Pallant powers to big win at Ironman 70.3 Florida

After getting married earlier this year, Great Britain’s Emma Pallant makes South Africa home these days, which is why we haven’t had a chance to see her compete very much over the last little bit – South African athletes have been dealing with some major restrictions when it comes to travel. Last month the former 70.3 worlds runner-up  (photo above) took an impressive win at the PTO-supported South African National Championships, and today we all got a chance to see that the result was as good as it seemed.

Pallant cruised to a four-minute win over a strong field at Ironman 70.3 Florida – the only time she wasn’t at the front of the race was through the swim, which was led by American Sonja Catano, who has a draft-legal race background. Pallant came out of the water just over a minute behind, but was already three-minutes up on the swim leader by the 20 km point of the ride.

After a few tough swims through her early season races, American Heather Jackson fared better today, but was still three-minutes down starting the ride. She’d managed to gain some time on Pallant through that first 20 km on the bike and trailed by 1:36 in second. but wouldn’t gain much more time through the rest of the ride. Coming off the bike Pallant was in first, 1:43 ahead of Jackson and over six minutes up on American’s Mollie Hebda, Lesley Smith and Lisa Becharas.

Pallant’s obvious fitness and always-strong running capabilities made the win pretty much a foregone conclusion – she stayed out in front and was never threatened as she cruised to the win in 4:18:48. Smith would use the days fastest run (1:24:13) to take second (4:23:05) with Jackson fading on the run to r0und out the podium in 4:27:42. Hebda would take fourth (4:31:57) while Great Britain’s Simone Mitchell finished fifth (4:33:17).

You can find all the pro women’s results here.