By a large margin, Paula Findlay won the pro women only Ironman 70.3 Chattanooga today. With a lead of over five minutes over Danielle Lewis and Jeanni Metzler, the Canadian athlete was far too strong for her competitors.
The swim was led by two American women: Grace Alexander and Hannah Sakaluk. They came out of the water after 26:09 minutes and were then followed at just under a minute by a group of five women, including Sarah True and Findlay. Lewis, who thus ended up finishing second, followed a huge gap of over 4:30 minutes and was at that point in 17th position.
On the bike, Findlay quickly rode the leading group to pieces, taking the lead in the race solo. Her lead over the rest of the field quickly grew and even though Lewis gained a lot of positions – halfway through she was already ninth – her gap was over five minutes. In the second half of the bike leg, this picture remained basically unchanged: Findlay returned to T2 with a 4:23 minute lead over Skye Moench, and Lewis, who had advanced to position three, followed after 5:12 minutes. Metzler was twenty seconds behind Lewis again and thus moved into fourth position.
During the run, the podium quickly became clear: Findlay obviously did not relinquish her victory and both Lewis and Metzler ran up to second and third position quite quickly, which they did not relinquish from then on neither. However, both ladies were evenly matched for quite a long stretch, but Lewis ended up running just a bit stronger.
Findlay won the race in 4:09:44, Lewis followed in second in 4:15:02 and Metzler in third in 4:15:37.
