Anahi Alvarez Corral roved that she is always one to watch when she makes it to the final transition in the leading positions. The Mexican duathlete captured the gold medal in the women’s duathlon at the 2025 Chengdu World Games in a heart-pounding sprint to the finish, narrowly edging out Spain’s Maria Varo Zubiri on the blue carpet. The bronze medal was secured by Jeanne Dupont, who secured another glory day for Belgium after their silver and bronze medals yesterday at the men’s competition.
29 women took the start of the 2025 Women’s Duathlon of the 2025 World Games in Xinglong Lake, Chengdu, with a 5km run, 30km bike and a final 5km run on the menu, and once again hard conditions with high temperatures and humidity.
From the gun, the main favorites showed up ready to contest a medal. A group comprising Alvarez, Varo Zubiri, and Dupont set a brisk tempo at the front, all within seconds of each other. A few seconds behind, Lisa Isebaert (BEL), Aline Kootstra (NEED) and Yayoi Fukushima (JPN) led a small group of athletes chasing the leaders heading to the first transition.
As the athletes transitioned onto the challenging 30km bike course, teams and alliances begun to show. With Dupont and Varo Zubiri alternating the lead, the first kilometers saw a group of five with the main favorites: Isabeart, Kootstra, Varo Zubiri and both Mexico’s Alvarez and Martinez Avila, with no clear leader emerging during the first lap, when the course claimed the first victim, Germany’s Julia Klein.
The leading five were trying to keep an eye on each other and eventually dropping Alvarez, known to be the fastest runner on paper, but the constant attacks ended up with the group riding slowly than the chase group, and finally the gap was closed before the athletes headed to the second transition.
Maria Varo Zubiri was the first one to take a small lead as soon as they were on the final run segment, that grew to around 5 seconds. However, Anahi Alvarez began to close the gap steadily, followed by Dupont. The three of them got together half way through the first lap of the final 5km run, while behind them Martinez Avila (MEX) and Isebaert (BEL) tried to close the gap, but the speed of the leading trio was just too much.
With 1km to go, it was Dupont the first one to be dropped a few meters, while Alvarez and Varo were still running shoulder to shoulder. And together they made it to the blue carpet. With the finish arch on sight, Alvarez managed to move one meter ahead of Varo and that last push was just too much for the Spaniard, who battled until the end but crossed the finish line in second place. 21 seconds later, Dupont claimed bronze while her teammate Isebaert got the chocolate medal, finishing fourth.
A heartbreaking turn of events unfolded for Selene Martinez, who was running in fourth place when she mistakenly followed a lapped athlete into the transition area instead of proceeding to the finish line. A costly error that resulted in a significant time loss, dropping her to 11th place.
Fifth on the line was finally for Mao Shimazaki (JPN), followed by Aline Kootstra (NED), Yayoi Fukishima (JPN), Nelly Maria Rassmann (GER), Ziqing Lu (CHN) and Diana Castillo (COL) rounding up the top 10.