Courtesy: USAT

David Thompson and Kim Loeffler took the male and female titles, respectively, at the USA Triathlon Elite Long Distance Triathlon National Championship on Sunday at the Spirit of Racine Triathlon in Racine, Wis.

Seven elite women and 10 elite men were on the start list.

Thompson (Appleton, Minn.) was the overall male winner in 3:51:26, outpacing fellow Americans Marcel Vifian (Park City, Utah), who finished second in 3:57:37, and third place finisher Brad Seng (Bloomfield, Mich.), who finished the 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, and 13.1 mile run in 4:04:17.

Thompson was actually out of the water second behind Vifian and had a much slower transition, but used a strong bike split of 2:06:17 - more than five minutes better than Vifian - to pull away. Seng had the fastest run of the day at 1:14:29 to grab a podium finish.

For the women, Canadian Lisa Bentley won the overall race in 4:17:08, but Loeffler (Colchester, Vt.) grabbed the national title as the top-placing American, finishing second overall in 4:26:40. Sarah Groff (Boulder, Colo.) was third (second American) in 4:30:03, and Erin Ford (Dalles, Ore.) was fourth overall (third American) in 4:30:43.

Groff was out of the water first with a swim split of 26:19.47, which was nearly two minutes faster than Ford, four minutes faster than Bentley and almost seven minutes ahead of Loeffler. But both Bentley and Loeffler recovered to record the top-two splits in both the bike and run.

The race was the sole qualifier for U.S. elite/professional triathletes seeking to represent the U.S. at the ITU Long Distance World Championship, November 19 in Canberra, Australia.