Jan Frodeno and Daniela Ryf both took the top spots at the Allgäu Triathlon, Germany’s oldest middle-distance triathlon. This echoed their back-to-back wins at the Ironman World Championship in 2015 and 2016, and was a valuable fitness test leading into this year’s edition in October.
With the women starting 15 minutes ahead of the men, spectators were treated to a race-within-a-race over Allgäu’s trademark bike climbs and rolling run course as Ryf held off Frodeno’s pursuit. By the end, she still finished two minutes ahead of him, both logging times of 4:03:35 and 3:49:55 respectively.
Ryf is tuning up for the Ironman 70.3 World Championships in Chattanooga next month before her Kona defense, and by the looks of it she is primed for peak performance.
For Frodeno, it was also a chance to compete for the German middle-distance championship, which he did beating his nearest competitor by almost 12 minutes. “Happy for my first German champ title in 10 years,” he said. “Can’t say I ever thought of myself as a climber, so the Allgäu Triathlon was definitely going out of my comfort zone. Thirty-five years this event has been around and it’s easy to see why: hard climbs, epic descents, run by good and passionate people. Put it on your bucket list!”
This was a successful checkpoint in his training block for Kona, with Frodeno heading into the toughest weeks of work leading into his title defense.
Meanwhile, Fredrik Croneborg successfully backed up from the hilly iron-distance Embrunman with a third-place finish at Ironman 70.3 Bintan. He said, “Missed a higher gear today and was not able to defend my title from last year but super happy with a podium finish!”
