Top-tier pros show their mettle with impressive wins at Ironman 70.3 St. George
Paula Findlay and Sam Long lived up to their rankings with impressive wins at the Ironman 70.3 North American Championship
Photo by:
Sean Haffey/ Getty Images for Ironman
With all the hype this year around the dueling pro triathlon series, fans have been blessed with a series of races featuring some of the sport’s biggest names. Both the PTO’s T100 series and the Ironman Pro Series got off to a bang with top fields at their first two events. Heading into the third Ironman Pro Series race – today’s Ironman 70.3 North American Championship in St. George, Utah – we were anticipating more of the same. In the end, though, the eventual winners proved to be in a class of their own as Sam Long (USA) dominated what we figured were a group of men who would be able to challenge him a bit more, while Paula Findlay (pictured above at Ironman 70.3 Oceanside) showed why she’s one of the sport’s top-ranked athletes over the 100 km and half distance.
Findlay at the front
The Canadian Olympian and silver medalist at the 2022 Ironman 70.3 World Championship in St. George would exit the water just 11 seconds behind swim leader Kate Curran (GBR). Australia’s Ellie Salthouse came out of the water with Findlay and rode with the two-time Canadian time trial champion for a few miles, but was “dispatched” (Salthouse’s description, not ours!) on one of the first climbs.
From there on Findlay remained in complete control of the race, finishing the bike 4:08 up on Salthouse, and 5:17 ahead of a group that included Americans Danielle Lewis, Jackie Hering and defending champion Jeanni Metzler.
Findlay would lose a bit of time to Salthouse on the run, but finished the race in 4:09:27, 2:28 ahead of Salthouse (4:11:56). Hering would post the day’s fastest run split to take third (4:12:50), with Metzler (4:14:47) finishing fourth and Curran rounding out the top five in 4:15:42. Lewis, who raced at Ironman Texas last weekend would hang on for sixth (4:21:22).
Long powers through on dry land
Sam Long is enjoying an incredible year in 2024. He opened his season with a win at Ironman 70.3 Pucon, then took second at T100 Miami, Ironman 70.3 Oceanside and T100 Singapore. He’s done all that despite a series of “poor” (compared to the rest of the field) swims that have seen him well back starting the bike. In Miami, for example, he came perilously close to being lapped out of the race, but surged through the field to take an impressive second.
Two runner-up finishes in two weeks – Sam Long is waiting to “crash”
In St. George the American was 3:17 behind South Africa’s Nicholas Quenet heading into T1, but was seconds out of the lead by the halfway point of the bike and ended up in T2 in the lead, 41 seconds ahead of Germany’s Maximilian Sperl and about 3:30 up on the chase group that included Quenet, France’s Antony Costes and Germany’s Magnus Manner. Last year’s third-place finisher in St. George, Canadian Jackson Laundry, was 11th off the bike, over six minutes behind Long.
Proving that he’s at another level compared to the men in this field, Long was almost three minutes faster than anyone else on the run (1:10:46 to Laundry’s 1:13:36) as he cruised to the win in 3:39:17. That’s almost four minutes faster than his winning time from a year ago.
Youri Keulen dominates T100 Singapore as Sam Long goes from last to second
New Zealand’s Ben Hamilton followed up his third-place finish at Ironman New Zealand with a second-place finish (3:46:52), while Costes (3:48:19) just barely held off a fast-charging Laundry (3:48:22) for the final spot on the podium.
