(upbeat techno music)
(cheering)
- This is the GTN Show.
And this week, I'm rather lonely
because Heather has deserted me
for a little holiday in America.
- Well actually, Mark, I'll have you know
that I did compete in the half Ironman Championship
out here, so just squeeze that one in.
I ran quite a lot of work.
We've been really lucky to catch up
with lots of the pros, so there's going to be
some great content coming soon.
And of course, I'm going to be bringing
my half of the show from here.
So let's crack on.
- Hi, I'm Tyler Butterfield from Bermuda.
You're watching the GTN Show.
- This weekend is the ITU World Triathlon Grand Final
in Rotterdam, and GTN will be there
following all the action
and speaking with some of the athletes.
Now, you may remember last year, we had the exciting finale
in Cozumel, where Jonny Brownlee put everything on the line
to try and take that world title.
But it ended in him overheating and having
to be carried across the line by
his older brother, Alistair Brownlee.
Now that left him missing out on the world title
by just four points to Mario Mola.
Well, this year, the rankings are looking just as close,
so anything could happen this weekend.
And if you're not aware of how the World Series works,
or how the World Champion is crowned,
then listen up.
There are eight World Series events.
An athlete can use their five best-scoring events
towards their World Series ranking.
And of those five, they can actually use a maximum
of two World Cup points towards their World Series ranking.
And then we have the Grand Final,
which is included as an extra,
and actually has a much greater weighting of points.
So whoever wins this weekend
doesn't necessarily become the world champion.
Actually, it comes down to an accumulation of points
over the whole year.
And this year, it's really close
with the top three men and women,
separated by less than 800 points.
In the men's, we have Mario Mola, Javier Gomez,
and Richard Murray.
And then in the women's, we have Flora Duffy,
Ashleigh Gentle, and Andrea Hewitt.
Now, Mario is the one to beat.
With four series wins this year,
he just seems to be on fire.
The question is, can Gomez or Murray shake things up?
And I'm actually really interested to see how Gomez does,
just a week after becoming Ironman 70.3 World Champion.
He's clearly in good form, but will he be tired from doing
a middle distance race?
Now, a little math suggests that if Gomez was to win,
Mario would have to place 6th to lose
his top spot in the rankings.
Then, in the women's race, it's Flora Duffy
that's been really impressive this season.
She's had five series wins and a 2nd in Montreal,
where she was beaten by Ashleigh Gentle,
who currently sits in 2nd on the rankings.
Now, Flora's being dominant across all three disciplines,
but she's been super impressive on the bike.
That's where she's opened up the big gaps.
And this weekend, I really think the course
could play into her hands.
It all starts with the swim in the Rhine Haven,
which is a small harbour off the side of the river.
Elites will complete a two lap course here,
and in September, the water temperatures are around
18 degrees Celsius, so it should be a wet suit swim.
They then have a split transition,
meaning T1 and T2 are in different locations.
They obviously exit the water to T1 beside the harbour,
mount their bikes, and then they will complete
a section of the bike course over to the other side
of the river.
And then, commence a seven lap technical bike course
with a lot of corners.
So it could really separate the fields,
especially if people get caught
towards the back of the pack.
They could find themselves sprinting out of every corner
to try and stay on the group.
It then goes into a flat and fast four lap run course.
Now it's time for the weekly poll.
And last week, we asked you who you think
will win the women's race in the Ironman 70.3 World Champs.
We gave the options of Holly Lawrence, Daniela Ryf,
Heather Jackson, or Other.
And in 4th place, it was Other with 9%.
In 3rd place, it was Heather Jackson with 13%.
And in 2nd, Holly Lawrence with 17%,
and in 1st it was Daniela Ryf with 59%.
Now if you didn't watch the race,
or you know the results already,
you can hear how it all played out
later on in the show with Heather.
But for this week's weekly poll, we want to know
who you think will become the men's
ITU World Champion this year.
And we have the options of Mario Mola,
Javier Gomez,
Richard Murray, and currently 4th place
on the World Series ranking, Fernando Alarza.
Now, let us know what you think by clicking on the link
for the poll just here.
Now it's time for the Control Tech competition,
where we have five of these
Control Tech Impel Clip-On TT Bars to give away.
And those five lucky winners are
Korhan Goytan, Clem Willis,
Shane Porteous, Richard Dobson,
and Dieter Vandewiele.
I will be in touch with those lucky winners via email
to get them shipped out to you right away.
But please, send in some photos of you using them
via Facebook, so we can see how you're getting on.
