Paula Findlay completes magical Quebec weekend with dominant win at Ironman 70.3 Mont-Tremblant

Despite a stressful week that saw her spend three days on the phone trying to track down her bike, Paula Findlay managed to complete an impressive double here in Quebec – on Friday she won her third straight Canadian Time Trial Championship, and today she enjoyed a huge win at Ironman 70.3 Mont-Tremblant.

After a close call getting her bike, triathlon star takes third straight national time-trial title

Findlay dominated the day despite the horrible conditions that included high winds and torrential rain that didn’t let up until shortly after the pros finished. The challenging conditions in the water forced race organizers to shorten the swim to about 1.2 km (eventually the swim would be cancelled for some of the age group athletes as conditions worsened through the morning).

Salthouse leads the swim

After a big win at Ironman 70.3 Boulder two weeks ago, Ellie Salthouse proved she is still in good form as she led the way out of the water in 16:57, but the shortened swim didn’t help split things up very much. Findlay was just four seconds behind in fourth, while 2022 champ (the race was cancelled last year due to smoke from nearby forest fires) Tamara Jewett was ninth out of the water, 37 seconds behind.

Once on the bike Salthouse’s race plan became pretty obvious – stay at the front of the race with Findlay. A third of the way into the bike course the two were already 3:28 up on the chasers. Then, at about 50 km, Findlay would push up one of the many hills on this challenging course through the Laurentians, and by 66 km the Canadian was 50 seconds up on the Australian, with the chase group that included Americans Grace Alexander, Meredith Kessler and Sarah True, Jewett and Aussie Grace Thek were all over seven minutes behind the leader.

Huge lead off the bike

By the time she hit T2, Findlay was over two minutes ahead of Salthouse, with Jewett just under nine minutes down, with Thek and Kessler just a few seconds behind her.

Findlay would open up time on Salthouse through the first 10 km, and was still over seven minutes ahead of the speedy Jewett through the halfway point of the run. By that point it was clear that unless something crazy happened Findlay would win, but second was still up for grabs as Jewett flew through the run course.

Findlay would cross the line in 4:01:00 to complete her winning weekend. With 1 km to go Jewett was just seconds behind Salthouse, who struggled over the cobblestones in the quaint Mont-Tremblant village as she tried to gear up for a sprint to the line. Jewett would fly through a 1:16:13 run to take second in 4:04:51, with Salthouse crossing the line seven seconds later. Thek would hang on for fourth in 4:09:56, with Alexander taking fifth in 4:15:27.