Pro Race Coverage | 2025 IRONMAN 70.3 Aix-en-Provence

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40 seconds [Music] away. All the second stage tanks now 30 seconds a notch. [Music] 12 11 10 9 Ignition sequence start. 6 5 4 3 2 1 zero. All engine running. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] The Iron Man Pro Series continues with six incredibly hard-fought races behind us. the last in the USA. And today we are here in Axen Province, France, which is normally known for its wine, cheese, nugar, and olives, and the beautiful and famous sunflower and lavender fields. The first third of the season is behind us, and it’s now all about the points that the athletes are making their way toward the chasing the $1.7 million in bonus prize money, where every second matters. Today I man 70.3 Axen Provence a beautiful part of the world in the south eastern part of France here absolutely gorgeous racing and today will be none other than spectacular Minda Carrey welcome in studio here outside we got a beautiful day happening at the moment on the cooler side but it will warm up absolutely a beautiful day here for the athletes uh athletes are just in their final preparation here we have of about 25 minutes to 30 minutes before the race starts. Uh so we’ll have plenty of time to watch the athletes do their final preparations doing a little bit of mobility there um before putting the wets suit on and jumping in to the lake. The lake is about 20 km outside of Axen Provence where the athletes will do a pointto-oint bike transition and then run around Axen Provence. And let’s take a look at the Roka race weather today here in Axen Province. Here it is. 54° Fahrenheit or 12° C outside. Clear skies at the moment. Absolutely beautiful morning. We’ve got 1 kilometer an hour wind out of the northnortheast. Nothing to really talk about there. The UV index very very low, but the humidity sitting around about 70%. So, uh, you know, outside of the cooler conditions, I think the humidity is going to make it feel a little bit warmer. Yeah. And of course, as the day goes on, that uh humidity will come up for the athletes. Uh but beautiful conditions down there now. Barely any wind uh set for a really great day of racing for these athletes. Hello, ladies and gentlemen. I am Greg Welch, joined by three-time Iron Man World Champion Minda Carfrey here in studio in what promises to be an incredible Iron Man 70.3 today here in the south uh of France. We know what province is all about. It’s absolutely gorgeous. Trained down there for a number of years. Uh beautiful and uh it’s got, you know, technical roads. There’s going to be some nice short sharp, you know, punchy little climbs. Uh nice little cornering out there. And then the run course is pretty flat down through town. But if it does warm up, it that’s going to be the only challenge. Absolutely. And a lot of the athletes comparing this course to Iron Man Nice and this is a great little um test early season for them to do um a hard bike course, flat run, but of course this run course so many turns. So, that’s one difference uh the athletes will have to uh contend with on race day today. All right, beautiful little segue. Let’s go over and take a look at our course maps right now. Let’s go over and have a look at our swim right here in Axen Province. Yes, it’s a 1.9 km rectangular swim. It is located at Lac de Per 20 km, that’s 12.5 miles from Axen Province. And the 90 km bike course as soon as they get out of the water here, it is a pointto-point course. 90 kilometers and the course boasts magnificent scenery throughout Province and a a technical uh type of race. It’s going to be here for the 90 kilometers over the beautiful roads in Monsan Victto. So pointtooint all the way back into town of Axom Province where they’ll head out onto that 21 kilometer threeloop run. Absolutely. in that uh 21.1 km threeloop run course takes the athletes through the heart of Axon Provence through the city’s parks and around Lar Ro fountain before finishing on Core Maoom. Yeah. Right there. So, three lovely laps there and you know some somewhat of a chance for the athletes to see their competition out here today and that’s something that you know on the women’s side of things. Lisa Purder and maybe M Marel Pierre and uh you know Lena Mesner and Marta Sanchez from Spain will be you know challenging out there for the women and on the men’s side Christian Blumenfeld Pier Le and also the IMA world champion from Kona Gustaf Eden not to mention uh a few more there Kaspers and you know William Hir there’s a whole host of great athletes out there but we are set for for a start here coming up in the next 20 minutes or so and as the athletes are now just uh going through their final preparations here. Looking like they’re um getting into it and having a good time. Absolutely. Yeah. Vibes are high down there right now the moments before the race gun goes off. Uh these athletes making their final preparations, activations, getting the body ready to go. Uh lots of exciting racing coming up. Um yeah, I don’t know who to pick. Uh we’ll soon see. We’ll soon see great fields in both men’s and women’s races. You know, and we know the thing about challenging yourself is you’re always looking for what’s next. [Music] of everybody. I’m going to be angel [Applause] [Music] united can’t control my feet in the street. Come on everybody and move your feet. I don’t stop. Don’t stop the beat. I can’t stop. and stop the beat. I won’t stop. Won’t stop the beat. [Music] [Music] [Music] We’re not here to sell you on this life. You already chose it. No shortcuts, no hype, just work. Same as you. Built to outlast, endure. 40 years in and we’re just getting warmed up. Welcome to the Ohana. Both men’s and women’s races here in Axen Proancece are very very stacked today on the men’s side. Got our returning champion Mirinda and Ruben Zup from u from Germany. So it uh it’s going to be a very difficult uh you know backup for him with you know the likes of Christian Blumenfield and Eden and Stone is in there as well. Ya Shamberg another German in the race. It’s going to be a great day and Pleor the local French man that stands a very good chance at the victory today. Yeah, Pierre Lor very interested to see what runs split he can put down here in Axon Proce another name to think about Cameron Maine uh with second just in Venice Jo Solo uh recently so uh coming off a great result there and looking for a good one here we also have Leon Chioier I mean this this field is as always uh we expect this now at the I’m in Pro Series races very very stacked and then going over to the women’s side Lena Mesnner um probably the athlete Um, most people are picking, but you know, we got Nikki Bartlett, uh, Lisa Pertier, Marta Sanchez, Margelene Pierre, uh, the local, um, home girl. Um, grew up just outside of Axon Provence. Yeah, Meline. And uh yes, she’d actually grew up in Reunion Island, a French island, and spent a lot of her childhood in Axom Province. And now she makes a home down in Nice, where our Iron Man World Championship is as well, splitting that with the Iron Man Kona, obviously. And uh next year, all culminating again back in Kona. So, it’s great to hear that that will all come together. But right now we’re focused on Iron Man 70.3 ax and proven $1.7 million in prize money over the over the races. This year we got 18 races over 17 different locations there. Nine countries $1.7 million. Every second matters when they’re going for these bonus uh bonus points and all the money at the end of the season. And of course athletes not only vying for end of season um points and money. There is a a prize purse on today’s 50,000 for the total prize points a purse. The male winner will go home with 7500. The female winner will go also home with 7500. And there are three pro um slots for Mabella and three for the men, three for the women. So, and 50 for the age groupers as well. So, um athletes racing for a lot of uh different things today here in Axen Province. Yes, lots on offer, that’s for sure. We got a couple of thousand athletes lining up today in what promises to be a beautiful day out here. Clear skies right now. Temperatures are going to warm up to around about 24° C around about uh 75 76 on the Fahrenheit scale. The humidity is up at the moment, 69 70%, low winds at this point of time. You can just see a little bit of chop. There’s Casper Storis from Norway coming off the uh short course, you know, the Olympic distance athlete that he was last year. He started you know concentrating on the longer distance doing quite well at the 70.3 level and you know when you got someone like Christian Blumenfeld and Gustaf Eden also from your country that it’s a lot to live up to but Casper doing very well. Yeah, Casper, Christian and Gustaf all raced in IM Texas not too long ago. So yeah, looking at the Pro Series standings