Things would have had to go very strangely for Alanis Siffert not to win Ironman 70.3 Shanghai today, and that is exactly what happened: the top Swiss athlete was clearly the strongest during the race, which had already been marketed by the organization as a ‘limited pro field’ race.
Few truly impressive names, therefore – and small starting fields anyway – which is why beforehand there seemed to be no trouble at all for world-class athlete Siffert. After the swim, which took her 27:11 minutes, she only had the Chinese athlete Xinyu Lin on her heels, and even though Lin stayed close to Siffert during the first kilometers on the bike, the difference was made early on. Once in T2, Siffert’s lead was already over seven minutes, and at the finish line, the margin had grown to more than eight minutes.
Siffert won in 4:05:30, Lin finished second in 4:13:36, and the also Chinese Kaiye Mai finished third in 4:39:25.
In the men’s race, the Chinese athlete Rongheng Chen won in 3:47:22. The American Simon Shi finished second in 3:54:00, and the Chinese athlete Junjie Fan finished third in 3:58:50.