- Honestly, it's been a lot of other races around the world
and we've picked a few that caught our eye,
starting in Wales, where, from what I gather,
the weather lived up to reputation.
It was a pretty tough race.
Cameron Worth of Australia won the men's event
by almost two minutes.
And then on the women's side, Lucy Gossage
took the win by 24 minutes.
Over in Australia, it was the 70.3
down on the Sunshine Coast,
and the men's event was dominated by Australians.
Dan Wilson led them home.
The top five places went to the host nation.
And for the women's side, also won by Australia,
Katey Gibb took the win there.
In Santa Cruz, there was another 70.3 on the weekend.
It was a bit of a slow start due to the fog,
and actually the course was shortened for the swim,
but it didn't dampen the excitement
because it came down in the men's race to a sprint finish.
Just one second separated the winner, Braden Currie,
ahead of Ben Hoffman, the 2nd.
And the women's side, it was Liz Lyles
who took the win there.
The ETU Challenge long-distance triathlon
in Almere, Netherlands also doubled up
as a European Championships.
And it was won by home favourite
Yvonne Van Vlerken in the women's,
and Britain's Joe Skipper won the men's.
Now, just one week ahead of the World Triathlon Series Final
there was an Olympic distance event over in Beijing
that was actually a non-drafting race.
It was won by Henry Sherman of South Africa in the men's,
and Paula Findlay of Canada in the women's.
As you can probably hear, I'm actually at the race
for the 70.3 World Championship here in Chattanooga,
and the men's age group race is actually still going on.
Now, as much as I'm enjoying the sunshine here
out on my holiday--
Mark, it's lovely out in Chattanooga--
I've stumbled across Heather Wurtele,
multiple podium finisher at World Championships.
Now Heather has very kindly agreed to go through
the women's race, and maybe a bit of the pro's,
the men's pro race as well from yesterday.
- So right away from the start,
Lauren Brandon is an amazing swimmer.
I think Sarah True's goal was to just get on her feet,
which I think she did successfully,
and Haley Chura, who's also an amazing swimmer,
they were the lead-- - America, one, two three,
out the water.
- [Heather Wurtele] Yeah, indeed, just incredible.
- [Heather Fell] And how far with the chasing pack then?
- [Heather Wurtele] Not that far back. I think...
They had a minute or so up on the next
sort of big group of people, which had Helle Frederickson,
Jen Spieldenner, who's another great swimmer.
I think she was probably leading that group.
So there was quite a big chunk, and then a little gap,
and then there was a group with myself, Holly Lawrence,
Emma Pallant, and then back again from us were
Laura Philipp, Lisa Hutthaler, some other athletes.
- Yeah - So there were sort of the...
- Okay - three distinct groups.
- Explain happened on the bike. How did things pan out?
- So, what happened on the bike, it seemed like Daniela
just rode herself to the front right away,
- Yeah - as she's prone to do,
and just put the hammer down.
I mean, she was in the front of the race
already on the climb,
and just continued to put time in to everyone.
Back from my perspective, I knew that
there was that main group of really fast swimmers
that were likely all to be a pack, and I was like,
I need to try and get to them
- Yeah - as quick as possible.
But in my group were really strong riders,
so likes of like Jeanni Seymour, and Holly Lawrence,
and they were working really hard on the bike.
So they got up that hill fast and
bridged to that second group.
- Okay.
What happened to Holly?
- Honestly, I don't really know. In my mind, she was
like Daniela, Holly, they're off the front.
- Yeah.
- [Heather Wurtele] But as I was coming down
the long descent, I just saw her standing on the side
of the road.
- [Heather Fell] Okay.
- [Heather Wurtele] And so I didn't know what happened,
- Yeah - I was like, oh...
So I think, yeah, she obviously just wasn't having a day,
made the call to--
- Yeah.
- Drop out, which is always disappointing.
Right away, out of transition,
I mean, Emma just took off like a shot, and Laura, too,
looked like she was running really well.
I was out right around with Annabel Luxford,
and I knew Jeanni Seymour was behind me.
She's got excellent running skills.
And so it's just like, okay, let's see what happens.
And so yeah, it was Daniela by a country mile.
I mean it, just impressive.
- [Heather Fell] Were you expecting her,
because obviously she's focusing on Kona,
did you expect her to smash it quite as well as she did?
- Maybe not quite as well.
I mean, I beat her last year in Mooloolaba,
which was, you know, sort of like a rare event,
like something's off a little bit,
but you sort of thought, well okay,
maybe if your focus is all on Kona,
- Yeah.
