Probably not many people had written down Tamara Jewett as the biggest favorite for the win at Ironman 70.3 Oceanside, yet it is the Canadian athlete who just walked away with the win. In doing so, she beat such big favorites as Kat Matthews, Chelsea Sodaro, Holly Lawrence and Paula Findlay.
Jewett got the day off to an immediate good start: Lawrence came out of the water first after 24:15 and then had a one-and-a-half-minute lead over a chasing foursome, which included Jewett. Jewett saw herself joined by basically all the favorites: Matthews, Findlay and Sodaro.
On the bike, these four women stayed together in pursuit of Lawrence, who led solo for a long time and stayed in front for nearly fifty kilometers. At the next checkpoint, after 63 kilometers to be precisely, Lawrence had given up her escape attempt and the British athlete had dropped back into the chasing group, thus creating a leading group of five women. Remarkably enough, it was Jewett who had to let go of the leading group in the final part of the bike ride: the pace was just too fast for her and as a result she came in fifth into T2, 1:14 minute behind the four leaders. Behind this chasing group there was a large gap of almost nine minutes to the first pursuers, so it was already clear at the start of the half marathon that there would be five women fighting for the medals.
It was initially Sodaro who took the lead in the race, followed briefly by Matthews. But, very soon Jewett ran to the front and well before she was even halfway through the run, she overtook Sodaro. The Ironman World Champion still tried to catch up with Jewett, but it proved to be impossible for Matthews and so Jewett saw her lead increase fairly quickly in the closing stages. Meanwhile, Matthews secured her third place at the expense of Lawrence.
In the end, Jewett ran to a stunning victory, which she claimed after 4:08:09. Sodaro finished second at 1:21 minute behind. Matthews finished third and was 4:18 minutes behind Jewett.
