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blueseventy takes first and second honors at Ford Ironman Louiseville

1 Sep 2008

blueseventy’s Maximilian Longree, from Germany, and Mariska Kramer-Postma from the Netherlands won the 2008 Ford Ironman Louisville. Both came from behind during the marathon to claim the win - for Longree it was his first Ironman title, while Kramer-Postma now adds the Louisville title to her win at Ironman France.

After bringing home a superb bike split of 4:32, 2007 Champion Chris McDonald stated after his race,
“It was a tough day. I wanted to break my course record from last year so I went for it. When Max passed me he was on a mission and I knew I could not hold his pace…”.

Longree’s impressive 2:48 marathon got him to the line well ahead of a strong field that included McDonald, two-time Olympians Chris Hauth (swimming) and Andrew Johns (triathlon) along with multiple top ten Ironman finisher, Sergio Marques.
Johns spent most of the swim on Hauth’s feet and then led for the first two-thirds of the bike before McDonald took over the lead, which he held starting the run. Longree started to make up time on the men ahead of him towards the end of the bike. Once out on the marathon course, it quickly became apparent that Longree was on his way to the win – he passed McDonald at the 13-mile point of the run and never looked back.
Longree celebrated his win at the finish line, located at Louisville’s Fourth Street Live, with an All-American cheeseburger.

In the women’s field, Hillary Biscay, a regular fixture on the Ironman circuit (she is competing in Ironman Wisconsin next weekend!) exited the swim in first place and was followed by a field consisting of Hawaii’s newest professional athlete, Bree Wee, last year’s female winner, Heather Gollnick, 2006 Ironman France champion Mariska Kramer-Postma and two-time Ironman champion Lisbeth Kristensen. Biscay led the bike portion through mile 30 when Kristensen took over, only to be overtaken by Bree Wee at mile 70.
Wee entered transition first and held the lead through the first half of the marathon. At that point Kristensen moved the front, but she, too, would run into problems at mile 20. Kramer-Postma ran her way through the women’s field and eventually took the lead with just four miles to go. Gollnick passed Kristensen in the closing miles of the marathon to claim third while Biscay hung on for fourth.
Top five professional men’s results:

1. Maximilian Longree, DEU 8:33:58
2. Chris McDonald, AUS 8:54:52
3. Sergio Marques, POR 8:59:15
4. Michael Goehner, DEU 9:04:24
5. Chris Hauth, USA 9:13:24
Top five professional women’s results:

1. Mariska Kramer-Postma, NLD 9:54:17
2. Heather Gollnick, USA 9:56:53
3. Lisbeth Kristensen, DEN 9:58:33
4. Hillary Biscay, USA 9:59:31
5. Rebecca Preston, AUS 10:06:15