Hamburg's final countdown

Wednesday, 02 July 2008

One year after hosting the Triathlon World Championships, Hamburg once again welcomes the world’s best as the northern German city hosts the eighth stop of the 2008 BG Triathlon World Cup series. The race schedule will be slightly different as the women and men will compete on separate days. This will be one of the last tune ups before the athletes shut down and do their final preparation and taper for the Olympic Games. Australia's Brad Kahlefeldt also makes return to the ITU circuit. Women's Event

Portugal’s Vanessa Fernandes returns to the site of her world championship victory and headlines the elite women’s field. She will race for the first time since her disappointing tenth place finish at this year’s world championships. Hamburg will be her final tune-up before the Beijing Olympics. Fernandes enters as the all-time world cup wins holder with 20 career titles, a record she set at the Madrid BG Triathlon World Cup on May 25.

She’ll be challenged by a usual strong German team that will be buoyed by the strong home crowd support. Anja Dittmer and Ricarda Lisk, who have both qualified for Beijing, will be joined by Joelle Franzmann to form a formidable trio. At last year’s world championships all three finished in the top-8. Olympic dreams will be on the line for Dutch athletes Lisa Mensink and Wieke Hoogzaad who need top-10 results for their National Olympic Committee (NOC) to send them to Beijing, despite having already earned Olympic qualification spots through ITU’s Olympic rankings.

Also in the field is Australian Felicity Abram, who has already been on the world cup podium twice this year at New Plymouth and Richards Bay, and Debbie Tanner of New Zealand, who was runner-up to Fernandes here in Hamburg in 2006. A host of other athletes bound for Beijing also continue their Olympic preparations this weekend including Czech Vendula Frintova, Swiss Magali Di marco, Jessica Harrison of France, Bermudan Flora Duffy and Spaniards Ana Burgos and Ainhoa Murua.


Men's Event

On Saturday the elite men kick the weekend off when they take to the streets of downtown Hamburg. The home team will field a strong line-up that includes last year’s world champion hero Daniel Unger, Jan Frodeno and Christian Prochnow, all of whom will represent Germany in Beijing this summer. The German squad also includes past Olympians Maik Petzold and Andreas Raelert.

But the home team will be in trouble with Javier Gomez in the field. The new world champion has already won three world cup titles this year and is no stranger to Hamburg success, winning the world cup in 2006. Australian Brad Kahlefeldt will race in a BG Triathlon World Cup since taking back-to-back silvers behind Gomez in Mooloolaba and New Plymouth at the start of the season. Last year Kahlefeldt took bronze at the world championships, adding to the bronze medals he won in 2006 and 2003 in Hamburg.

Like the women, a number of men continue their roads to Beijing through Hamburg including Swiss Sven Riederer, Kris Gemmell of New Zealand, Portugal’s Bruno Pais, Ivan Rana of Spain, Dmitriy Gaag of Kazakhstan.