Rapperswil also produced another breakout performance into the pro ranks for future speculation. 22 year old old Alanis Siffert, better known as 'the duck' made a huge step forward with an outstanding performance to take 2nd in the Professional women's race.
After an excellent swim Alanis went to work on the bike and had her best ever 90km bike performance. Duck competed at this race last year and while I was very pleased with that effort, she seemed to be on a mission this year, to give herself every opportunity to be on the podium. A quick transition, and duck was more like the rabbit!
Leading the field out of T2 and knowing her training partner Julie would be hunting her down, the young inexperienced athlete showed great composure to run her own race, to her abilities and this allowed her to post her best ever run. It was a memorable day for the duck family.
Another notable effort was from Nina Derron, who joined her sister Julie and Alanis for our training camp in China earlier this year. The pay off was her best race in the last couple of seasons; with a personal best for the run split.
Nina made it an exciting day for the Derron family as she too had to get to work out of T2 to close down a 5 min deficit to 3rd place. She set about doing just that, keeping the excitement going as she clawed back second upon second, making up the time deficit with 300m to go. A super effort, but out sprinted for the podium. It was a very creditable performance for the chocolate medal. Well done Nina. A big step forward, and a great building block for this seasons first Ironman in two weeks time.
Thank you Christof Siffert and Marc Derron for images.