The women’s Commonwealth race, already replete with some of the current World Series’ top 10 athletes, had extra pulling power thanks to one Flora Duffy, Bermuda’s Olympic, Xterra and World Triathlon champion who also had title retention in her crosshairs.
As with the men’s race just three hours before, the starting horn caught several athletes out coming so soon after the ‘on your marks’ instruction.
But it didn’t trouble Team Scotland’s Beth Potter, who, more known for her destructive run speed, found herself leading the field ahead of Duffy, and England’s Georgia Taylor-Brown and Sophie Coldwell for the 750m swim.
Potter was first in and out of T1, making the initial jump to the front for the 20km bike. But conscious of run legs, she soon held back to work as a five with Duffy, Taylor-Brown, Coldwell and Canada’s Emy Legault.
At the start of the second lap of four 5ks, Taylor-Brown and Duffy had other ideas, creating some clear air to form a two-person breakaway, the chasing trio unable to provide an answer. By the end of lap two the gap was 16 seconds and growing.
One lap later and that gap was more than doubled to 34secs, the leading pair now in a fight for gold.
By T2, the gap was double again, Duffy and Taylor-Brown heading onto to the two-lap 5km run with a minute in hand. The Olympic champ had a smoother transition that the Olympic silver medallist, and was able to slowly pull out a small lead of by the end of lap one.
2.5km later and the gap was up to 16secs, the gold all but assured for one of the sport’s most decorated athletes. With a massive smile of relief, Duffy crossed the line in 55:25, proudly brandishing the Bermudan flag.
A whopping 41s later saw Taylor-Brown cross the line to take silver in her first Commonwealth Games, acting out a bow towards the Olympic champion, who played all her cards right today.
Meanwhile, Potter claimed bronze in her second Commies outing and won Scotland their first medal, coming through 1min21s later. That left Coldwell to take fourth, fifth for Linn (AUS), sixth Non Stanford (ENG), seventh Liv Mathias (WAL), eigth Ackerman (RSA), ninth van de Kaay (NZL), tenth Legault.
Top image: BBC Sport broadcast