With a European Long Distance title at stake, dozens of professional athletes took off Saturday morning at Challenge Almere-Amsterdam. After a spectacular race, decided only in the final stages, Jesper Svensson (SWE) and Marlene de Boer (NED) earned the European Champion titles. De Boer not only won Challenge Almere-Amsterdam, but also broke the National and Course records.
De Boer was seen as one of the race favourites beforehand, but the Dutch athlete, who finished second in Almere last year, still had to prove herself. The fact that after the swim - in which Alanis Siffert (SUI) swam a course record with 51:05 - she was immediately at the front and ended up in a leading group of four women was an ideal scenario. Already early on the bike De Boer took off on her own and on the famous dikes it became clear right away that no one was equal to her. With a big gear she ticked off the kilometers as if it was nothing and her lead only grew bigger and bigger.
During those 180km on the bike, under perfect conditions with almost no wind, De Boer's lead grew to ten minutes, but her ambitions were perfectly clear. When she started the marathon, her lead position was reasonably secure, and even during the 42.2km run, during which she was loudly cheered for by the crowd as a home favorite, she showed no weakness.
With 10km to go, De Boer was told that she was on track to not only win, but also break the course record and Dutch record. “I actually thought; let me just finish. It was really tough. But that it eventually worked out, makes me speechless,” she said after crossing the finish line in 8:22:30, an improvement of more than two minutes from the Dutch record and more than eight minutes from the course record. “To win here, in front of so many people I know, that's amazing. Actually, I just can't believe it. Winning and a Dutch record. Wow.” Behind De Boer, debutant Alanis Siffert was second in 8:30:16 and Germany's Jana Uderstadt was third in 8:34:36. For Uderstadt it was her first podium as a professional athlete.
Men's race exciting until closing stages
While De Boer dominated the women's race almost from start to finish, the men's race was equallz exciting. During the swim, the expectation might have been that Lukasz Wojt would come out of the water first and have a big lead, but he was then joined by a number of men, including favorites Florian Angert, Jesper Svensson and Joshua Lewis. Lewis, by far the least experienced long-distance athlete of this bunch, was precisely the one who went on the attack early on during the bike leg and took the lead solo.
What followed was a bike in which Lewis dictated the pace for a long time; the Brit rode steadily, but above all fast and managed to increase his lead over the chasing group that included Wojt and Svensson as well as Ognjen Stojanovic and Andrew Horsfall-Turner by several minutes. Meanwhile Dutchmen Milan Brons and Pim van Diemen had found each other, but with a gap of more than five minutes they had to chase hard. After about a 100km they finally managed to join the chasing group, where Svensson had already gotten away in pursuit of Lewis.
From that moment on, however, it was Van Diemen who started to steal the show, as the Dutch Middle Distance Champion went full on the attack, single-handedly closed the gap to Svensson - within 20km he made up about three minutes - and then he also managed to reduce Lewis' lead to eventually just a minute and a half in T2.
Lewis who started to increase his lead again and saw it grow to several minutes. Meanwhile, Svensson ran to second place and Van Diemen dropped further back. For a long time it looked like Lewis would win the race, but in the final kilometres he had a hard time and Svensson passed him. In those final kilometres, Svensson's lead also grew rapidly before the Swede won Challenge Almere-Amsterdam in a time of 7:41:26. Lewis, totally empty, still managed second place in 7:47:29 and Lars Lomholt, who had the fastest marathon time of 2:39, ran up to third place in 7:48:38.