IRONMAN 70.3 Geelong: Jelle Geens goes from sickness to glory with short-course stars ‘on fire’

He may only have raced a handful of middle-distance events himself, but Jelle Geens made that experience count as he notched his latest victory at IRONMAN 70.3 Geelong on Sunday.

The brilliant Belgian has made a sensational switch since last summer’s Olympic Games in Paris, winning both T100 Lake Las Vegas and then the 70.3 World Championships at the end of last season.

He continued in that vein in Geelong, with a 1:07:58 half marathon seeing him power to glory as a whole host of short course athletes tried their best to get in the mix.

Geens came home 45 seconds clear of a fast-finishing Jake Birtwhistle, with New Zealand’s Tayler Reid rounding out the podium on his 70.3 debut.

Geens employs shrewd gameplan

Geens said afterwards: “There was Aaron Royle and Matt Hauser who are two of the best swimmers in the world so they kept an honest pace on the swim but I was very happy that I actually came with them out of the water and was in the front straight away.

“I tried to really push from kilometre 15 to kilometre 30 on the bike but you could really see that it was too hard to really make a gap and break people so then I decided to not spend too much energy and really focus on that run.”

And that call proved a shrewd one – as did not getting carried away early on the run as Geens added: “The second lap of the bike was quite a bit faster which hurt some people’s legs, maybe quite a bit.

“I then set out on quite a fast pace on the run, the ITU boys kept following, I guess they think it’s quite a chilled pace to keep for a couple of kilometres but then I got a gap and I slowly increased it and I could start running my pace that I knew I felt I could do for the 21k.”

From sickness to victory

And woryingly for Geens’ rivals – remember he was the only person to beat Marten Van Riel in the T100 last season – he went into Geelong with a far-from-optimal preparation.

He explained: “I’m stoked of course, it’s good to start the season with a win, it was a hard fought win for sure, because I wasn’t 100 percent sure how I was going to feel.

“That’s because I got sick a couple of weeks ago and then my partner got sick and it was very busy with the baby but luckily we had a lot of help from her family, but then in the end I actually felt really good but I needed it today because the guys were on fire.”