What Chrissie Wellington missed doing by 30 seconds last week at Ironman Frankfurt, occurred today at the 2008 Quelle Challenge Roth Ironman as Yvonne Van Vlerken clocked an 8:45:48 to se the new female Ironman record, while Erika Csomor of Team TBB also broke the old record with an 8:47:05.  Paula’s old record was in 8:50 land, but the new generation has made a stab at it and in the past seven days we have seen three different women in two races have the ability to break that record. It is also notable that the top four women went under the 9 hour mark, not too shabby! I did not keep up with the race since it is in Germany and I was sleeping, but these performances will undoubtably have to get up there for performance of the year: years and years have gone by with gifted female Ironman competitors trying to break PNB’s hold on that 8:50 and it was not till 2008 that we finally saw it broken.  
On the men’s side Patrick Vernay got the win as Chris McCormack must have pulled out at some point during the race.

Official 2008 Quelle Challenge Roth Ironman Results:

Female
1. VAN VLERKEN, Yvonne (NED) 8:45:48
2. CSOMOR, Erika (HUN) 8:47:05 +1:17
3. FERGUSON, Gina (NZE) 8:57:18 +11:30
4. GRANGER, Belinda (AUS) 8:58:08 +12:20
5. KEAT, Rebekah (AUS) 9:02:34 +16:46
6. BISCAY, Hillary (USA) 9:24:19 +38:31
7. CAVE, Leanda (GBR) 9:28:03 +42:15
8. MATTHES, Dagmar (GER) 9:30:14 +44:26
9. NOVAKOVA, Eva (TCH) 9:38:35 +52:47
10. HOHENESTER, Melanie (GER) 9:40:49 +55:01

Male:
1. VERNAY, Patrick (FRA) 8:09:34
2. JACOBS, Pete (AUS) 8:12:53 +3:19
3. SINDBALLE, Torbjorn (DEN) 8:15:59 +6:25
4. MCDONALD, Chris (AUS) 8:20:59 +11:25
5. CHABAUD, Francois (FRA) 8:23:44 +14:10
6. HELLRIEGEL, Thomas (GER) 8:25:19 +15:45
7. FORSTER, Markus (GER) 8:29:19 +19:45
8. SUNDBERG, Swen (GER) 8:30:47 +21:13
9. VUCKOVIC, Stephan (GER) 8:31:33 +21:59
10. PSCHEBIZIN, Marc (GER) 8:34:55 +25:21

www.challenge-roth.com  | full Challenge Rorth results here