Unger shows his Olympic potential; home team places five in top 10

Hamburg, Germany (July 5, 2008) - In what seemed like an instant replay from one year ago, hometown favourite Daniel Unger of Germany has won the 2008 Hamburg BG Triathlon World Cup in a time of one hour 46 minutes and 51 seconds. With only 200 metres to go, the Beijing-bound Unger managed to catch and pass teammate Jan Frodeno to win by a mere six seconds and put Germany one-two on the podium. Young Oliver Freeman of Great Britain rounded out the podium in third, a further seven seconds back.

"It was deja vu," said the 2007 world champion Unger. "It was a perfect race for me. It was tough as the speed was very high even though the top guys weren't here. It was a good test for Beijing. I think I can push myself into another level."
With only six weeks until the Olympic Games triathlon, Unger's second world cup win of the season, in only his second race, shows he is a definite medal contender in Beijing. The entire German Olympic team showed their muscle today with Unger first, Frodeno second and Christian Prochnow in fifth. In total Germany had five athletes in the top eight.

Thirty-five men would start the sixth edition of the Hamburg event with Russian Ivan Vasiliev moving to the lead early in the swim on with a group of 12 athletes, four of them Germans, in quick pursuit. With many young and inexperienced athletes in the field the race quickly split into numerous small groups early on the bike. This gave the front thirteen the chance to put significant time on the chasers including top contender Brad Kahlefeldt of Australia, which grew to over 80 seconds by the end of the bike.
On the sixth of eight laps Prochnow and relative world cup newcomer Gareth Halverson from Australia would take advantage of the flat and technical course through downtown Hamburg to break away from the front group, giving them a 33 second buffer heading into the 10-kilometre run course.

Halverson quickly dropped off the run pace and was swallowed by the chase group before the end of the first lap. From here it was only a matter of time as Unger, Frodeno and Freeman ran shoulder to shoulder, catching Prochnow at the five kilometre mark. From here it would be a battle for gold, each taking their turn in the lead until with 800m to go, Frodeno kicked into an early sprint clearing 25 metres on the other two. But just as at the 2007 BG Triathlon World Championships, Unger would time his response perfectly, and just as he caught Javier Gomez of Spain with 200m to go a year ago, Unger caught Frodeno and then cruised home to the cheers of thousands of elated German fans to take his second world cup win of his career.

2008 Hamburg BG Triathlon World Cup
1.5km swim, 40km bike, 10km run
Elite Men - Unofficial Results
Gold - Daniel Unger (GER) 1:46:51
Silver - Jan Frodeno (GER) 1:46:58
Bronze - Oliver Freeman (GBR) 1:47:05
4th - Ivan Vasiliev (RUS) 1:47:20
5th - Christian Prochnow (GER) 1:47:45
6th - Ivan Rana (ESP) 1:48:00
7th - Maik Petzold (GER) 1:48:04
8th - Dan Wilson (AUS) 1:48:18
9th - Gregor Buchholz (GER) 1:48:20
10th - Martin Krnavek (CZE) 1:48:21