Emma Pallant-Browne wins Ironman 70.3 Chattanooga, Matt Hanson triumphs thanks to huge catch-up effort

Just a week ago Emma Pallant-Browne won Ironman 70.3 Mallorca, but today she triumphed again: just some minutes ago the British athlete won, with a minimal lead, Ironman 70.3 Chattanooga. In the men’s race, the home victory went to Matt Hanson, who started the half marathon minutes behind, but ran so fast that he still managed to win.

Hanson recorded a 1:09 on the half marathon and when you run splits like that, you know you’re always in a good position during the run. In Hanson’s case, even a very good position, because when he started the 21.1 kilometers he was seventh and more than 4:30 minutes behind the race leader at the time, Justin Riele. Antony Costes, Trevor Foley, Jackson Laundry and Nicholas Quenet also had such a large margin, while Colin Szuch started the final run over a minute and a half early.

All those men, however, proved no match for Hanson. In what is Hanson’s favorite part of the race, he ‘ate them alive’. It took him about fifteen kilometers to do so, because for the first five kilometers his gap was about the same and only then did he start making up time. Then things did evolve very quickly and in the end Hanson won the race in 3:41:21. Laundry was second in 3:42:02 and the bronze was for Foley, who finished after 3:42:16.

Emma Pallant-Browne also had to chase hard to claim victory; after the swim, she was more than two minutes behind and in tenth place. On the bike, however, many women got fairly close to each other, and once in T2, big favorites were close: Jackie Hering, Jodie Stimpson, Sarah True, Danielle Lewis, Grace Alexander, Lisa Becharas and Pallant-Browne, among others, started the run less than a minute apart.

Pallant-Browne, actually in line with expectations, immediately took the lead during the run, but her lead did not really become large. Hering was able to stay surprisingly close and so the tension remained until the finish line. Nevertheless, it was Pallant-Browne who did not let herself get crazy, just kept running her own race and thus eventually booked a nice victory in a time of 4:06:27. Hering was second in 4:10:13 and True was third in 4:10:13.