The respect was obvious with their finish line embrace and both Solveig Løvseth and Laura Philipp took plenty out of their IRONMAN Hamburg one-two after pushing each other to the limit.

The duo had both endured testing build-ups – sickness had hampered Løvseth in the weeks before the race while Philipp had a spell in hospital because of stomach and back pain.

It was reigning IRONMAN World Champion Løvseth who seized control on the bike and the eight-minute buffer she built up over defending Hamburg champ Philipp proved crucial on the run as it came down to less than 90 seconds.

‘I wasn’t sure I’d make it’

Løvseth is now IRONMAN’s World Champion (Kona), North American Champion (Texas) and European Champion (Hamburg) and speaking afterwards she revealed this might just have been the toughest of those three epic victories.

She said: “Right now I am honestly feeling awful, but also really happy at the same time!

“I don’t think I’ve ever pushed myself as hard as I did those last kilometres.

“I felt surprisingly good for the first seven hours and then I just completely blew up.

“I gave it everything I had but I was still running something like five-minute per kilometre at the end there.

“I’ve never experienced something like that before so it was just a relief to actually cross that finish line because at one point I wasn’t sure if I would make it.

“So really, really happy that I was able to push through and I just can’t believe how well the racing is going at the moment.”

Target on her back

Speaking in more detail about her preparation, she added: “I’ve had quite a bad training block going into this race – I’ve been on and off sick for the last three weeks so I haven’t really felt that great and I think my expectations weren’t that high as a result.

“But when the race started and I actually felt good, that was really surprising.

“The lack of training caught up with me in that last 10k but luckily it was just enough.

“The marathon was just so mentally hard. I felt like I was running scared for 42k there so to be actually able to make it was really cool – I definitely prefer chasing rather than being chased!”

Roth next for Philipp

German star Philipp too endured tough stretches of the race as she looked to defend her title on home soil – but also gained plenty of confidence from it.

She explained: “I struggled a lot on the bike – it was really windy and gusty. At some points I nearly fell off so I was really pleased to get off the bike and onto the run.

“Knowing I had a gap of eight minutes to Solveig on the marathon was a big ask but I tried my best and everyone went mad for me so thank you so much to them, it really helped.

“Coming so close to Solveig at the end should definitely give me confidence.

“I really struggled in my build up so knowing I can nearly win against such strong athletes after that – I’ll definitely take that and hopefully I can build throughout the season.”

Next up for her is Challenge Roth in four weeks as she looks to repeat last year’s win in Bavaria.