American Taylor Knibb won the Lake Las Vegas T100 Triathlon to live up to her pre-race billing as an overwhelming favourite and complete the first-ever hat-trick of T100 race wins.

Having already claimed victory in San Francisco and Ibiza, Knibb shone in Lake Las Vegas to sit top of the T100 standings.

She now needs to finish first or second in next month’s Dubai T100 Triathlon World Championship Final (16-17 November) to become the inaugural T100 women’s world champion. 

Knibb enjoyed a fine swim before pulling clear on the bike and then bringing it home on the run, in a time of 3:37.03, more than two minutes ahead of Olympic silver medallist Julie Derron of Switzerland, with Tokyo Olympic champion Flora Duffy taking bronze.

Knibb said: “All three of us on the podium today could have raced somewhere else. But we choose to race here. At this point in the season I’m just trying to enjoy myself and enjoy the process, enjoy the journey and this is what I’m choosing to do.

“I would kill to have that swim start every single time. I have a team of people here. My swim specialist and my movement specialist and they are each taking credit for that start. So they both have to come to every race now. On the bike I loved how broken up it was.”

For Duffy, who won Olympic gold three years ago, this was a breakthrough T100 performance, and her first podium, having set her sights on doing just that.

“I’m really, really happy to be on the podium,” she said. “It was a super hard day out there. It was really tough. Taylor took off like a bullet in that swim. I thought ‘gosh’ I’m back in a short course race. But then I gathered myself and found some good feet to sit on. The bike is the biggest area I need to improve. Getting stronger and more comfortable on the TT bike and this course is certainly better for me today [than Ibiza].”

The seventh and final race of this first T100 season will be the Dubai T100 Triathlon World Championship Final on 16-17 November where inaugural T100 world champions will be crowned.