Triathlon: Docherty, Gemmell finish strong

New Zealand triathletes Bevan Docherty and Kris Gemmel cracked the top 10 in the Hamburg round of the world championship series over the weekend.

But their women counterparts did not fare so well, with Debbie Tanner finishing 14th and Nicky Samuels 19th.

Docherty was fifth, with Gemmell two places further back in the fifth round of the series.

Gemmell led the New Zealand contingent out of the water 35s behind race leader Richard Varga of Slovakia with James Elvery next followed by Docherty and Martin van Barneveld.

On the bike leg, American Mark Fretta, Canada's Paul Tichelaar, Germany's Christian Prochnow and Austria's Dominik Berger attacked and broke away just before the halfway mark.

Gemmell and Docherty made the transition into the final run leg 81s behind the leading quartet and took 25s out of the lead on the first of four laps.

They could not close the gap but earned good points towards their overall world rankings.

For Docherty, a top five finish was good reward after a month wrecked by illness. He moves into 13th in the overall rankings with London, Yokohama and the season-ending Gold Coast races still to come.

Gemmell stays eighth overall, knowing he can move higher with strong performances in the next two races because the four best performances over the eight-leg season count towards the overall final rankings.

"It just feels awesome to get a finish to be honest," Docherty said.

"The last month has been frustrating, being sick for three weeks and losing a huge amount of fitness.

"Today was all about getting some form back, getting the confidence levels back up again.

"But despite that it isn't a win and I'm not on the podium.

"I hate that especially behind guys I know I can beat. But this was a good race - I felt a little stronger the longer we went but only had one gear today and couldn't quite stay in the race for third to the line."

Gemmell said given his recent workload, his seventh was pleasing.

"This is about what I expected with training for the last month all about volume and base. Today shows again that if you are half a per cent out, you are going to miss the podium.

"Like Bevan I felt better as we went on, I was pretty much on the limit early.

"This isn't the time for me, it will be later in the season with some more speed in the legs."

Of the other New Zealanders, van Barneveld ran a strong final kilometre to make up some ground in finishing 38th while James Elvery withdrew as he struggled with the pace in his series debut.

The men's race was won by American Jarrod Shoemaker who clocked 1h 44m 6s.

Docherty clocked 1h 44m 25s while Gemmel timed 1h 44m 29s.

Australia's world No 1 Emma Moffat won the women's event, beating Sweden's Lisa Norden by almost a minute when clocking 1h 56m 12s.

- NZPA