for the men here, Ben Hamilton sitting up in the top position. You can see the Cameron Worth sitting in second, Rudy Vonberg and racing there highlighted today, Jonas Shamberg, Jay Bert Whistle and Christian Bloomfeld. Yeah, racing into today and also Leon Chavalier. So those three athletes looking to move up the standings after the race here today. Also, Casper Stone is in the race too on the women’s side of things right now. Annie Reichman from Germany is leading the series, but we’ve got Marta Sanchez who’s the highest ranked racing here today. Hey, Chloe Lane sitting in second. My stage Neielson from Denmark, Cat Matthews having that incredible Iron Man Texas and Paula Finlay sitting right there in equal fourth place. And just outside the top 10 that are racing today, Lisa Perier, Lara Jensen and Charlene Clell looking to break up into that top 10 as well. So, a lot of movement still to happen after today’s race. Beautiful swim located 20 kilometers from the finish line. Today, we are here in Axen Province. It’s a beautiful morning. We’re just about to get set for the race start coming up in around about 15 minutes from now. The athletes are going through their last minute warm-ups here. Very, very nervous down there and the tension is written all over their faces. We can see that a few thousand athletes are just about set to get underway in the opening leg. 1.9 kilometers of swimming. meet. [Music] Yes, that’s perfect. [Music] There’s no limit to how far a dream can take you. Start in your own adventure now. Katar Airways. You know, and we know the thing about challenging yourself is you’re always looking for what’s next. [Music] [Music] [Music] 50 spots on offer for our age group athletes to the Iron Man 70.3 World Championship in Marba, Spain. Coming up later this year, we’ve got a great athlete field in our pro men’s and pro women’s coming up in less than 15 minutes from now. Athlete introductions will be coming up very, very soon. Minda, we’re talking a little bit about the winner from last year’s race on the men’s side representing Germany, Ruben Zupun. He’s got a lot of athletes he’s going to have to look out for today, especially on the swimming side of things with Casper Sters. You got Pier Le core that’s going to be in there, you know, on our local side of things as well as Jonas Shamberg, one of his uh compatriots there. So, Reuben got his work cut out today. Yeah, absolutely. We’ve got some great uh swimmers that will be lining up, not to mention William Hirs, um Andrea Salosber, we have Casper Steppnak, we have Pierre Lour, uh Casper Thorns, uh Samuel Dickinson. So, yeah, a lot of really fast swimmers. this this swim will get out hot, but again, I think it’ll still be a pretty big pack of men coming in onto the bike. Cameron Main’s going to be in there as well. Had a great race few weeks ago in second place there. Dennis Chevro is always a great race throughout France and he’s going to be up there as well here today. So, France is very well represented today with Anthony Costas. He’s going to be right in the mix with Pier Core as well. And as we anticipate the athlete introduction on the women’s side of things, you got to look at Martha Sanchez always swimming very, very well. Lena Meer, a great swimmer in her own right. Absolutely. Lena Meis and you looked at athletes like uh Louisa Pratt, uh Julie Al. Oh, here we go. Here. So, wearing men’s number one today. Let’s welcome on in here Ruben [Music] [Applause] Zupun M2. to the man. That’s Christian Blumenfeld from Norway. He’s coming off his win from Iron Man Texas. Also the Olympic champion from 2020 wearing M3 today. Gustaf Eden also from Norway. The Iron Man world champion. Gustaf looking to find the form from a few years ago. Number four, that’s a Leon Shioalier from France. He was ninth in Iman Texas. Is looking for a few more points here today in Axon Province. fourth place in the Iron Man World Championship as well wearing M6 today representing Norway great uh Olympic distance background and also in the 70.3 right now Casper Storms and M9 that’s a Pierre Laour we’ll look for him on the run course but also throughout the swimming bike as well he was six and I’m in 70.3 Solo and wearing M10 the Deutsch athlete here from Germany this is Paul Houston, one of the good swimmers as well. So look out for Poor in the early happenings. And M11 with a kiss to the crowd. That’s Casper Steiaak from Poland. He was 10th in Texas. M12 coming through is Vheim Hirs, which is another one of our good swimmers here today from Germany. So Germany’s going to be very well represented with the with the great swimmers, but you know that the Germans just love to power that bike as well. Absolutely. And we’ll wait and have the women’s come out shortly, but uh we’re just chatting about the women’s uh the swimmers in the women’s field a moment ago and we’ll wait for those uh women to come up on screen. They’ll be called out momentarily. But uh yeah, Julia Molo, uh Louisa Pratt, we have Marta Sanchez, uh Lena Meisner, probably the cream of the crop on the swim, but I think yeah, she’ll have some some company. Also, Lisa Pertier. Uh look for those women to be out front early on this swim. Ladies that are returning to the race from last year, Julie Emolo there, Mirinda, she was in third place last year. She’s got to have a a great race today, but she’s going to have to face Lisa Pera. I do believe from Austria is going to be the biggest threat out there and Marta Sanchez as well. Margeline Pierre from France is going to stand a very good chance at the podium today as is Julie Imolo. So that’s it. The scene is set for our men’s race start here coming up in about 10 minutes from now. Blumenfeld, you’d have to say he’s going to be one of the favorites out there today as as well as Gustaf Eden. I’d love to see, you know, Gustav come back to the the form that he had in, you know, 2023 there when, you know, he had a great race in Kona and just, you know, after that things went a little bit ary, but and we did see um glimpses of that in I man Texas. He was aggressive on the bike with Christian early on and and had that flat tire which sort of uh sort of flattened his race a little bit. Uh but yeah, just I think seeing glimpses and then of course third in Oceanside earlier this year. So, I feel like he’s starting to find some form again, and I feel like this will just be another another uh great um step forward for him. On the women’s side, we have F1. That’s Marta Sanchez from Spain. She was second in IM South Africa earlier this year. Marta being a good swimmer as we were talking about just a moment ago. So here we are Pierre. They just coming through wearing F3 here representing France. Uh Lisa Pertia. She’s F F2 from Austria. She was third in Iron Man Texas. Here’s Nikki Bartlet just coming through right now there wearing F4 today and wearing F8. Next out is Raina Lizzy Raina from Great Britain there. So she’s another one on the rise. And bib number nine, Charlene Clevel stepping out there now from France. She was seventh at Man South Africa early first race of the year, second race of the year. And that’s F10. That’s Julie Emilow from France. She was third in Axen Province here last year. Yeah, she said earlier in the week that she’s looking forward to a good swim, but even stronger on the bike ride. So, next athlete coming out, we can welcome from Sweden there, F11, Sir Fence. And F-13, that’s Leah Ricaboni from France. She was six at 70.3 Peru. F14, Laura Jansen from Germany just making her way out here being introduced to the crowd here today as we are now get ready the scene set for our start of the race here in the Axen Province Iron Man 70.3. We’re just uh around about 7 and 1/2 minutes away from our race start. 1.9 kilometers the swim. It’s in a rectangular shape here. Elongated rectangle. Then they’ll make their way out on to the bike ride. 90 kilometers over a one lap pointto-oint race course and they’ll be going through some of the most beautiful parts of Province down there just outside of Axen Province before hitting that threelap run course out there today. 