Recently, Lionel Sanders indicated that he was completely done with the Full Distance for the time being and wanted to focus only on the Middle Distance and immediately, in his first race after those statements, he strikes with a victory. Just some minutes ago, Sanders was too strong for all his competitors at Ironman 70.3 Oregon.
His victory is instant proof that Sanders is still very strong at the 70.3 distance – should there be any people who doubted that at all – and that he certainly hasn’t lost his speed. As is actually always the case, he started the race quite a bit behind; at least, after the swim, because at 1:38 minute from the fastest swimmers of the day, he came out of the water in 23rd place. The pro field was remarkably deep; as many as 43 professional athletes took off in the men’s race.
On the bike, Chilean Martin Ulloa took off on his own, but Sanders slowly but surely rode to the front and joined the Chilean after about 50 kilometers. This thus created a leading group of two athletes, briefly followed by American Trevor Foley. Back in T2, Sanders and Ulloa were still in the lead and Foley followed in third at forty seconds. The next closest athletes followed at more than six minutes.
During the run, Sanders actually decided the race quite quickly in his favor; very quickly he did not run away from Ulloa, yet he did and after the first eight kilometers his lead actually began to increase rapidly. In the end Sanders won the race in 3:33:37. Ulloa finished second in 3:37:11 and Foley third in 3:37:19. Marc Dubrick was very close to a podium finish, coming in as fourth in 3:37:41.
In the women’s race Danielle Lewis (USA) was dominating. At the moment of writing, she had five kilometer of running left, leading the race by over 8 minutes.
