Triathlon: Hewitt nets gold

Christchurch's Andrea Hewitt blitzed the field in the run to win the gold medal in the elite under-23 race at the triathlon world championships in Gamagori, Japan yesterday.

Hewitt's splendid effort closely followed the silver medal won by North Shore's Rebecca Spence in similar style in the under-19 race - the opening event of the championships.

"I'm rapt, the hard work has paid off," Hewitt said after the race.

"I just took the lead (in the run) and I wasn't going to look back," she said.

New Zealand officials said Hewitt executed her plans like a professional athlete and finished 33 seconds ahead of her main rival, Czech Republic's Vendula Frintova.

Hewitt said she was in the leading bunch coming out of the 1.5km swim leg but 1min, 20s down on American Olympic swimmer Sara McLarty.

"We broke away - about five of us [in the 40km cycle leg] and we caught up the leader. Another New Zealand girl [Nicky Samuels] was with me."

Samuels was one of the fastest cyclists, finishing the leg in 1hr 4m 52s, seven seconds ahead of Hewitt.

However, Hewitt finished with a powerful run.

"I just took off, in the lead, and ran scared," she said.

"A few of the girls were catching up to me in the end but that was that."

It was only the fourth triathlon for the 23-year-old. She took up the sport only a year ago and is regarded as an outstanding prospect.

The former New Zealand surf lifesaving representative was so far ahead by the end of the event that she had time to respond to the spectators' cheers by clapping hands with them as she ran down the finish chute with a New Zealand flag.

Samuels from Dunedin finished fifth.

The youngest member of the New Zealand team, Spence, 16, was second in her race.

The national secondary schools' duathlon champion clocked the fastest run of the race but couldn't haul in Portuguese Anais Moniz's advantage.

Moniz won the gold medal in one hour 1min, 18s and Spence clocked 1hr, 1min, 39s.

Australia's Melanie Sexton was third in 1hr, 1min, 44sec.

Despite the warm and humid conditions, Spence showed plenty of determination and was the only athlete of the 46 who finished to run sub-18 minutes for the sprint distance (750m swim, 20km bike 5km run). She clocked a blistering 17min, 52s for the run.

"Anything to beat those Aussie girls," Spence said when asked if she was happy with the silver medal.

"I came out of water and there were a couple of Aussie girls in front and I wanted to run them down. I did but I couldn't beat the Portuguese girl's (overall) time."

"It was very humid, you just wanted to grab every bowl of water that came your way during the event."

New Zealand high performance manager Stephen Farrell said Spence was expecting to finish in the top five.

"Her first words when she finished was 'I really wanted to win'."

"So that's the sort of attitude the girl has," Farrell said.

Of the other New Zealanders in the race, Anna Hamilton was 13th, Anna Elvery 27th, Jacquie Seebold 30th and Amy-Kelly Horsfall 33rd from the field of 50 starters.

- NZPA