21 km and some great climbing on this course Greg from 67 to 71k there’s an average gradient of 5% so a great little climb out there. That’s something the athletes I think look forward to are courses that have challenge like that. Um where it sort of gets you out of the saddle and um you’re able to attack a little bit differently. You’re not just um sitting in the time throw bars and um cranking away all day. You get to and and late in the bike course. Um that to me spells a time where maybe an opportunity for an athlete to um attack um on the bike or or try and break away. And there was talk uh you know with a couple of the athletes that we you know heard from during the week. I think that is a a tactic that the the Norwegians are especially talking about because they know that Pier Le core is out there and can run like a 66 67 half marathon any day of the week. So, they know they got a little bit of work to do and Pier Le was saying that, you know, he really needs to have the bike ride um to match those guys, but he said he’s going to get out there and do his own pace for sure. Another athlete uh they may be thinking about is Cameron Mine. Um estimated to run around a 110 off the bike. I mean, Christian should run a little bit quicker than that, but uh yeah, that’s a fast and dangerous runner in in Cameron Maine as well. So, uh, yeah, some very fast runners and I think, uh, Christian would prefer to just do away with them on the bike and and have the the roads to himself. Yeah, that is the talk. He he did mention having a a strong bike today and and Gustaf as well. So, you can expect that the Norwegian train is going to be up there and really forcing the pace of the early part of the bike ride, but I think they’ll have a little bit of work to do. They won’t be in the lead of the race out of the swim. I don’t believe Christian Blumenfeld and Gustaf Eden maybe Casper Storas but um you know Shawnberg he was he’s always a great swimmer he comes from that short course background and world championship medalist in the relay and you know he’s just going to get out there and have a good swim. William Hirsh he’ll get out there and have a great swim as well. So look for you know at least three of the top Germans in the in that group maybe Paul Schustra as well. So it’s going to be off to a good start. You can see that a sea of Iron Man caps now right down at the the shores edge. Just getting ready for their start here. Just over 4 minutes away from our men’s pros and then 50 spots up for grabs for the age groupers in Marba at the end of the year. Iron Man 70.3 World Championships going to Spain for the very first time. Yeah, that’s going to be a wonderful uh world championship event this year in Spain. uh the athletes really looking forward to a new venue for a world championship uh event, but those spots on the line. I think there are a number of men that already do have their slots, so that slot may roll a little bit or those three slots in the men’s side, but I know there are a few of those pro males that would like to snatch that up and that’s sort of the number one goal for today. There are quite a few athletes that have qualified already and there’s 11 out there racing today in the men’s side of things. So, I know that Casper Storms was talking about getting one of those spots. So, if it does roll down a little bit, but if he wins the race, well, that’s almost a guarantee, right? Top three is a guarantee. Definitely. Yeah. Guarantee with Yeah, but a lot of the athletes have already qualified. Blumenfeld’s already qualified. I can see uh you know, there’s a whole bunch racing today. Yeah. Mart Sanchez on on screen here. It looks like a lot of the the athletes are not um not being allowed to warm up in the water. Typically the pros will opt to, you know, have a swim warm-up. It doesn’t look like that was an option today. And, you know, some races you’re allowed to get in for a swim warm-up, others you’re not. This race, um, the athletes, um, have to do a dry land. So, you’ll see them, you saw them earlier, doing swim cords and, um, warming muscles up, activations, um, and now they’re allowed to to get in the water. It’s usually a safety issue. Uh, don’t want to let the athletes get in before um, it’s time to go. And we are moments away. Yeah. some bodies of water. I know that the Indian well 70.3 don’t allow the warm up either because of the you know the the conditions there in Lake Kia. So um you know all the wets suits have to be tested and and make sure that they’re hitting all the rules and rigs out there. It’s a state park. So the Iron Man 70.3 Axen Provence is just moments away. We’ve got our men’s pros in the water right now. They’ll be racing for a share of $50,000 today. $25,000 going over to the men’s category. 25,000 over to the women’s category. Even prize money split down the middle. Three spots available for their men for Marba in the World Championships. Three spots for available for our women’s pros out there today. And as well, as we’ve just said, 50 spots available for our age group. Is a beautiful morning and we’re just about set to get underway. The wind is just down at 1 to 2 kilometers an hour out of the east northeast. So, um, great conditions to get started today. Absolutely. And as we look at our athletes, there’s around 67 men on the start line here today. So, a pretty solid men’s uh start list. The women are about 23 strong. So, 90 professional athletes racing here today in Axom Provence. Uh we as we wait for the final moments for that gun to go off. Uh these final moments always a little nerve-wracking for the athletes and and you’re seeing the race uh refs getting those athletes that are out to the side in. they’ll need to start between those two Roker boys. Um, of course, they have to keep the course fair for everyone. So, that is the starting point. Another one of the French athletes that we didn’t mention was uh Sir Vino who’s been uh, you know, top five at the IMAN World Championship before as well, representing France today. Uh, he’s a veteran of the sport and very very well-liked. We mentioned De Dennis Shavarell and they’ll be racing. So, the two veterans from France going to be right up there. But look out for Pier Le Core. He’s my favorite French man today. He’s uh coming off a incredible Olympic distance racing career and you know raced at Olympic Games and World Championships and he’s got definitely the talent to get the job done today. He’s going to have uh a great tussle with the Norwegian train today. That would be Casper Sters and also Christian Blumenfeld the Olympic champion from 2020 and lineman uh world champion as well. and Gustaf Eden. Gustaf making his way back to really good form. And I think that today is going to be a great day. We are now looking forward to seeing our men’s pro race get underway in less than a minute. Sorry. Scene is set for a quick start today. Beautiful conditions right here as you would imagine. What’s it going to be today, Marinda? 22 1/2, 21, somewhere around there. We’ve been having great swim times this year already as we get underway here in Axen Province. We are here at the Iron Man 70.3 and we are underway. Athletes are madly trying to find some space for themselves. Uh it always looks like a bit of a washing machine at the start of that race and you just want to avoid getting a foot to the face or a a fist to the face. Uh but we’ll see as they get a few hundred yards in things will start to spread out a little bit and uh athletes will sort of uh form alliances find uh their fast friends and uh we will see some hopefully be able to pick out um some of the athletes. We do have some athletes in colored caps that we will be able to pick out as we go. Well, two yellow caps there. You can see that Matia Czecharelli from Italy and also Sam Dickinson from Great Britain are right up there in the early part right here. We can see right swimming along there in the pearly pink cap as well. Pier Le Cor. So no surprises there to see Pierre right up there in in fourth place at the moment. He is wearing that pink cap getting himself way out of the water there. Mirinda and navigating his way just really nicely right now. Yeah, Pierre Lor sitting pretty I like to say that’s uh third third uh third wheel or third body um in the swim. Uh these are the swim color caps we have. We have Christian Blumenfelt in green. Gustaf Eden in purple. Casper Stors in orange. Pier Lur as we were just saying in pink. Katper Steepniaak is in the green today. Villain Hersh is in the orange. There we can see that Chakarelli, he’s right in there with the the red orangey cap there. Yona Shamberg and also Sam Dickinson wearing the other yellow cap there. So the the great British athlete off to a really good start. Don’t forget about William Hirs. Also Paul Shist is a great swimmer from Germany as well. But we’re off to a great start here. You can see that the the board paddler, the uh the swim uh the swim team over there where the volunteer is having a hard time keeping up with the pace there, even though he’s on that board out there. So, we’ve got our swim safety all the way out there. You can see just going past that first buoy at the moment. We’ve got an elongated rectangular course. So, very long out to the far end, 850 mters, and then 100 meters across and then 850 back end. and then they’ll get out of the 1.9 km swim and head off onto that bike ride. We’re located about 20 kilometers from town out here in the the LA right now, but uh a very nice start. You can already see a couple of professional men athletes off the back at this uh early part. Yeah, absolutely. It’s uh not uncommon for uh some of the professional