She already won there last year, but now she did it again: Marjolaine Pierré proved once more today to be world-class with a victory at Ironman 70.3 Aix-en-Provence. Moreover, that victory was more than just winning: she absolutely crushed her competition, including big names like Imogen Simmonds and Laura Philipp, and simply showed supreme dominance.
Pierré still had some work to do to actually take the lead in the race, because after the swim – led by Fenella Langridge – the French athlete came out of the water in eighth place and had 31 seconds to make up. While it was Belgium’s Hanne de Vet who started leading the race on the bike, Pierré initially saw her deficit grow to almost a minute. However, around the halfway mark, she managed to catch up with De Vet, and by that point, no other women were anywhere near them. Pierré, meanwhile, kept pushing as if it were nothing, and eventually, De Vet could no longer keep up with her either. When Pierré returned to T2, De Vet followed in second at 1:38 minutes, while Solenne Billouin was already nearly four minutes behind in third, with Simmonds (+4:12) and Philipp (+4:36) following at even greater distances.
Despite Pierré keeping the pace impressively high, the 21.1 kilometers actually became a victory lap to enjoy, as it quickly became clear that no one could jeopardize her win anymore. Meanwhile, exactly the opposite was true for De Vet; in the final stages, she saw both Simmonds and Philipp pass her by, thereby losing her podium position.
Pierré won the race in 4:08:27, Simmonds finished second in 4:12:10, and Philipp took third in 4:12:46.
