{"id":274223,"date":"2025-11-10T13:08:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T13:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/274223\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T13:08:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T13:08:08","slug":"olympic-cycling-hero-greg-van-avermaet-becomes-a-triathlon-world-champion-in-marbella-age-group-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/274223\/","title":{"rendered":"Olympic cycling hero Greg Van Avermaet becomes a triathlon world champion in Marbella – Age Group News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Olympic gold medal winning cyclist Greg Van Avermaet became a triathlon world champion in Marbella on Sunday.<\/p>\n

The Belgian, who won the road race at the Rio Olympics in 2016 as well as many other of cycling\u2019s biggest events before retiring in 2023, triumphed in the 40-44 age category at the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship.<\/p>\n

He covered the 1.9km swim, 90km bike and 21.1km half marathon in a time of four hours, 15 minutes and 56 seconds.<\/p>\n

That was nearly five minutes quicker than German\u2019s Wolfgang Teuchner in second, with 492 of the world\u2019s best age groupers having qualified for that 40-44 category.<\/p>\n

Quicker than the pros<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly it was on the bike where Van Avermaet put the most time into his rivals.<\/p>\n

His 2:16:20 split on what was a challenging 90km course with 1,785 metres of climbing was quicker than many of the male professionals<\/a>, including star American duo Ben Kanute<\/a> (2:19:03) and Jason West (2:22:10) as well as two-time 70.3 World Champion Gustav Iden<\/a> (2:20:17).<\/p>\n

In the swim Van Avermaet clocked 31:02 and his half marathon time was 1:21:31.<\/p>\n

\"GregGreg Van Avermaet [Photo credit: Getty Images for IRONMAN]<\/p>\n

A first world title<\/p>\n

Ironically Van Avermaet never claimed a world title on the bike.<\/p>\n

That despite him winning the sport\u2019s biggest and most iconic one-day races such as Paris\u2013Roubaix and Gent\u2013Wevelgem as well as two individual stage wins in the Tour de France.<\/p>\n

He also wore the yellow jersey for 11 days during the 2016 and 2018 Tours.<\/p>\n

After retiring from racing two years ago, Van Avermaet set his sights on other endurance endeavours, including Unbound Gravel, and competed in the 2024 IRONMAN 70.3 Knokke-Heist, where he came third in his age category to secure his place on the start line for the 2025 IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship.<\/p>\n

Triathlon GOAT contender Jan Frodeno<\/a> was quick to congratulate him on his achievement, posting on his Instagram page: \u201cNice man, real nice\ud83d\udc4c\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Olympic gold medal winning cyclist Greg Van Avermaet became a triathlon world champion in Marbella on Sunday. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274224,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,125567,125568,82],"class_list":["post-274223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-ironman-70-3","tag-ironman-70-3-world-championship","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}