In their season opener, reigning IRONMAN Pro Series Champion Kat Matthews and three-time IRONMAN 70.3 World Champion Taylor Knibb took gold and silver at the IRONMAN Texas North American Championship.
For Matthews, it wasn’t just her third consecutive win and a new personal best: her finish of 8:10:34 is the new fastest time recorded by a female athlete for a full-distance IRONMAN.
Knibb led for most of the day on the bike after emerging from the 3.8-kilometre swim in second, then blitzing the 180-kilometre bike leg in 4:19:46 to set the fastest-ever IRONMAN bike split, despite tripping as she dismounted.
Just under six minutes in arrears after the swim, Matthews limited the damage by riding the day’s second-fastest bike time and keeping the deficit to Knibb steady as she began the run. Chasing down the American, the British athlete made use of her strongest discipline to run the day’s fastest marathon, taking the lead near the 16-kilometre mark and finishing nearly 10 minutes ahead of Knibb and the rest of the field.
“I’m really proud to pull together that [performance] against this field. Seriously, I’m really happy,” Matthews said. “I wasn’t feeling great to be honest. I thought I’d just ease into it, but the speed came quite easily… I feel lucky to sort of claw back time really quickly and stay positive for most of it.”
In the men’s field, Kacper Stepniak debuted in the Bahrain Victorious racing red with a strong Top 10 finish in 7:45:05.
At IRONMAN 70.3 Valencia India Lee finished sixth with a time of 4:09:06, brushing off the memories of her heat-induced DNF at Singapore T100 three weeks ago.
