At the inaugural Grand Final in Dubai, Marten van Riel took a late lead to win the first-ever T100 World Championship title in his debut season.
In a social media post, the athlete shared: “T100 world champion 🤩 Thank you to everyone in my camp ❤️”
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The Belgian athlete, who placed 22nd at the Paris Olympics, defeated the young German Rico Bogen in the final moments to win and solidify his title as champion. With less than two kilometers left, van Riel overtook Bogen, who had been his close running leg opponent in the competition. He finished with a performance record of 3:09:17 while Bogen crossed the finish line 22 seconds later.
Despite finishing the race strong, van Riel admitted that he was not fully in control of what had happened but he was confident he finished with remaining energy.
“I could feel I had a couple of surges in me… Rico is really good at keeping the pace high but when I put my first surge in and we dropped Kyle [Smith] I could already see he was suffering a bit… I knew that with a couple of kilometers to go, I was going to put in a big surge,” van Riel stated.
Following this win, van Riel said: “It was honestly really tough… Especially wearing that No. 1, because in my head I knew a podium place was good enough and if you have that in your head, it’s actually really hard to go for the win as well.”
The athlete added: “So I was trying not to think too much of the title and just try to perform as good as I could on the day.”
Source: Eurosport