The Sunday of sprint distance racing continued in Barbados when both Daniel Unger and Lauren Campbell broke long ITU winless streaks at the 2012 Bridgetown ITU Sprint Triathlon Pan American Cup.

In the men’s race, a quick transition was enough to hand former ITU World Champion Unger his first win since the 2008 ITU Hamburg World Cup.

In Barbados, Unger was first out of the water in a group that was led by USA’s Ethan Brown and included Barbados’ Jason Wilson and Russia’s Igor Polyanskiy, but the rest of the field were close behind. Not that much changed in the bike leg, and most of the field entered T2 together.

The deciding moment then came not in the run, but in transition. Unger swept through T2 in 14 seconds, while Costa Rica’s Leonardo Chacon took 17. In the end, although Chacon had a run leg of 15 minutes and 26 seconds - one second faster than Unger’s time of 15:27, he couldn’t quite make up the deficit.

The USA’s Manuel Huerta claimed bronze with a time of 55:36.

In the women’s race, Great Britain’s Kerry Lang led the field out of the water but was quickly followed by Campbell and Great Britain’s Vanessa Raw. Canada’s Kirsten Sweetland and the USA’s Kaitlin Shiver joined those three in the bike, and they formed a small breakaway that stuck heading into T2.

Campbell then posted a 17 minutes and 49 second 5km run to take the title by just over 30 seconds from Raw. It was Campbell’s first win since a 2009 Pan American Cup win in Kelowna, since then she has spent extended time on the sidelines with injury and fatigue. Sweetland held on for bronze, her first ITU medal since she claimed silver at the U23 world title race in Budapest in 2010.

Lang finished fourth and Shriver in fifth, while 2012 PATCO champion Sarah-Anne Brault put in the second-fastest run split of the day - 18 minutes and 9 seconds - to finish sixth.