Judith Corachán qualified for Kona

The triathlete has been third in the IRONMAN New Zeland, thus obtaining the Slot for the IRONMAN World Championship 2020.

Judith Corachán becomes the first Spanish to climb the podium in the mythical IRONMAN New Zeland and achieves his "slot" for the Kona World Cup

The test began with the traditional Haka Maori, the ancient Maori dance that was used before a battle to intimidate the adversary and that is currently traditional in many events, such as major sporting events, and that is a symbol of competition, hospitality and respect.

Behind her, the start honk for the male PRO category and a few minutes later the women took the exit

More women than men at the starting line

 Ten men and thirteen professional women began to swim in Lake Taupó with what the distribution of slots for Kona is in two for sex.

Highlight that it was one of the few times in which female participation exceeded male participation, something unusual in triathlon tests and where hopefully it can be seen more and more often, this equality between same-sex participants.

Teresa Adam takes the victory with test record

New Zealand's Teresa Adam was the first to leave the water, with a time of 50:26. After 2 ′ she did a group with the rest of the favorites, the Americans Meredith Kessler, Jocelyn McCauley and Kelsey Withrow, the Canadian Rachel McBride, the Czech Radka Kahlefeldt (who left in T1) and Judith Corachán with them.

Adam starts the cycling segment with a high pace and increases the advantage to 2:30 as he passes through km 18, point by which Judith was fourth, in the same group as the rest of the favorites.

In km 46 Teresa Adam continued the same, increasing the advantage over the rest of the persecutors.

Midway through the cycling segment, Adam continued to lead incontestably, while behind the race was broken, Kessler was second to 8 ′ from Adam, McCauley third to 9 ′, McBride fourth to 11:30, Judith fifth to almost 14 ′ and Withrow sixth to more than 20 ′.

The second part of the cycling sector would continue with the same tonic, Adam dominating alone in a forceful way, and behind the rest of triathletes alone one by one.

Highlight the abandonment of the winner in 2019 McCauley at the end of cycling.

Judith fourth when arriving at T2

After completing the 180km of cycling Teresa Adam reached the second leading leading transition with a 16 ′ advantage over Kessler, 19 ′ over McBride and 23 ′ over Judith Corachán, who had placed fourth in the final kilometers of the cycling segment.

With this career situation Judith had the slot for Hawaii in her hands, but she still had to run the Marathon. He started strong, running at rhythms similar to Adam and Kessler and was slowly cutting the advantage that McBride took. Judith struggled to get on the podium, knowing that the first two were already qualified for the Hawaii World Cup.

On km 12, it was placed in third position

When passing through kilometer 12 Judith placed third. In the half marathon the situation was as follows, Teresa Adam leader alone, running conservatively with a 12 ′ advantage over Kessler and 19 ′ over Judith. Fourth was McBride 4 ′ from Judith and fifth Julia Grant more than 23 ′ from the TRICBM triathlete.

The dream classification for Kona was on Judith's legs although she still had 21km of running on foot.

When passing through km 32, the race continued practically the same with the first three, while Judith had managed to increase the rent with her pursuer to more than 7 ′.

The last 10 kilometers were of total enjoyment for the current Embrunman champion and ITU world silver medal in Long Distance, who was going to add another historical feat to his medal winners, a triple feat, climb the mythical IRONMAN New Zealand podium, be the first Spanish to get it ... and get qualified for the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii, her main goal of the season.

The best part of the race on foot for Corachán

Finally victory for Teresa Adam with a time of 8:40:30 achieving the test record, second was the American Meredith Kessler with 8:56:04 and third a historical Judith Corachán Vaquera with 9:03:22, achieving the best partial running race of all triathletes with 3:04:44.

The fourth position went to the Canadian Rachel mcbride with 9:10:07 and the fifth to Julia Grant with 9: 35: 25.

"Today I fought a lot throughout the race and I don't believe what I have done"

Judith was extremely happy at the finish line and very satisfied for having achieved the goal of qualifying for the Hawaii World Cup: “I don't know where I am, it has been very hard but I think I deserve it.

Today I fought a lot in the whole race and I don't believe what I have done. I still don't believe in Kona, but I deserve it.

I have given everything until the end and throughout the competition. I'm very happy.

Thank you very much to all the people who have followed me online from home, to my family, friends and my husband Javi. This is wonderful. Also, thank all my sponsors this year for their support. Thank you very much, we are going to Hawaiii ”