men to get shelled or um fall off the back of the pack, but uh looking out to the lead there in that yellow cap, it’s most likely Sam Dickinson. Um he is one of the fastest swimmers in the field today. Um probably him alongside I think is that an orange cap uh the other one? Hard to see uh with that glare. Yeah, with the sun and you can also see a little bit of steam coming off the uh the lake at the moment. So you can see the wets suits are worn so the temperatures are under 20° at the moment. Uh but it is warmer outside. So a little bit of steam coming off the lake right now. Great swimming here. We got a good group of uh five to six athletes just swimming very strongly. Love the way that they’re getting up and out of the water. They are swimming into direct sunlight. Minda, explain how hard that is. Yeah, when it’s uh early in the morning, the sun rises up, it’s just hard to see as you uh lift your head up. I mean, I think it just makes a lot of glare. So, gole choice becomes really important that morning. And obviously these athletes are professionals. They will have come come down here check checked out the swim at that this time and or even you know in transition they have their goggle options. I sometimes would go down to the swim start with two different options and and and pick which one uh made the most sense. Um but uh yeah we have a pretty big group uh so far. It’s kind of strung out but uh seems like very intact and I would imagine all of our favorites are in that u main pack um right now. But we have both yellow caps. Uh, and I believe Sam Dickinson and Matia Churelli Churelli Czecharelli. I I’ll get that right by the end of today. Uh, the orange cap is Casper Storer and Will Hirs. So, uh, we have a orange cap, I believe, up front. That would probably be Willie Hirs. And then a violet cap as well up front. Yona Shroberg, most likely. Shberg. Yeah, you can see the length of Shawnberg’s swim stroke right now. Getting ready for our women’s start as well. We’re very, very close to that. So, we will cut back as soon as we get the opportunity there. But Shawnberg leads the race at the moment. We can see that Sam Dickinson is right up there as well. So, the women’s are underway. Minda, here we got a great uh field of 23 of our top professional women around the world here being led there today by Marta Sanchez. Yeah, Marta Sanchez typically takes it out. Um, Lena Mesnner as well be will be taking it out very quickly. Uh, will be able to pick out a couple of these, but uh, Pearly Pink coming out really strong. That’s either Julia Melo or Louisa Pratt uh, in the pink there. And there are two distinctive packs for Welshi. Emlo is a great swimmer. She said that she needs to get out there and have a great swim and bike ride today to have a chance in this race. She was third place in this race this time last year. So today a very important race for her. You can see that Lena Meisner is right hot on the heels and Lizzy Raina as well sitting back there in sixth spot. So right up there as well, Lisa Pter and Margeline Jolly H sorry Margeline Pierre is just sitting back there in the purple cap as well. So off to a great start today with our ladies there. Marta Sanchez sitting right in there as well. But it’s Immolo, the local French lady that’s off to a great start. Yeah. And as you see on the side there, we can see the cap colors, but uh Io uh swimming very well. We have a yellow cap of Lena Mesna, I believe, just taking the lead now. Lizzie Rainer is also in yellow. We have uh Marta Sanchez in green. And one of the green caps uh sort of took the left. I believe that’s most likely Marta in green that we’re on screen right now. Again, she is one of the fastest swimmers led out by a good margin in Iron Man South Africa earlier this year. Emily Mier from France is also wearing a green cap and she was third place in this race last year. So look for her to be up there today too. Um Emily, so just getting back to our leaders right now that Lena Mesner just a beautiful calculated start. Just didn’t get out and rush too much at the start like Io. She just uh waited a time and then she just got straight into it. And that’s Margelain on screen right now. Um the local French girl. She was uh fourth in in Nice last year. Incredible uh race for her from racing in her hometown. Uh knows those course that course like the back of her hand. And same here. She uh uh you know racing at home. I think she does her best. So she is just falling off the back of this group. But the pace is on she. It really is. And I I think that you know Margelain coming from this area is spending a lot of time here in her childhood knows these roads very well. She lives in Nice right now in in the Kot deser but these are the maritime Alps up in this region. So she knows this place like the back of her hand. So it’s got to be a leg up on the competition in that respect. And going over to our men’s race right now. You can see that Shamberg is really opening it up at this point of time here. And as he gets uh you know through the early part of it just about to head out to that halfway marker would say around about 10 and a half to 11 minutes we’ll see the athletes making their first right hand turn. They’ll only make two right hand turns today before heading back down the course with a not a really uh a tail current but uh without the sun in their face. Yeah. Always much nicer when you make that turn and and head back into into transition. But I think we’re actually still on the women’s race here. This is uh Lena Mesnner um in the yellow cap and we have most likely Marta Sanchez in green on her feet. So um yeah, following the women’s race along there, but we will uh get as much information on both races as we can um as we pick out these cap colors. Uh, a lot of racing yet to come and a big swim. Big swim happening right now. 1.9 kilometers. The men are approaching the the halfway point. The women are just into it about 300 m at the moment, but the swim pace is on. [Applause] [Music] Hey, we’re not here to sell you on this life. You already chose it. No shortcuts, no hype, just work. Same as you. Built to outlast, endure. 40 years in and we’re just getting warmed up. Welcome to the Ohana. You know, and we know the thing about challenging yourself is you’re always looking for what’s next. [Music] I’m in 70.3. Three acts on provenance is brought to you by Roker. Find faster with Roker and by Trot. Better training results in less time with fewer injuries. And the men right now are approaching half away on this swim course. The women around 6 minutes in. And we are looking at the leaders here. We have Julia Molo in the lead. We have also Marta Sanchez sitting right on her feet and in the violet cap that is Lisa Pertier as well. We believe Julie Amolo is in there too. Walsh she I am Julie Yamolo and we are here in Exon Proance for the Iroman 70.3 part of the pro series. Yes, I think that the the first race of the season for me were not so good and um I try to understand what I did wrong and what I can change for the next race and um yeah, I think I can do something much better here because I know the course. Um of course the swimming is a good point for me. So I hope to stay in the front pack like I did last year maybe in Mayora with Linda Mesner which is a strong swimmer also. And then I really know the bike was very well and um I know the heels, the downhills and uh last year I managed to escape and uh to be first in T1 with in T2 sorry with um a small gap and yeah tomorrow we will have more much more strong bikers but I hope to keep with those guys those girls. Yeah. Well, things are unfolding just fine for Julie because she’s right up there in the lead group here at the moment in our women’s pro race of the Iron Man 70.3 Axen Proce. We’re off to a great start at this point in time and we can tell you that Julie having a good swim. Mara Lampierre is trying to hang in there at the moment with Lisa Pura. Lisa is having a good swim just sitting in third place. Marta Sanchez just trying to stretch it out a little bit on Lisa at this point of time. So the pace is being set right now, Minda, by Lena Mesner. Now the German really swims well. She really wants to stretch it out here today because you got a couple of really good, solid cyclists right in this group. Absolutely. I think uh that’s Lizzy Raina in the back there. Looked like we had Lena Mesna in there. Uh yeah, basically all our players are are right up there. Margelane Pierre just sort of slipping back a little bit in the violet cap. Um, but that’s Marta Sanchez right there in violet and in the lead we have Lena Micler. Yeah, there’s Marta right there in the green there. Yeah, Lena Mner in from Germany in the fluuro yellow cap there and really strange to see Majel Pierre just you know sitting out on the side but uh it’s wherever you feel comfortable right if you don’t feel