Seregni, who emerged from the opening swim at the Jingtang Triathlon Centre - purpose-built for this event - with a 40sec lead, was caught by two riders on the bike.

And due to "a little problem" in her second transition, she set off five seconds down on the leaders in the concluding run.

But she found the reserves to regain the lead, eventually winning in a time of 1hr 56min 51sec.

"I had a little problem in T2 so I started running a little later, but I pushed so much at the start and I said to myself now you have to go, you have to push and try right from the start and we’ll see at the end," Seregni said.

"I’m really confident in this format and the Olympic-distance is my favourite, I mean I love racing and so I’m really really happy."

Claire Michel of Belgium, running the 100th World Triathlon race of her career, earned silver in 1:57:17, with bronze going to Seregni’s team-mate Ilaria Zane in 1:57:36.

Fourth place was claimed by home runner Xinyu Lin, who had followed the eventual winner out of the swim and caught her for the latter part of the bike ride along with fellow Chinese athlete Yifan Yang.

Lin clocked 1:57:58 to earn the best result of her career at this level, with Tereza Zimovjanova of the Czech Republic fifth in 1:58:32.

Hellwig was a runaway winner of the men’s race, where Mexico’s Aram Michell Penaflor Moysen outsprinted Azerbaijan’s Rostislav Pevstov to silver.

The men's swimming event finished with Hungary’s Mark Devay and Dylan McCullough of New Zealand holding a significant lead, but the field had largely closed up by the transition between the cycling and concluding 10 kilometres run.

Six men, including the three eventual medallists, took turns in the lead before Hellwig made a decisive move in the final kilometre before finishing in 1:44:15, with Moysen coming home in 1:44.21 and Pevtsov being given the same time.

Hungary’s Bence Bicsak missed out on a podium place by just one second, with Japan’s Makoto Odakura a further second behind in fifth place.

"To be honest I didn’t feel amazing today," Hellwig said.

"I had to play my cards very carefully.

"On the last kilometre there were so many people cheering and especially here on the finish line so it’s a pretty nice experience here in China, I like it very much,"