- But I feel like she's back to true Daniela form,
where she's fit and focused,
- Mmhm. Yeah. - She just crushes it.
And she did that again.
- Well, thanks to Heather, she's had to dash off,
so I'm just gonna summarise the results very quickly.
In the women's pro field, the race was won by
the dominant Daniela Ryf of Switzerland
in a time of 4 hours, 11 minutes.
2nd place, after a tremendous run, went to Emma Pallant,
at a time of 4:18,
and 3rd place to Laura Philipp of Germany, in 4:19.
Over in the men's pro field, it was the lead swimmers
Javier Gomez and Ben Kanute, who battled it out.
It came down to the run, and the Spaniard Gomez
took the World Championship title
in a 3 hour, 49 minute performance.
2nd place went to Ben Kanute of USA, just 1:21 back.
And then Tim Don of Great Britain came 3rd,
2:15 off the lead.
So, that's it, here from
the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in Chattanooga.
Mark, I'm going to go and grab my cocktail.
I'll leave you to it.
- Oh, it's alright for some, isn't it?
Well I'll get on with this week's caption competition.
And last week we showed you a photo of GCN's Dan Lloyd,
floating or swimming, I'm not really sure what
he was trying to do.
But the winner of that caption competition was
Big Vegan Jeff, and he said, "Hey, I thought you said
this was 'mineral water'!?"
Now, if you're not already a fan of GCN,
well, Dan is quite keen on his mineral water, or beer.
To put that caption into a bit of context,
here is a short clip.
- I've had at least eight mineral waters,
mineral waters, mineral waters myself.
I'm not sure what the others have been drinking.
- Now for this week's photo that we'd like you to caption,
it's actually one from my own archive
of me on a training camp with Alistair and Jonny Brownlee.
Now I do apologise for my rather horrific sunglasses,
but the reason we're wearing bin bags
is that we were on a training ride in Spain,
we were a couple of hours from home,
when the heavens opened.
And the only way that we could get home in one piece
was by wearing these bin bags to keep warm.
So please, leave your captions in the comments below.
And don't forget, Big Vegan Jeff,
get in touch via social media to claim your cap.
Now it's time for this week's Try DIY,
where we get you to send in photos of your
try hacks and creations.
So to start things off, we have a photo here
from Sascha Fetch that they've sent in over Facebook.
Now they have made an eTap junction box case,
and not just any old case, it's a 3D printed case.
That is seriously cool.
I mean, a lot of effort, but very cool.
They've even managed to hide away all the cables,
and they're able to plonk this on the top of their stem.
Really neat.
And then from David Sommerfeld,
he has got Spinergy wheels
that he has turned into a disc wheel,
and he's told us that the whole wheel set,
front and rear, cost him $260.
The tyre and the tube was $28.
And then, to make a disc wheel,
the vinyl roll just cost him $7.
Now that is a real hack.
You save yourself a lot of money there to make a disc wheel.
Very good.
Alex Lark, in prep for Ironman Wales,
that was just the weekend gone,
he has made himself a (laughs) a gel holder on his seat tube
and his down tube.
So I mean, it looks like he wanted
to take a lot of fuel with him.
Yeah, that looks like it's kinda working pretty well.
He's got a lot of gels there.
And then probably my favourite,
Shaun John has sent this in over Facebook.
He's made his own disc wheel, and he's called it
the Cardboard-Fiber Ghetto Aero disc wheel.
And he simply cut up an old cardboard box
and made a standard wheel into a disc wheel.
I love it. It's brilliant.
And do please keep sending your photos,
using the hashtag, #trydiy over Twitter,
or send them in over Facebook.
Coming up on the channel this week,
tomorrow we have "How to swim around boys".
On Friday, we have draft-legal racing video.
On Saturday, we have a pro bike from Chattanooga.
On Sunday, we have some tech coming from
the ITU World Champs in Rotterdam.
Then on Monday, we have a wet suit repair video.
On Tuesday, we have a running cadence video,
and then on Wednesday, we are back here for the GTN Show.
There we go, that is the GTN Show.
And we're going to be heading out to Rotterdam
for the ITU World Triathlon Series Grand Final.
If you're heading out there too,
please keep an eye out for us and come and say hello.
We're going to be bringing you content from there
over the weekend and next week on YouTube and social media.
And to make sure that you don't miss out
on any of that content, just subscribe to GTN
by clicking on the globe,
and to see our eight key stretches video,
just click down here,
and to see our swimming on hips vs swimming on feet video,
just click down here.