World champion and reigning Hy-Vee Elite Cup women’s gold medalist Emma Moffatt of Australia has announced that she will sit out the Mooloolaba World Cup on March 27 due to a broken shoulder suffered in a bike crash in mid-February.
 
“I didn’t think anything was broken at the time, but a week later things weren’t improving so I had an MRI and that showed a couple of breaks in the humerus head,” Moffatt told Triathlon.org.

The 25-year-old Moffatt said the shoulder is expected to heal without surgery, although she will need to refrain approximately six weeks from swimming.

Plans to compete in Mooloolaba, held on Australia’s Sunshine Coast, have been shelved, “and then I’ll reassess what races I’ll do when I get an update on how it’s healing,” Moffatt told the website. “I will just have to wait and see how my shoulder progresses and see where my fitness is at.”

Moffatt won the $200,000 first place prize in the Hy-Vee ITU Triathlon Elite Cup last summer at Raccoon River Park in West Des Moines. She defeated fellow Aussie Emma Snowsill by 1 minute, 33 seconds in a race dominated by heat and headwinds.

Snowsill was slow out of Blue Heron Heron Lake and had to chase Moffatt throughout the 40-kilometer bike segment. Moffatt led by 55 seconds going into the run. She finished in 1 hour 59 minutes, 46 seconds. Canadian Lauran Groves finished third, 1 minute, 45 seconds back.