Sam Hart and Isabella Hayes claim British medals at Alanya Europe Cup
Sam Hart and Isabella Hayes both reached the podium at the Alanya Europe Triathlon Cup, with silver in the men’s race and bronze in the women’s event respectively.
Europe Triathlon’s report records a particularly close men’s finish: France’s Martin Hubner beat Hart by one second, with Dmitrii Karpeev third.
Switzerland’s Anouk Danna won the women’s race, finishing 25 seconds ahead of Germany’s Anabel Knoll. Hayes crossed the line four seconds behind Knoll. Danna’s decisive run made the difference after she reached the second transition with the leading cyclists.
Hart converts another strong position
The result followed a run of near-podium finishes for Hart. In its pre-race assessment, Europe Triathlon highlighted fourth in Tenerife and sixth at the City of Derry event. He had also finished fourth at the previous Alanya edition.
Hubner arrived with his own record of recent success, including victory in Wels and silver at the Rome World Cup. Hart was therefore racing against an athlete who had already delivered at both Continental Cup and World Cup level.
Hayes joins a competitive women’s podium
The same preview identified Knoll’s third place in Kitzbühel and subsequent top-ten finishes as evidence of her consistency. Danna, meanwhile, had taken junior silver at the Championship Finals in Pontevedra before returning to the circuit.
For Hayes, finishing alongside those athletes makes Alanya a result worth building on. The narrow gap between second and third also underlines how little separated the medal positions behind the winner.
Another late-season opportunity
Alanya was the penultimate stop in the European Cup programme. The official race information listed an €8,000 combined elite prize fund, with equal allocations for men and women and payments extending to tenth place in each field.
The event provides a useful illustration of why the Continental Cup circuit matters to athletes developing their international careers: it creates opportunities to test race execution against competitors at different stages of their progression. For Hart and Hayes, this visit ended with medals.
Triathlon Insight also covered the Rome World Cup, where Hubner finished second to Alex Yee. That result adds context to the close contest at the front in Alanya.
Original editorial graphic: Triathlon Insight. Result source: Europe Triathlon.
