If I don't know anything, or I know little, Lionel Sanders has a lot to say in a race. And the first edition of IRONMAN 70.3 Dallas-Little Elm put it all on the Canadian plate: strong wind, complicated currents and an altered competition format that reduced swimming to just a few hundred meters.
The Texan event had to adapt on the fly due to the arrival of a cold front that shook Lake Lewisville from early in the morning.
The PROs played a very short swim time trial and the age groups did not even enter the water.
In that scenario, Sanders again did what he does best: build victory on the bike and finish it off by running.
Sanders imposes his script after a symbolic swim
The cutback in swimming left minimal differences between professionals. In just 350 meters of effort against the clock, the American Marc Dubrick set the best time and between the first and the last there was barely more than a minute of margin. Sanders came out far behind, forty-six, forty seconds from the head.
That initial delay, however, was never a real concern.
The Canadian began to recover positions from the first kilometers of the cycling segment and before the first third of the route he had already settled into the front group. As the day progressed, the usual pattern of their careers was repeated again.
Halfway through the bike ride he was already battling for the lead alongside German Leonard Arnold.
Both began to open a gap over the rest of the favorites, including Ben Kanute, Ari Klau or Josh Lewis.
By the time they reached the second transition, Sanders was leading the race with 19 seconds over Arnold and almost three minutes over the chasing group.
From there the race was practically doomed: Sanders signed a half marathon of 1:11:53 on a mostly dirt course and managed the advantage with solvency. He crossed the finish line with a 2:27 margin over Kanute, while the Swiss Andrea Salvisberg completed the podium just six seconds after the American.
Hering rallies despite a two-minute penalty
The women's race had a more open development and with several twists. After the brief swim, Brazilian Vittoria Lopes was the first out of the water, accompanied very closely by Rachel Olson and Erica Hawley. Jackie Hering started sixth, just over twenty seconds behind the lead.
Lopes extended his advantage in the first kilometers of the bike and came to have almost forty seconds of margin over his pursuers. However, the situation changed in the middle of the segment when Annamarie Strehlow moved to the front.
Both she and Hering then received a two-minute penalty that altered the test landscape.
That circumstance allowed the German Anna Buettner to get fully involved in the fight for victory. In the running segment, contested over a three-lap circuit with gravel stretches, it was Buettner who took the lead. Halfway through the half marathon he was about thirty seconds ahead of Hering.
But the American was steadily closing the gap in the final kilometers.
At three kilometers from the finish line, the margin was already 22 seconds, and at kilometer and a half there were barely eleven. Hering ended up catching Buettner shortly after and took the victory with a time of 3:49:57, eighteen seconds ahead of the German, while Strehlow resisted to close the podium.