But a charging Jelle Geens (Belgium) and Kristian Blummenfelt (Norway) lit a fuse in Wilde as he once again put his foot down on the gas to keep the fast-closing challengers at bay.
In the end, Wilde did just enough to hold on for the win, breaking the tape in three hours 50.51 minutes – just 18 seconds ahead of Blummenfelt, with reigning Ironman 70.3 World Champion Geens rounding out the podium.
Wilde dropped his watch heading out of the final transition, and says his brain had to work overtime to figure out his advantage with about two kilometres remaining.
“It’s awesome to execute a race,” said Wilde. “I was coming down the Promenade and hit about 15km and the legs felt really good, and I was like yeah, we’ve ticked that box since Taupō, now I just keep chugging along and I got to that 19km mark and really had to dig deep.
“There was still a 32 second gap, so I was doing calculations in my head where I was thinking if I just keep this pace – I didn’t have a watch – it just felt like 3.10 pace, then Kristian has to run sub 3.00 pace to catch me. So I just said, keep chugging, keep chugging, get over this little pinch and run downhill. It’s still sinking in, to be honest, but it’s just nice to get it done.
“Coming out of T2 I had all my things in my hand, and I kicked my watch, and I think I kicked it all the way into the marina – so I might have to go and buy a new one. So that was a bit frustrating. I look at the race, and it wasn’t a perfect race for me, there were a few things that were errors, but I was just really happy with how I executed the run.
“With 5km to go, I was able to hold on. The last 2km was punishing, but, you know, a great quote from Kristian is, ‘it’s worse to lose’, and yeah, it definitely is, so to hold on is something special for sure.”