Dan and Ran Alterman (both from Israel) took the first and the second place on the Eilat ITU Premium European Cup Final. In the women’s field Ricarda Lisk from Germany took the gold.
The traditional Eilat Triathlon always starts with an Age-Group event on Friday. There are more and more participants coming all over the world. This year the organisers set a new record with the number of participants on the weekend with almost 1600 athletes.
2 hours before the elite races the course was ready for the junior athletes, where they competed on the last event of the ETU Junior European Cup series. Yuliya Yelistratova from Ukraine and Bar Fogel from Israel were the best on the day.
The elite women started first. The small, but competitive field entered the water. After the swim 4 athletes broke away including Lisk, Christiane Pilz from Germany, Lenka Zemanova from Czech Republic and Zita Szabo from Hungary. They were followed by Nina Pekerman. On the bike Pekerman bridged the gap between her and the leaders. In the last lap of the bike Christiane Pilz could not go with the leaders and the other four athletes entered the transition together. In the early stages of the run, Lisk immediately took the lead and none of the other athletes were able to go with her. Zemanova was running clearly on the second place and Szabo run together with Pekerman till the last 500 meters. At that point she was able to escape from the Israeli athlete and finish on the podium. There were no change on the first and second place, therefore Ricarda Lisk won the race and Lenka Zemanova got the silver.
The men were competing at the same time as the women, but the officials were able to manage to have a clear race. All the filed were out of the water within 30 second except a few athletes. On the bike the Alterman brother dominated and formed a lead group together with Michael Raelert from Germany, Andrey Glouschenko from Ukraine and Will Green from New Zealand. The chase group was working hard and at the end of the third lap they were very close to the leaders, but at the end of the bike the leaders increased again their lead over the rest of the filed. In the run the Alterman brother were setting the speed and only Glouschenko was able to go with them, till half way through the run. First Ran Alterman made a breakaway from his brother and Glouschenko, and after Dan Alterman also left the Ukrainian behind. Today it was the day of Ran finishing first, but Dan was also very happy for the victory of his brother. Andrey Glouschenko came third today.
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The 2005 ETU European Cup series finished with the race in Eilat and Lenka Zemanova and Andrey Glouschenko won the overall. They take the biggest share from the 25.000 Euro overall prize money.
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