, Visser had slightly less catching up to do than usual; Swiss Alanis Siffert was the first to reach her bike after 25:22 minutes, but then a group followed with Els Visser in sixth place, 3:15 minutes behind. At that moment, Visser was surrounded by, among others, Lucas Lottie, Nina Derron and Samantha Kingsford.

That wouldn’t last long, because in the first kilometers on the bike Visser rode away from all her competitors – and fast too – and after twenty kilometers she had already turned her deficit of more than three minutes on Siffert into a lead of more than a minute. So Visser was clearly on a mission and left no stone unturned.

Visser kept pushing hard on the bike and her lead quickly grew bigger and bigger. Halfway through she was already almost three minutes ahead and once back in T2 her lead over the number two at the time, Lottie, was more than four minutes. Siffert, third at the time, followed seven minutes later.

During the run, Visser just had to ‘finish it off’. In practice, of course, a more difficult task than on paper, but Visser didn’t crack anything and saw her lead only grow in the first kilometers. Only in the very last kilometers did Siffert, who had advanced to second place, come a little closer, but it was no longer exciting for victory.

Visser won the race in 4:08:39. Siffert was second in 4:14:20 and Lottie was third in 4:18:48.