Powerful wins for Sanders and Moench in Ironman 70.3 Texas
Lionel Sanders will be the happiest man in Galveston this morning after winning his third Ironman 70.3 Texas title, putting an end to the string of second place finishes he has recorded so far this season in Challenge Daytona and Challenge Miami respectively, getting himself back on the top step of the podium in an extremely competitive field. The USA’s Skye Moench took the win in the women’s race after a solid run to hold off fast finishing Jeanni Metzler, the 2019 winner of the race.
Men’s Race
The versatile Ben Kanute came out of the water with a 15 second gap on second placed Andrew Keily, with favorite Lionel Sanders trailing by 1:37 and Sam Long a further 2 minutes back on Sanders after a swim he described after the race as ‘extremely disappointing’.
By the turnaround on the bike, after a first leg out with a tailwind, Kanute turned back into the headwind still in the lead, but with a significantly reduced advantage of 50 seconds to Sanders and Andreas Dreitz whilst Long had managed to make up a minute on his fellow American. On their return to transition, Long put in a tremendous effort to make up close to two minutes and take the lead into T2 over Sanders, with Germans Dreitz and Marcus Herbst within 10 seconds of ‘The Big Unit’. Kanute was a further 10 seconds behind before a 3-minute gap to the second group, which included 2019’s best returner Matt Hanson.
The run was where Sanders really showed his class, quickly overcoming Long’s slim lead and holding a gap to the American for the first 10 miles before pulling away on the last lap of three to win by a minute from Kanute, who out-sprinted Long, the latter finishing 1:06 behind Sanders. Matt Hanson ran his way into 4th with the fastest run split of the day whilst Dreitz held on to round out the Top 5 after a good all round race.
The full results can be found here
Great Britain’s Joe Skipper was riding in the top five when he was caught in a complex penalty situation and ultimately suffered a DQ. Skipper explained his plight on Instagram:
Women’s Race
In the women’s race it was the Brazilian Pamella Oliveira who entered T1 with a 36 second lead over second place Sophie Watts and close to 60 seconds over the 2021 edition’s winner Jeanni Metzler.
Oliveria’s lead however was quickly being eaten into by a charge of women once they got onto the bike, with Brit Kimberley Morris reducing her advantage to 21 seconds by the first checkpoint (20km) and opening a gap of her own over the Brazilian by the turn around point. Coming into T2, Morrison had a 2-minute lead over second placed Dede Griesbauer following a commanding bike leg and 2:30 over uber-runner Skye Moench, the pre-race favorite. Lisa Becharas came off the bike in 4th a further minute back before some daylight to a group including Heather Jackson which trailed Morrison by over six minutes.
Moench made up the deficit to Morrison in just under 10km, and the Brit was just moving backwards from there on out. She was first passed by Watts before Metzler came storming past, running herself into second with a 1:15 half marathon to finish 1:16 behind Moench. Watts finished in third place, ahead of Heather Jackson who ran strongly to push Kimberley Morrison into 5th.
The full results can be found here
