Aernouts runs to 70.3 Florida win, Laundry takes fourth

There was no stopping Belgium’s Bart Aernouts at Ironman 70.3 Florida in Haines City (just outside of Orlando) as the former Kona runner-up and Challenge Roth champion showed that he’s returning to top form with an impressive win over a stacked field.

Canada’s own Jackson Laundry was second out of the water, hitting T1 about 22 seconds behind Russian Alexander Khalamanov. Canadian Taylor Reid had a solid swim, coming out of the water in ninth spot, 1:07 back. The pre-race favourites were well spread out after the swim, with Germany’s Andreas Dreitz just under a minute down, American Matt Hanson at 1:23, Great Britain’s Joe Skipper at 1:53 and Aernouts just under three-minutes behind.

Out on the bike the fast-riding Dreitz was joined by Denmark’s Magnus Ditlev at the front, with Laundry leading the chase group through the first half of the ride, 2:19 behind. While the rest of the field found themselves losing huge amounts of time to the two bike leaders, Aernouts managed to keep his deficit to Dreitz down to about a minute – by the time he hit T2 he was 3:09 behind Dreitz and Ditlev, with Skipper at 3:17 and Laundry in fifth at 4:28.

Out on the run course Dreitz managed to quickly run clear of Ditlev, but Aernouts steadily gained time on the German, making for an interesting race between Challenge Roth champions – Aernouts won the prestigious race in 2017, Dreitz took the event in 2019.

By 16 km, though, it was clear the day would go to the Belgian – he was just six-seconds behind and made the pass shortly afterwards. Aernouts cruised through the last 5 km of the run to easily take the win in 3:47:42, with Hanson putting together a blazing 1:10:38 split to take second (3:48:20). Dreitz hung tough for third (3:49:04) with Laundry taking fourth in 3:51:20. Defending Xterra world champ Bradley Weiss took fifth in 3:52:36.

Reid would finish 10th in 4:01:03.