comfortable sitting on the bubbles and but you do save a little bit of energy sitting on the bubbles there but uh it’s a little bit more difficult. Absolutely. apps, you want to ideally sit right on somebody’s hip, but that sort of slows them down. So, if you want to keep the pace high, uh you’ll see the leaders really um narrow out and single file. Um in the men’s race, I believe that’s what we’re looking at right now um from overhead. Um a little bit different. Uh you see they’re all bunched up. there’s a there’s a lot more bodies um in there sort of but still you know in at the front we have Yonas Schroberg leading and it’s single file for a couple of athletes right behind him. Yeah, the overhead shot that we got was uh a big single uh foul line and you could uh tell that um you know you could just about throw a blanket over the field uh at the at the for the most part and most of the uh favorites are going to be right up there in that early group which is bad news for the early swimmers but as you can tell uh look at it. It’s just a big bunch there at the moment and really hanging in there well. It is stretching out at the back end of it, but the the front part of it, this is going to be some sort of bike ride. The the first part is where always the pace is going to be on. But we did mention that in between that 60 and 70 kilometer part, that’s where the hill comes. That’s you got a more than a 5% climb there. It’s going to be the part which you know makes or breaks the field here, I would imagine, today. But pace is being set right now by our athletes here right up in the front and they’re coming up to the 16th minute right now. And you can tell that you know Sam Dickinson off to a good start today. Yeah, Sam Dickinson, I misspoke earlier. Uh believe that’s Sam Dickinson in the yellow cap leading. He is uh on paper the fastest swimmer and uh certainly showing the way here today as well. So uh very fast swimming. Uh we can see on the left there that is the cap colors that we we gave some of our swim notables and our our favorites uh before the race. And we can pick. You can see one athlete there. A couple of athletes lost lost the cap, which happens uh sometimes when uh there’s a mad rush at the beginning of that swim. Yeah, the leader there just rolled over and did two or three strokes of backstroke and said, “Hey, come on through and uh do a little bit of work here. I’m not going to be responsible for all of the pace setting.” So, obviously, you know, he’s thinking about the bike ride already, not being able to get rid of those other swimmers there. So, this is a big surprise up front there. We’ve got a good group of about 15 athletes here right in the lead and only about 5 m back. Another five or six athletes there. So 21 athletes all in the space of around about 30 seconds right now which will be a little bit uh tough getting out of transition uh you know in a in in the format where you have to you know keep quite a bit of distance to the rest of the athletes on the bike with a rush of about uh you know 20 to 25 athletes getting out of the swim together and getting onto the bike today is going to be very important for the athletes is to understand what the rules are and how to go about doing passes and uh you know staying safe within that group and we can tell you that uh you know Yonas Shamberg the tall Germans is having a great swim today. You got Vilheim Hirs and you got Sam Dickinson right up there and don’t be at all surprised that Gustaf Eden is going to be right in there as well. And as you can see at the moment there’s Pierre Leo Pier Leo is sitting in there in around about third to fourth spot at the moment. and look out for the Frenchman. He really wants to not lose that much time today on the bike ride to someone like Christian Blumenfeld or Gustaf Eden who are great runners in their own right but Pier Le is one of the the best runners you know in the sport at the moment here especially in 70.3 and you know he’s right up there with the likes of you know Lionel Sanders from what Lionel did last weekend was so impressive and you know going at this point of the season it looks like Pierre is going to be picking up speed and going to be one of the hard ones to I would say come to the end of the year at the 70.3 World Championships in Mar. Absolutely. Yeah, he he’ll be one to watch for sure. And Welshy, they’re moments away. Uh I would say maybe 4 minutes out. Uh usually around a 2230 swim. Uh might be a little hotter now that this is a a Pro Series race and a lot more big hitters in the field. um when the athletes get out in a pack of 20 men or or 15 men, what are they what’s the best tactic as they come through transition? The best tactic is just to run your race and uh in transition, you know, these athletes practice their transition, especially getting a wet suit off. Getting a wet suit off is a it’s an art in itself. You’ll probably see in the morning like athletes will put something, you know, like a lubricant, anything from Vaseline to cooking spray. And this just releases, you know, the wet suit from the skin a little bit better. You don’t want to put it uh, you know, on your hands. You want to make sure that you put it on with a a plastic bag over your hand and then you can uh, you know, dispose of the plastic bag. But if you use the cooking spray, you just make sure you don’t get it on your fingers because if it gets all over your goggles, that’s all over. The goggles will fall off. they’ll fog up. They’ll be greasy. But that’s the way to get it done. But you can see that the athletes here. Look, there’s going to be over 20 athletes that are going to come into transition area very very u you know soon and very close to one another. So get your space, get out onto the bike, get that helmet on before you release that bike from the uh from the racks. That’s the rule. Cannot jump onto your bike until you get over the uh the mount line there. But then it’s going to be important for these reasons. The first reason is you got to establish your own pace. And then the second reason is that you have to be legal. And if you’re going to, you know, go hard, everybody’s going to go hard in the first 20 kilometers of this race, but some people will probably overdo it and some of the others will have to do it because they, you know, find themselves in a position where it’s precarious and there’s going to be rules and ruling fractions. Yeah. Yeah, and that’s where the the racing really comes in when there’s 20 plus men coming out of transition together. Um, obviously you have to stay legal and um, you know, we have race ranger in effect here today, I believe. But, uh, you’ve got to make decisions. Um, do I go with them? Someone’s inevitably going to go out really hot and you have to make a decision. Do I go well above my watts right now? And I think 99% of the athletes will say, “Okay, well, this race is short enough where um this is a critical point um where I don’t want to lose contact um and I and I, you know, want to stay intact in contact with uh this group. So, uh, yeah, some athletes just won’t be able to go, um, go with the pace, but I feel like generally you see you’ll see a number of these athletes, um, stick together through the majority of this bike course. And then this course in particular, um, unique in that there are some really great climbs that can break it up. Around a minute to swim here at the Iron Man 70.3 Axen Province. It is in beautiful southwestern France. It is the Maritime Alps region in beautiful province. And I tell you what, Miranda, we’ve been um served up a wonderful day so far here this morning. It was 12° earlier Celsius or around about uh you know 55 52° F. A little bit on the cooler side, but it’s certainly heated up right now with just about 20 seconds to swim. You can see that a large group of men in our men’s pro races coming into the transition area momentarily. It’ll be a mad sprint for the bikes and it will be absolute mayhem in the Ruby transition here coming up in a few seconds time, but a great opening swim. The field is just about set with most of our favorites right up there. Right up there. And they’re just about to hit dry land. Generally, you’ll swim until your hands hit the ground and then you start running. That’s the most efficient way to exit a swim. Uh, Fast and Furious out of transition. Now the athletes getting their caps off as they’re running and you’ll see them undo those wets suits and pull them down to their hips. Wii leading the swim was bringing there just coming in from France and then Yiannis Shamberg he did all the leading on the way in. Sam Dickinson in third place. There’s Pier core going up into fourth place. Sters as we thought in fifth place. Cameron maine there’s freelance in there and Vain is in there as well from France. Lebo is there. Chetcharelli is in there from Italy. There’s Dupri. Salburg is right