(VNF) - Cyril Viennot (France, born in 1982) and Caroline Steffen (Switzerland, born in 1978) respectively took the men’s and women’s titles of the VNG IRONMAN 70.3 Vietnam 2016 in Da Nang central city on May 8th.

Similar to first edition in 2015, this year’s race featured a fast and scenic course that includes a 1.9km ocean swim in front of the beautiful Hyatt Regency Da Nang Resort and Spa, a looped 90km bike ride along Da Nang’s pristine coastline and a 21km run that took athletes past some of the city’s key landmarks before a stunning beach finish at the Hyatt. With tropical conditions, the temperature ranges from 29-32 Celcius degree, causing not much difficulty for all contestants.

Viennot, who ranked fourth last year, cleared the finish line first at 3:54:09, following by Tim Van Berkel (3:55:08) and Luke McKenzie (3:59:18), both from Australia.

“I’m very happy to race and win the VNG IRONMAN 70.3 Vietnam this year. It’s a challenge with hot weather today and I was thinking of running faster on 21km track. Organizers are professional, and I really love Vietnam’s nation and people,” Viennot said at a press conference after the race.

Swiss Steffen, who won VNG IRONMAN 70.3 Vietnam 2015 - one of the top 10 most extreme triathlons, defended her title in this the second edition of the race in a time of 4:12:18.

Radka Vodickova from the Republic of Czech finished second with a time in 4:15:46, while Liz Blatchford ranked third after finishing in 4:19:46.

“Winning the title is hard, but defending it is even harder. I’m very happy to win again in Vietnam. I had a good start with swimming and a good run after a bike race in very hot conditions,” shared Steffen.

The race, a sport spectacular and an add-on to the beach activities of this wonderful coastal city, drew nearly 1,150 athletes representing 60 countries/territories, including more than 25 professional triathletes and 50 relay teams. Along with them are more than 20 world-class professional contestants.

Da Nang, Vietnam’s third-largest city and one of the most beautiful coastal cities, is covered by three widely famous UNESCO World Heritage sites: Hoi An Ancient Town, My Son Sanitary and Hue - The Imperial City.

The IRONMAN 70.3 Vietnam is also called “Half IRONMAN”, since it halves the total miles comparing to the ordinal IRONMAN series.

The event also serves as a qualifying race for the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship in Mooloolaba, Queensland (Australia) and the IRONMAN 70.3 Asia Pacific Championship in Mactan, Cebu (the Philippines).

Forty-six (46) age-group qualifying slots for the IRONMAN 70.3 World and forty-four (44) slots for the IRONMAN 70.3 Asia Pacific Championship races are at stake, including exclusive 70.3 World and 70.3 Asia Pacific slots for the top Vietnamese male and female finishers.

Earlier, on May 7th, over 200 kids in the age groups of 6 to 10 and 11 to 14 also competed in the IRON Kid race with 1.5km and 2km fun run./.

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