Challenge Daytona
PAULA FINDLAY’S SECOND BREAKTHROUGH
With so few races in 2020, the PTO 2020 Championship in Florida served as much more than a million-dollar bonanza, it turned into a duel between the world’s best short-course and long-distance triathletes. We recap the unique race day.
It wasn’t as though she had stopped – in the eight and a bit years since her tough day at the 2012 Olympics in London, Paula Findlay had been racing. She’d been winning races. She put herself in a position to make the Olympic team for Rio, but in the end wasn’t selected, and certainly was a main contender for the Commonwealth Games team in 2018, where, once again, she wasn’t selected.
At which point Paula Findlay decided it was time to turn her sights to long-distance racing. Some solid 70.3 results followed, but it wasn’t really until her back-toback wins at Ironman 70.3 Indian Wells-La Quinta and Challenge Daytona last year that the amazing talent and promise that we’d seen almost a decade earlier seemed to be coming through.
The 31-year-old from Edmonton seemed ready to make a splash on the distance triathlon scene.
Then COVID-19 hit. In a year with precious little racing, almost all of the world’s best triathletes found themselves in Daytona Beach, Fla., as part of a million-dollar bonanza.
To be exact, it was actually a $1.15 million day for many of the world’s top triathletes, thanks to the Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO) who were determined to put on one of the biggest spectacles the sport has ever seen. The race featured a somewhat unique 2-km swim, 80-km bike and an 18-km run, a nice round 100 km total, that was long enough to require outstanding endurance and strength, but also short enough to require the speed of a standard-distance racer.
The PTO invited a number of short course stars to the race, which made for an interesting mix of some of the world’s greatest long-distance athletes in the field taking on Olympic and draft-legal world champions. Heading into the PTO 2020 Championship, it wasn’t hard to compare the race to an event like the world cross country championships where you see the world’s best track runners take on the world’s top marathon runners. The race in Daytona had very much the same feel – the top distance and sprint athletes were competing in an event that split the difference and gave each a fighting chance for the title.
SWIM, BIKE, RUN EXCELLENCE REQUIRED
Great Britain’s Lucy Hall was first out of the water, managing to even gap super-swimmer Lauran Brandon by eight seconds. Findlay was in a group that included Fenella Langridge, Holly Lawrence, Jodie Stimpson, Nicola Spirig and Lisa Norden.
Out on the bike it was Findlay who quickly took control, with Norden staying close behind until just passed the halfway point of the 80 km bike ride, where the Swede moved in front and pushed to the line. Findlay beat the Olympic silver medalist out to the run course, though.
Behind those two came Kimberly Morrison followed by the German connection of Anne Haug and Laura Philipp. Early on in the bike Haug had found herself in a tight position trying to get past a group of riders and was hit by the officials with a penalty, so she had to spend two minutes in the penalty tent right after transition before she could get started on the run.
Meanwhile, on the back-stretch with what was now a lead of almost six minutes on the only woman with the run-firepower to catch her, Findlay was striding along looking not unlike the young woman who won five WTS titles in 2010 and 2011, still more than any other Canadian.
Haug might have powered through the field to take second, but Findlay managed to take the penalty out of the equation by running just 1:25 slower than the German Ironman world champion, leaving her 2:37 clear for a solid win and a $100,000 piece of the $1.15 million prize purse. “I was so shocked,” Findlay said of her win. “In a field like this I thought maybe a top-ten would be great. I felt really good all day. It was one of those perfect days that you don’t get very often.” There are those who might argue she had a similar day a year ago here when she won in Daytona, but who wants to be picky. The bottom line is Paula Findlay is most definitely back at the top of her game, and while it might be a shocker for her, the rest of us aren’t even remotely suprised.
IDEN TAKES ANOTHER BIG WIN
The stacked men’s race began with a World-Triathlonlookalike swim pack leading the way through the water as Henri Schoeman led the way ahead of a large group that included most of the favourites, including the two men who finished on the podium at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, Alistair and Jonathan Brownlee.
Once out on the bike much of that large group powered away in front, working hard to figure out how to stay 20 m behind the speedster ahead of them, which became a challenge at times as they faced a stiff headwind down the Daytona International Speedway’s back stretch. Eventually some of the cycling powerhouses we expected to make a dent in the lead group worked their way towards the front – Lionel Sanders, Sam Long, Magnus Ditlev and Sebastian Kienle seemed to be making up ground at some point, but no one put in a dominant enough bike split to ride clear. Kienle started to fade badly, though, eventually pulling out of the race due to a calf injury.
Rudy von Berg was first into T2, but it wasn’t long before Alistair Brownlee was in front on the run course with von Berg, Sam Appleton, Thomas Davis, Timothy O’Donnell and Henri Schoeman all making appearances near the front. Jonny Brownlee and Vincent Luis ended up spending time in the penalty tent due to drafting penalties, which effectively put them out of the hunt for the win.
Heading into the second lap of the run Alistair Brownlee suddenly pulled to the side of the track and would eventually have to call it a day thanks to a torn calf muscle. Not long after that Gustav Iden glided by all the men who appeared to be ready to duke it out for the win, pulling clear and never looking back as he took his second major title in 15 months after his Ironman 70.3 World Championship win in Nice last year.
Behind him Matt Hanson used the day’s fastest run to work his way to second, while George Goodwin put together the race of his young career to take third. Sanders pushed hard over the tail end of the run, but found himself just seven-seconds short of third.