up there from Switzerland and the Polish athlete Kath Steeppniak. There is Plumemer going through in Zacharas. Christian Blumenfeld is now in 16th position just 13 seconds down. And as we look at the Wahoo Element rival swim time, 2232 from Matio Bringer. Uh that is around the same time as last year. So similar swim time to what we saw here last year. A long transition. These athletes are on the pink carpet. It looks uh like pink. It’s pink from uh that view anyway. Might be red. Uh but yeah, we have a long stream of men now just coming out of the water and making their way into the Ruby T1. Vheim Hers, she was in there as well from Germany just 15 seconds down. So 20 athletes all within 16 seconds with a very very long run up into transition. Now mind, when you got a long run like this, you can see the athletes now putting on the the rest of their suits. Some of the athletes have decided to swim with their suit already up, but this here is like a little bit, you know, a little bit of doubtfulness. You know, I want my shoulders to be free. Yeah. So, a lot of athletes, well, it’s kind of personal preference. You’ll see some athletes uh wear that suit down underneath the wet suit. Other athletes will have it up and over their shoulders. And with this long long, it generally it’s a little bit restrictive. So, um, when you’re swimming, um, and and it’s restrictive like that, it’s just a little bit uncomfortable, uh, with a super long run like this. And as you see, transition blowing up with all of the men coming through now, grabbing their bags off the rack, putting those helmets on, and off they go to the run. A lot of them with calf sleeves on cuz they would have been able to wear those underneath the wets suit. Yeah, good idea there. making sure that everything’s uh done up before they were out first onto the run while she got a bike. Sorry. Yep. So, Yiannis was uh you know leading the swim there from the very early part and then in the last part when Sam Dickinson you know just made his way across and said come on through. You need to do a little bit of work here but actually heading out of transition right now. Shamberg he gets back in the lead from Bringer and Sam Dickinson’s had a great transition. So, we’ll get to those transition times coming up in just a little minute from now. But Sam Dickinson from Great Britain leads Yannon Shamberg from Germany. Just one second. Separate our top two. Heading out onto the 90 km bike, one loop. Yeah. Onto the Zoot bike course. Uh very hilly. Um that’s an understatement. I think there’s some really great climbs on this course. And as I said, a five or six kilometer climb uh late in the bike that’s around 5% average. So, that one definitely will be a turning point. You see an athlete stopping to put the kit up. They had hadn’t done the zip up before getting on the bike. That’s of course a rule. He needed to make sure that was zipped before he makes his way onto the zoo bike course. Yeah, you’ll mention like hills. There’s Bradley Vice coming out of the water from uh South Africa. There’s rain just coming out in sixth. There’s Hernandez Cabrera from Spain also heading out in seventh. Christian Blumenfeld had a good transition in eighth place. and uh Zak House Puger and Vim Hersh. There’s Bringer. He lost nine positions in transition. Now you were talking about a hilly course. Well, let me let me remind you this is Province and we’re not too far away from one of the most famous climbs in all of France. We’re not talking about the Alps Alpes and uh you know climbs like we’re talking about Mont Vontu which is just outside of Carpentra which is not too far away from this region right here and uh training in the area years and years ago. We used to go up and ride Mont Fontu every so often and what a hard climb that was. All right, Dickinson leads Shawnberg. There’s Main Road in there. Ple core, the French favorite. There’s Stepheniaak making up a lot of lot of ground in transition. But getting back to our women’s race right now, Lena Mesner from Germany still leads Marta Sanchez from Spain. Absolutely. Lina Meisner making her way to the end of the swim as well here. Uh Mara Sanchez right on her feet. I believe Margelain Pierre has dropped off just a touch but we’ll be able to get a accurate split on her time as we get them out of the water and that should be in the next couple of minutes here. Women are 2233 into the swim right now. We have Lisa Pertier sitting in third and as we pan back we can see Julia Melo right there in fourth. So our top four women on screen right now and they’re all single file which tells me that that pace is pretty hot. Men’s swim time 2232 today for our leader. That was Matteo Bringer but it was Yona Shamberg who stood up first but Matteo was very very quick to get into the lead there. So, women starting in uh 5 minutes behind there. So, you know that they’re just uh any minute away from hopping out of the water there. But we can tell you that Lena Mesner, she’s not getting the the gap that she probably wanted. Marta Sanchez hanging in there very very nicely. Pera is in there from Austria as well. Look out for Lisa. She is a incredible cyclist in the Olympic distance. we, you know, spoke to her during the week and she was mentioning that, you know, she wasn’t able to quite reach her potential at the Olympic distance because it’s drafting now. Tell us about the drafting and as opposed to non-drafting. Absolutely. The uh ITU short course racing uh use a different bike. They use a road bike and there’s no um you know arrow bars on those bikes and they’re able to draft behind each other. So that’s a big savings. Uh so generally if you are a great swimmer and a great runner, you do still have to be able to bike very well, but um not as well as um if you are to ride the whole way or break the wind the whole way um by yourself as you do in Iron Man racing. We of course have a 12 m rule. So the athletes do need to be separated by around 12 m, not around, more than 12 m or more um to ride legally. So you’re actually having to pedal the whole way. So cycling behind somebody about a 25 to 30% uh energy savings. Yeah, absolutely. Uh which is massive u massive uh savings when you can you know sit behind somebody on the wheel but we are moments away from the athletes getting out and looking like a 24 and change. Uh last year Julie Alow swam a 2453 so it looks like it’s going to be right around that same time for her today as she is right in this pack. Great pacing by the German Lena Misner there just having a good swim today. Here we go with our women’s pro field just about to head out of the water of the iron man 70.3 Axen prom and we can tell you that right now in a great swim here today. Lena Meer leads from Germany. Marta Sanchez and Lisa Pureru from Austria with a 25 flat and a 254. Then we have Lizzy Raina. Pratt is in there from Italy as well as Zimolo at 2510. So, six athletes 10 seconds. As we look at the Wahoo Element rival swim time, Lena Meisner 25 flat for Lena. So, um again, very similar swim times to what we had last year. And the athletes now make their way on this long carpet run. You’ll see them take their swim cap off, get the wets suit down on their hips so it can easily slide off when they stop in uh transition. So when they get into transition, do they sit down or they stand up or is it personal preference or uh typically in a race like this it’ll be standing up. Uh I think maybe in an Iron Man you may may see them sit down, but typically, you know, they’ll they’ll whip that wet suit off uh super quick. Uh throw it in the bag, grab the bike helmet out and and maybe some nutrition. uh throw it in the back pocket and they’ll be they’ll be off. First six ladies making a huge impression on the swim course here today with just six athletes out of the water at the moment there. So we’ll know that a few of the athletes have been left behind. You know, such notables as Majelane Pierre uh just one of them, Nikki Bartlett, one of the favorites. She’s going to be back a little bit as well. So little bit of work to do in the early parts of the bike ride, but Meline is there she is right there. and you know a good swimmer but uh she’s a very strong biker for 25 years of age she knows this area very well so I wouldn’t be at all surprised by about halfway she start making inroads on the rest of the competition yeah she said she knows every nook and cranny on this bike course uh Emily Morier as well getting out with Margelane so that’ll be a great partnership Margelane around 120 sorry 36 back from the lead uh that’s within reach for Margeline that’s not a crazy big deficit Of course, she’d like to be as close as possible, but uh now we’re with the lead six women as they take those wets suits off. They’ve got to put them back in their transition bags and they will need to wear race numbers on this race, return that to the rack and