Philippine 1-2 in women's triathlon
She stumbled over the finish line and collapsed to her knees.
Exhausted after the 51.5km triathlon race in the scorching 31 deg C heat, Kim Mangrobang had little energy left to celebrate coming in second and had to be cared for by the onside medics.
The 23-year-old said the hot weather at East Coast Park yesterday was similar to conditions back in the Philippines, and she was not acclimatised because she had been training in much cooler Portugal until two weeks ago.
"It was so hot and I think my electrolytes just went down very quickly, because I sweat so much during a race," she told The New Paper, after she had recovered.
Compatriot Claire Adorna stormed to first place, bagging the Philippines' first triathlon gold with a time of 2min 13:08sec in a dominant performance.
Adorna was first out after the swimming leg, 90 seconds ahead of her teammate, and stretched her lead to more than two minutes after the bike leg.
She suffered in the 10km run, her weakest of the three race segments, but did enough to win.
"I was a former swimmer and the run was the most difficult for me today," said Adorna. "But I came here wanting to win the gold and that was my motivation to keep pushing on."
SURPRISED
Although she had trained for three months in the Australian summer to prepare for Singapore's conditions, she was still a little surprised by the intensity of the heat.
"Usually I don't drink water because it makes me heavy and I feel the need to go to the toilet," she said. "But today I drank at all three stations."
Thailand's Saruthai Arunsiri claimed the bronze medal.
It was a sad day for Singapore's two triathletes.
Ethel Lin was running in third place, when she saw her bronze-medal hopes dramatically end after she collapsed about 500m away from the finish line due to heat exhaustion.
Teammate Winona Howe fell off her bike after running into a wet patch, and was lapped after losing time repairing her bike.
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