By Jim Birchall
A day after the All Blacks opened their Rugby World Cup campaign, 12-time New Zealand Ironman champion Cameron Brown, who performed the Haka at the pre-race press conference, clinched a comfortable win at the TRI-Factor (TF) World Championship 2019 in Quzhou, China.
In front of thousands of excited Chinese supporters, crowd favourite Brown won the TF Enduro (Elite) triathlon which consists of a 1.5km swim, 80km cycle and 20km run in 3:25:40 to take home the title. The 47-year-old exited the swim 55 seconds behind Irishman Colin O’Shea, but caught O’Shea early in the cycling leg and never looked back.
O’Shea (3:41:40) eventually finished 16minutes behind Brown, while Rondina Leonard (3:45:40) of the Philippines was a further four minutes back in third position.
“The city of Quzhou really got behind the race and the atmosphere on the entire race course was amazing,” said Brown who also won TF Quzhou in 2017. “The marshalls’ and volunteers were fantastic and I’m not surprised that the race was sold-out. More and more people are learning about this race and will want to come to visit Quzhou. The start-finish line is pretty special and it’s not every day you get to finish in front of an ancient city-gate as magnificent as Shui Ting Men. I really enjoy the mountains and scenery here and I’ll definitely come back here and try for a three-peat”.
Tri-Factor Quzhou China is the season finale to the TRI-Factor Asia Series that included stopovers in Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines and China.