then off they go onto the bike. Helmet must be strapped on and done up. The buckle has to be done up before the bike’s released from the rack there. So, here goes the bike and it is released now. You can see Lena Mner and Marta Sanchez, Lisa Purder, the first three out of the water. Lizzy Rainer in there from Great Britain and Pratt the Italian having a great swim so far as we can see Margeline Pierre running very very fast toward that bike trying to make up a little bit of that 136 deficit. Now the Ruby transition area, they say it is the fourth leg of triathon. The transition is very very important. Absolutely. Yeah, I think uh you know when you’re racing half distances and uh competitive races like this, you cannot waste a second. And of course, you know, every second does matter in the I’m pro series as well. So athletes are obviously of course vying for points here as well. I bet we’ll see a very quick transition time for Margelane. She’s in transition all by herself, so she has her uh space to to get what she needs to get done done. She doesn’t have anyone in her way. She’s also a very fast runner, so she would have made quick work of that transition uh zone. Again, trying to make up every second she can as she makes her way through transition and onto the zoot bike. Margelane sitting down trying to get the rest of that wet suit off there as the other athlete stands up and they’re happy to say goodbye to Lak Prolis and head off onto the bike right here 90 km hilly course as they make their way back in toward Axen Promce where they’ll be met with a 21 km run over a threelap course. It is uh well pretty flat Miranda, but uh you know with a couple of little inclines here and there, but it’s going to be a fast run today because we know that in the men’s and women’s fields, we’ve got some really good runners out there today. I’m I’m really interested in seeing, you know, the legs of someone like Gustaf Eden come back. Christian Blumenfeld and Pier Le, probably the three fastest runners in the men’s field today. As we look at Margela Pierre knowing these roads very, very well, she’s happy to have the swim behind her and her favorite leg coming up. So let’s go and take a look at the Zoot bike course map right now. 90 kilometers, one lap pointto-oint ride from T1 to T2 located in Axen Province. The C course is very hilly in succession up and down on these uh false flats as well. They do go over the cold desol from 67 to 71 kilometers right there. Average gradient of 5% magnificent scenery of province and with the technical roads of Monsant Victto before they head into Axen Province and then head out onto the run course. So you can see straight away Miranda it gets absolutely gorgeous here in province. Absolutely. Yeah, looks like a phenomenal bike course out there and we see our front few men. That’s Cameron Main on screen right now. He was of course third in Venice solo just a few weeks back. Um, and you’ll see race ranger in effect and you see that light turning blue and you see him sort of hit the brakes. If that light turns from blue to red, that means he is in uh the 12 m zone. So you kind of see it working perfectly here. It’s it’s orange now. So that’s uh that’s between 14 and 17. And so he’s in the clear zone. So let’s go and take a look at the Ruby transition times out there today. Transition one, top three fastest males, Cameron Main on screen. That was a beautiful little segue onto that 236 238 for Sam Dickinson and Yona Shamberg at 240. So, yes, a very long run up into uh, you know, transition there with about over 500 m and then to, you know, get everything right, get that wet suit off, get the helmet on, get the helmet buckled, release the bike from the rack, and then head out another 100 m or so before they could actually jump on their bike. When you look at this race ranger, you know, um, as well, just the women’s, um, go ahead then. Yeah, the Ruby transition one times for the women as well. Julia Molo at 249, Lizzy Rainer at 252, and Louisa Pratt at 257. So, yeah, long run. That’s a That’s a lot of time in transition. A lot of time in transition on bare feet, that’s for sure. So, getting back to the race right now, our men’s pros on the left screen, our women’s pros on the right hand side here. We got Marta Sanchez. They’re trying to make a move on the early leader that is Lena Mner. And then also up there having a good ride so far. We can tell you that our top three ladies are just really hammering right now. Just trying to get rid of the rest of the athletes here. Julie Imolo spoke during the week that she said she wants to have a very strong bike here today. So wouldn’t be at all surprised if you see Lisa Pera also out there. Mart Sanchez and Julie Imolo really putting in the big ones early. Yeah, absolutely. Putting down um as much power as possible, getting some separation from the women that they came out of the water with and they know Margeline Pierre is sitting back there as well. So, they will want to make quick work of those early miles and try not to let Margeline anywhere near them. We are in the opening miles of the Axen Provence bike course here and we have a lot of action coming right up. What do you want? Uh, you know what’s that uh really good non-alcoholic beer I keep hearing about? Do you have that really great non-alcoholic beer that I keep seeing? Do you have a non-alcoholic beer that actually actually tastes good? It’s athletic. You’re holding it. You mean athletic? You’re looking at it. I think you mean athletic. It’s athletic. Ask for it. [Music] [Music] Stop the beat and go everybody. [Applause] [Music] Don’t stop the beat. Can’t control my feet. People in the street. Come on everybody and move your feet. I don’t stop. Don’t stop the beat. I can’t stop. Can’t stop the beat. I won’t stop. [Music] You know and we know. The thing about challenging yourself is you’re always looking for what’s next. [Music] OMA man 70.3 Axen Proancece is brought to you by Zoot Sports, the original triathlon brand delivering comfort, speed, and performance since 1983. and by Athletic Brewing Brew without compromise. Well, there’s no compromise at the moment because the athletes are working their way toward the front of the group here in a hurry. They are showing and expressing signs of concern here. You know that you got the Olympic champion and Iron Man world champions in this group here, Minda. The action is on right from the start. Yeah, absolutely. And uh yeah, times like that are a little precare pre precarious because the athletes they need to pass when they’re passing within 25 seconds, but they also need to stay spaced accordingly. So uh we need to make sure uh we are making making those passes but making them cleanly and and we’re like at the back of this pack of 20 plus men uh and it’s just a long stream of athletes. We saw Christian Bloomfeld earlier u making a pass. Uh we that was Silvan Freelance from Switzerland just going through there as we now try and make our way toward the front there. We we can see that Bradley Vice as well from South Africa and just moving through the field here. 65 is Leon PGover as well from Austria. So the smaller framed athlete here really having to work hard in the first part to keep on the early pace cuz the pace is being set up front here by Dickinson. Shawnberg’s in their main pier core vans there Stephanie from Bringer and the big hitters up there Christian Blumenfeld and Casper Thorns really pushing the pace. Yeah, absolutely. We’ll be able to see as the camera rolls through the field here. We’ll see what number that’s M33 is. Looking at, you know, Matis Th as well from Belgium. Yeah, another one of our great Belgian athletes here just really getting caught up with the group here. So, leaving transition today. They got out in a hurry, but they really have put the hammer down because we had 20 swimmers all within around about 25 to 30 seconds. But look at that. We’ve got 12 athletes now in the space of 30 seconds. And the gaps are opening up. The gaps really are opening up. You can see that gap here. Uh this is number M44. Uh that’s Hernandez Vincente Hernandez from Spain. Uh that is a gap that most likely won’t come back. Uh just the the pace at the front is going to be so hot. So he’s uh lesseron athletes to you know to us obviously um coming up in the sport. uh when you’re going head-to-head with the best in the world, um it just is so tough to to stick in there. But now we’re coming up on the main pack of men. Um we’ll be able to pick out who’s who and who’s uh sticking in there. That looks like Steak, I believe. I can read that on his the back of his suit. And he is at the very tail end of this main men’s pack. Yeah, the one of the mission there, Reinnie, was Gustaf Eden. didn’t really see Gustav, you know, coming out of the swim. So, he was a little bit further back there today. So, um he’s got a little bit of work