Results Triathlon Nordhausen 2022

Nachtwey and Weihmüller win Nordhäuser Triathlon

Nordhausen. Almost 250 triathletes found their way to the southern Harz for the 19th Nordhäuser Triathlon. After the pandemic-related interruption in 2020 and a limited implementation in 2021, the focus was now on triathlon again. The victories over the Olympic distance of 1.5 kilometers swimming, 40 kilometers cycling and 10 kilometers running went to Morris Weihmüller (LTV Obereichsfeld) and Jasmin Nachtwey (Lauffreunde Kreuzebra) . The local heroes Stephan Knopf and Thilo Kühne each took second place on the Olympic and sprint distances.

Olympic Distance - The Race

On the bike course, it quickly became clear that victory over the Olympic main course was only possible with Morris Weihmüller. The man from Heiligenstadt won the Kaiserwinkl-Walchsee challenge race in his very first middle distance this year and was the fastest amateur. In Nordhausen he only had to give way to water polo player Nico Brand (Erfurt) in the Sundhäuser See, but he took the lead at the end of the first of four cycling laps.

Behind him, Arterner Stephan Knopf, starting for Triathlon Nordhausen eV, put himself in a good starting position. Getting on the bike just over a minute behind Weihmüller, he only lost a little time in the second discipline on the top favorite and switched to running shoes in second place, just over two minutes behind. “In the last lap I put the trio in front of me and was able to move up to second place. By the time we made the change, we had managed to rip a small gap," said Knopf.

While Weihmüller safely ran to victory in his favorite discipline with a five-minute lead in the Nordhausen Triathlon, Knopf secured second place against René Trillitsch (Triathlon Jena). “The next big goal this year is the half- Ironman in Dresden at the end of July. But the race was a good test of form,” explains Weihmüller. Places four and five went to two other houses from the north, the brothers Karsten and Martin Knape.

Jasmin Nachtwey (cross zebra) secured victory in the women's race, equalizing a deficit after the swim and presenting Luise Gorki from Weimar (2nd), who had been leading to date, at the beginning of the running course.

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Over half the sprint distance (0.75 km swimming, 20 km cycling, 5 km running) an exciting exchange of blows developed between Mirko Witte from Göttingen and local hero Thilo Kühne from Nordhausen. After fellow favorite Leon Fischer (Weimar) canceled due to his start in the Triathlon Bundesliga in Grimma, Kühne was the fastest starter in Sundhäuser See.

On the bike course, however, it was Witte, actually at home over the longer middle distance and 21st in his age group at the Half-Ironman World Championships in Nice in 2019, who constantly made up ground and took the lead shortly before the second change. "I was still able to keep up and hoped to run," said Kühne.

Plagued by a stitch in the side, Nordhäuser had to let his opponent go more and more, so that Witte ran towards an ultimately undisputed victory with a lead of two and a half minutes. "I've always wanted to start in Nordhausen. Now that the Lower Saxony state championship in Wolfsburg has been cancelled, it finally worked out," says a happy Witte, who also used the competition to prepare for the Leipzig triathlon next weekend.

The fastest woman was Maja Gießmann from Erfurt, followed by Anna Spindler (Halle).

A complete success

Even if the number of participants has not yet reached the pre-Corona level, organizer Ulrich Konschak drew a positive conclusion in the first event under normal conditions since 2019 and already has the first ideas for the big anniversary as part of the 20th Nordhäuser Triathlon 2023. Jürgen Rockstroh , President of the Thuringian Triathlon Association, put it in a nutshell. "Triathlon Thuringia still needs a strong event in the north," says Rockstroh, who regularly starts in Rolandstadt himself.

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