I'm no triathlete, but I don't see why you would need a road bike for that. How much time would you gain on that hill as opposed to how much time you would lose over the rest of the course? It's more about gearing than anything else. You can see that a lot of the successful riders were spinning an easier gear at a higher cadence and a lot of the riders who failed were pushing way too difficult of a gear.

I do understand that nobody wants to get off the bike and admit defeat, but you're a triathlete, right? Why not get off and run? It looks like it would be faster for a lot of those people.