Belgium’s Marten van Riel, who has struggled with injuries for the past two years, ended his 2023 season in style with a big win at Ironman 70.3 Bahrain today.
The Belgian won the 70.3 Dubai in early 2022, then finished 12th in two WTCS races before missing the rest of the season due to injury. This year, he crashed his bike while practicing for the PTO Open, so he couldn’t start racing until November. He won November’s Ironman 70.3 Fortaleza and capped off the season with a big win in Bahrain.
Van Riel adopted a very WTCS-like strategy in the race, remaining at or near the front throughout the day. Van Riel, who was fifth in a group of eight who broke out of the water in the lead behind Germany’s Wilhelm Hirsch, led the group that included Alistair Brownlee on his bike. Brownlee flattened just 5km before T2 and Van Riel was the first to enter T2, just ahead of Hirsch. The German beat Van Riel to the run course, but it didn’t take long for Van Riel to take the lead.
By the halfway point of the race, Van Riel was alone in the lead, with 2016 Olympic bronze medalist Henri Schoeman (RSA) in second place, about a minute behind him, and Hirsch a further 10 seconds behind. Van Riel continued to pull away and eventually won in 3 hours 31 minutes 21 seconds, giving him a 1 minute 28 second lead over Schoeman (both had the exact same split of 1 hour 10 minutes 06 seconds). , won by 2 minutes and 58 seconds over Britain’s Max Stapley (3:34:20), rounding out the podium.