NEWS

USA’s Verzbicas keeps promise to win Junior Men’s World Championship for McDowell

By Merryn Sherwood | 11 Sep, 2011
{article_title}

video placeholder Your video is loading. If the video fails to load please upgrade your Flash player

Verzbicas fulfills World Title promise

The USA’s Lukas Verzbicas kept his promise to training partner and friend Kevin McDowell when he turned in a world class performance to win the ITU Junior Men’s World Championship on the final race in Beijing on Sunday.

Verzbicas made a statement, he would return to triathlon for one more year to win the gold medal he was sure McDowell would have won had he not been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in March.

He did just that in Beijing, beating junior men’s European Champion Justus Nieschlag (GER) and another American, Tony Smoragiewicz over the line.

“It’s a big relief, I finally did it. It all just came together. It’s a great feeling,” said Verzbicas. “I was holding back tears on the podium, hearing the national anthem, it really meant a lot to me.”

Youth Olympic Games gold medallist Aaron Barclay (NZL) and bronze medallist Alois Knabl (AUT) were first out of the swim and joined by six other athletes. They formed two small groups leading onto the bike.  

The chase pack which included Verzbicas, quickly caught the leaders on the first uphill and then rode together for the rest of the 20 kilometres pulling further away from the rest of field all the way into T2.

Nieschlag was the leader coming out of the transition, but Verzbicas’ world class running prowess came to the fore as he flew to the front rounding the first bend and stayed there to win by 34 seconds, in a total time of 56 minutes and 21 seconds.

“It’s just so amazing, that’s the best way to describe it, I’m just truly speechless, it’s hard to believe, coming into triathlon so late and be able to do this,” said Verzbicas.

“I really enjoyed the race, the swim was great,” said Nielschlag. “On the bike I was at the front, but it was very hard with the hills and the second transition was great too, I ran out first. I knew Verzbicas is very strong on the run, so I didn’t try to go with him and just tried to defend the second place.”

“I saw the group weren’t too far ahead coming out of T2, so that gave me hope for the run,” said Smoragiewicz. “I had worked really hard on the bike so I didn’t know if I was going to run that fast, but coming up to the last stretch I was in fifth and I said that I’d be thinking about this race for the rest of the year and not be happy with it if I finished fifth so I had to think of a strategy to get up there and I gave it another kick.”

The Junior Men’s World Championship decided over a sprint distance of a 750m swim, 20km bike and a 5km run, wraps up the week of racing in Beijing.

Related Event: 2011 Dextro Energy Triathlon - ITU World Championship Grand Final Beijing
09 - Sep, 2011 • event pageall results
Results: Elite Women
DNF. Felicity Sheedy-Ryan AUS DNF
DNF. Carla Moreno BRA DNF
DNF. Line Jensen DEN DNF
DNF. Yi Zhang CHN DNF
DNF. Anastasiya Polyanskaya Yatsenko RUS DNF
DNF. Keiko Tanaka JPN DNF
DNF. Sarah Fladung GER DNF
DNF. Anahi Leon MEX DNF
DNF. Paula Findlay CAN DNF
DNF. Lisa Mensink CAN DNF
Results: Elite Men
DSQ. Mark Fretta USA DSQ
DNF. Dmitriy Gaag KAZ DNF
DNF. Courtney Atkinson AUS DNF
DNF. Hendrik De Villiers RSA DNF
DNF. Claude Eksteen RSA DNF
DNF. Clark Ellice NZL DNF
DNF. James Elvery NZL DNF
DNF. Zhou Fang CHN DNF
DNF. Brad Kahlefeldt AUS DNF
DNF. Vladimir Turbayevskiy RUS DNF
Results: U23 Men
DNF. Wesley Matos BRA DNF
DNF. Wei-Chiang Chiou TPE DNF
DNF. Billy Gordon PAN DNF
DNF. Pei Yen Hsu TPE DNF
DNF. Jing Huang CHN DNF
DNF. Nikko Huelgas PHI DNF
DNF. Chon Yen Lee TPE DNF
DNF. Maxim Leshina KAZ DNF
DNF. Ivan Lo Ching Hin HKG DNF
DNF. Weibo Zhao CHN DNF
Results: U23 Women
1. Agnieszka Jerzyk POL 02:07:07
2. Zsófia Kovács HUN 02:07:08
3. Rebecca Robisch GER 02:07:14
4. Kaitlin Donner USA 02:07:18
5. Yuliya Yelistratova UKR 02:07:30
6. Non Stanford GBR 02:07:44
DNF. Fabienne St Louis MRI DNF
DNF. Luo Yi Louis Chang TPE DNF
DNF. Tereza Durdiakova SVK DNF
DNF. Elena Danilova RUS DNF
Results: Junior Men
1. Lukas Verzbicas USA 00:56:21
2. Justus Nieschlag GER 00:56:54
3. Tony Smoragiewicz USA 00:56:59
4. Ron Darmon ISR 00:57:06
5. Matt Brown AUS 00:57:11
DSQ. Carlos Alfredo Perez Bolsegui VEN DSQ
DNF. Iuri Vinuto BRA DNF
DNF. Miguel Alejandro Lopez Garcia VEN DNF
DNF. Ru Cheng CHN DNF
DNF. Pavel Agapov RUS DNF
Results: Junior Women
1. Mikayla Nielsen NZL 01:03:40
2. Ashlee Bailie AUS 01:03:42
3. Hanna Philippin GER 01:03:47
4. Eszter Pap HUN 01:04:02
5. Kelly Whitley USA 01:04:12
6. Joanna Brown CAN 01:04:16
DNF. Mnandi Weber RSA DNF
DNF. Valeria Piedra Chillagana ECU DNF
DNF. Fumika Matsumoto JPN DNF
DNF. Lucy Buckingham GBR DNF
Latest Regional News
more news →