Posted: June 6, 2004

Triathlon: Lessing Wins Escape – Goes For The Cycle

Simon Lessing won his third Escape From Alcatraz championship on Sunday with a dominating, course record performance. On a post-card perfect San Francisco day, Lessing recorded the fastest swim and run splits and was just 4 seconds slower than Craig Walton’s fastest bike split resulting in a 5-minute detonation of the race’s 6-year old course record. This performance is what Lessing had in mind when he passed on this summer’s Olympics because draft-legal racing does not reward his balanced swim-bike-run abilities.

This short-distance win came just two weeks after Lessing won the Half-Ironman at Disney World. Next month, Lessing races Ironman USA presenting an opportunity for him to become – possibly -- the first to win “The Cycle” by winning major short distance, half-Ironman and Ironman races in the same season. In fairness to the likes of Mark Allen, Greg Welch, Erin Baker and Karen Smyers, there were no major half-Ironman races in their hey-days but it is still an interesting statistic in this day-and-age of triathlon distance specialization.

Two first-time Escapers showed the promise of racing for The Cycle at some point in their careers. Young Australian Ironman phenomena, Luke Bell and Kate Major, showed that they could mix it up with the best at short distances. Bell exited the bike-run transition on the heels of McCormack and Reed but doesn’t yet have the foot speed to hang-in on the run. Major dropped a minute in every discipline to winner Jones but showed balance and enough speed to finish 4th.

Carol Montgomery placed 6th as a tune-up for a World Cup race next weekend in Korea.

Escape From Alcatraz Triathlon - June 6, 2004, San Francisco, CA

Men

1 Simon Lessing (GB)          01:54:41                 20:45\46:01\43:09    
2 Chris McCormack (AUS)   01:56:23                21:27\46:47\43:49  
3 Matthew Reed  (USA)        01:57:06                 21:12\46:46\44:34  
4 Craig Alexander (AUS)      01:57:53                 21:28\48:33\43:29 
5 Levi Maxwell (USA)            01:58:17                 21:09\47:36\44:58   
6 Craig Walton (AUS)           01:58:24                 20:45\45:57\46:58  
7 Luke Bell (AUS)                 01:58:37                 21:11\46:47\45:54 
Women
1  Michellie Jones (AUS)       02:08:54                 22:18\51:48\49:51
2  Liz Blatchford (AUS)         02:09:17   
3  Joanna Zeiger (USA)        02:11:36 
4  Kate Major (AUS)              02:13:15                 23:42\52:46\50:58
5  Melanie Mitchell AUS)       02:13:32
6  Carol Montgomery (CAN) 02:15:40                 22:20\55:23\52:22 
7  Heather Gollnick (USA)     02:15:51  

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