Ekaterina Shabalina became the second in Sejong

Today in the South Korean Sejong was the Sprint Asian Championship. The race brought together 95 Elite athletes from 13 countries of the Asian continent. In the women's category, the Kazakh flag was defended by Ekaterina Shabalina from Nur-Sultan, in the men's category, the representative of the Aktobe region Daryn Konysbaev and athletes from the Akmola region Ayan Beisenbaev, Meirlan Iskakov and Temirlan Temirlan performed.

As expected, at the end of the race, the podium of honor was almost completely occupied by the Japanese. Only our Ekaterina Shabalina managed to “dilute” the podium. She won a well-deserved silver medal.

Shabalina finished the 750m swim in fifth position with a score of 10:02, 26 seconds behind her main competitors Yuka Sato and Sarika Nakayama. Thus, Katya proved that she did a great job on swimming and did the work on the mistakes, leaving behind those rivals whom she lost in the last event in Nepal. For two laps of the 20-kilometer bike, our athlete led the peloton, keeping a 20-second lead from her pursuers. However, her inexperience showed up on the last lap and she made a tactical mistake, saving her energy for the running stage. This decision cost her an additional 15 seconds behind. Shabalina entered the second transit zone already 38 seconds behind the leaders. At the 5-kilometer race, the Kazakhstani closed the gap to 8 seconds, showing the best run-split of the race among women (17:34) and finishing with the second result (00:59:20).

Japanese Yuka Sato won the women's race (00:59:20). The top three was closed by another representative of the Land of the Rising Sun Sarika Nakayama (00:59:46).

“Our athlete made an exclusively tactical mistake, because she had not yet ridden in such a large group. This is quite normal, given that she has just begun to compete in the continental championships, in which all the major countries of Asia are represented, claiming Olympic medals. Of course, she will draw conclusions and apply this experience in the next races. She was able to overtake last year's winner of the distance, which is important. The good Japanese sportswoman Sato won the championship. She shows competitive results at the World Cups and WTCSes, allowing her to score points in the Olympic rankings. Our next start is scheduled in Leeds WTSC. This will be the first race of this level, we are waiting for a good performance,” commented the head coach of the national team Maxim Kriat.

In the men's start after the swimming stage, four groups were formed: in the second was Beisenbaev A., in the third - Iskakov M. and Temirov T., in the fourth - Konysbaev D. Until the end of the cycling race, the participants were rebuilt from one group to another. So, according to the results of the cycling stage, Konysbaev D., together with Temirov T. and Iskakov M., were in the second group, lagging behind the first about 2 minutes. Beisenbaev A. arrived in the second transit zone in the group of leaders, which included 11 athletes from different countries. Running failed for all of our athletes. As a result, Beisenbaev A. finished in the top 10 with a time of 00:53:49. Konysbaev D. (00:55:44) finished the race in seventeenth position, Temirov T. (00:55:51) in eighteenth, Iskakov M. (00:56:01) in twentieth.

The men's podium was taken by the Japanese: Genta Uchida (00:52:44), Aoba Yaasumatsu (00:52:51) and Makoto Odakura (00:53:05).
WTSC in Leeds (Great Britain) will be held on June 12. All results from today's continental championship are available at www.triathlon.org.