to do. But, however, you know, we we talked to him during the week. He did mention that he was going to bike very very hard today. So, you know, to try and get up there and put a little bit of distance between, you know, a lot of the top athletes, a lot of the favorite runners, especially Pier Leo, I think that they were all trying to talk about there. But, we got Gregor Payet from Luxembourg. He’s sitting right in there as well. A little bit dangerous here going into the corner, a little bunched up. Uh that’s inside of the allowable distance. So, uh race ranger is going to get its work out today and so with the officials out there. But there goes the Lexenburg athlete right now as he makes his way through the field with that flashing light. Yeah, I just looked down the field and picked out Gustaf Eden. He was around 112 down out of the swim. So, a little further than um usual for for um him. Dennis Chevro around 103 down. another one of our uh notables pre-race. So, uh a little bit of work to do early on the bike for uh those men. Uh but again, if if there’s a lot of jinning around like it looks like um it’s happening now, um you know, that deficit can be made up. So, there is a center line violation rule as well, Miranda, that’s in effect. So, you know, these are narrow roads here in province. So, uh when you get into the big open roads like in St. George, Utah last weekend. The roads are just a little bit wider and there’s a little bit more space to overtake. So, you have to use it uh you know with caution and just uh make sure that you’re actually staying out of that uh distance, that legal distance and making sure that you wait until it is safe to go through and then make those passes. Now, off onto the women’s side of things right now. You can see that the distance a little bit uh larger there which the ladies are riding along very nicely at the moment. And that’s Louisa Pratt there. Um, we have Italian right on screen. So, this is the back of that front group of six uh that came out of the water together. Uh, she’s sitting sitting there looking really good. Uh, the the women of course uh don’t have to worry as much about the chaos of of the, you know, 20 plus men. Um, you know, with six women, it’s a little a lot more manageable to make sure you find your space and and get into a rhythm and um and and yeah, sort of race your almost race your own race. Obviously, you’re racing everyone around you, but you don’t have to worry about the crazy surges that sometimes happen when there’s massive packs. Um, so fortunately for these women, I mean, still no less pain, no less uh effort, but uh just less sort of chaos going on around them. Yeah, Louise are riding along nicely. Not showing any signs of concern up there and you know sitting back a few more leaders than the legal distance there. So very very smart racing right now. You can see that the six women athletes with the same six athletes that were out of the water together. Lena Mner from Germany. Lizzy Raina from Great Britain. Io from France is in there. That’s Pratt that we’re looking at at the moment. Marta Sanchez is just up the road a little bit. Lisa Purder. So all of our women’s athletes up there that we thought that would have a shot today are in there. The only one that’s around about 238 down being one of our favorites was Margel Pierre. But also we’re forgetting Nikki Bartlett. Nikki Bartlett not known for her her swim ability, but Nikki can ride a bike and and can run. So uh Nikki will be someone we will be keeping our eye on um throughout the day. I’ll I’ll go and at only 40 minutes in the race. You are absolutely right in saying that. However, she’s more than 6 minutes down at this point of time and it’s going to be a a very very hard task to pull that in especially when we get to that 60 km marker. 60 to 70 km marker. That’s going to be uh it’s going to be a very very uh you know hard part of the race where things might you know separate a little bit more. It’s going to be where the strength of the riders really come through and do their thing. And the runners are going to have to really work hard to be able to stay with those athletes up front and then start to prepare for what is going to be a very very fast threelap run around the town of Axen Province today. But uh we can see here that our leaders having a great day here in the saddle. And on screen in the queue at black, that’s Julie Al. She was just passed by. I didn’t catch um the number of that athlete, but basically they’re all riding together at this point in time. Yeah, I know that Lisa Pter is really fired up today to really put the hammer down on the bike. You know, so too is Julie uh Emolo and that’s what she said in you know in her pre-race interviews uh you know when we when we conducted those uh earlier this week and and we know that that’s coming to fruition right now because look at the pace in these legs. Look at the look at the turnover that our leader is putting down right now. You can just see that it’s very very good. There’s Lena Meer and she’s not, you know, just going to let this happen without a fight. Look at that. That’s Yeah. Oh, Emlo. Yeah. So, she was overtaken just a moment ago and now retaking the lead here. So, look at that. And as they go by, come on. Let’s uh set the pace here as they go by there. So, you know that is Lisa Per. So, you know that she wants to get out there today and have a a good solid bike ride. She called it what she said during the week. Yeah, absolutely. And uh Lisa coming off that race in Iron Man, Texas uh not too long ago, but I think really excited with she has newfound excitement coming over to the long course racing and and really feels that this is where she’s going to, you know, make her mark on the sport. obviously racing Olympic distance, doing very well there. But uh coming up to Iron Man distance racing and and racing some of the greats in our sport, third to Taylor Nib and also uh um Cat Matthews in Iron Man Texas on that record setting day. So a phenomenal Iron Man performance from Lisa and now here she is uh setting the pace along with Julia Molo in Axon Province. Back to the lead of our men’s race and cycling along really nicely at the moment. very very powerful. But uh you know this is early days and this is where you know you you’re going to really have to hurt yourself to get a gap on anybody else on you know over the the 90 kilometers. It’s it’s not like an Iron Man race. It’s they’re pretty much racing at full out. You know I I thought that an Olympic distance race or you know race just under two hours where is where you can go pretty hard and get away with it. But now everybody’s racing over 70.3. Margelan Pierre now making her way through and uh you know we know she’s got a great uh you know uh cycling proess and very very strong rider. You can see that her turnover mightn’t be as fast as our leaders but you know that it’s powerful. Yeah, absolutely. And uh turnover is a funny thing, you know, um some athletes opt to ride at, you know, a higher cadence, you know, 90 90 plus. Other athletes will ride more of a grinding cadence and, you know, one of the greatest in our sports. Danielle Riff used to ride at, you know, 70 or 65 cadence. And um she had no problem putting a ton of power down. So, you know, whether you know, they you choose to race with a high cadence or a low cadence is sort of personal preference. Um and you sort of have to find that cadence where you can um hold uh hold it for a long time and also um put out adequate power. So Margeline probably sitting in the you know mid80s um in terms of her cadence right now. Oh, why don’t we go over and uh take a listen to Margeline and a fighting chance. He’s Margeline Pier. For me, when I run, I’m I feel free. And it’s for me like super powerful to have my hair free, too. So, it’s like a mindset to just put my hair free and run free. How are you? I’m good. Are you? Yeah, fine, thank you. You were you just going down to register? Yeah, I passed them. I passed Norian. seated. Yeah. Here’s the rack. Yeah. Because I passed you on the bike. I told baby also passed you. Yeah. Yeah. You have to tell the full story. Not only you passed us, but it but it’s true. She passed us on the bike today. 2019. I raised age group and I took my slot for the world champion in 2019. I never thinking about be a professional athlete one day. It was just like for fun. And I raised this rate because I studied here. So I just wanted to have fun. But never in my mind I thinking to again race here as a professional athlete. I love this race because I studed here. So I have a lot of memories with all my friends. We made a lot of party here in the earth of Exon Province. I also started triathlon here in Exxon Province. And yeah, I I think I know every corner and I just want to have fun and to race close to my friend and my family. This is me and this is Clemon in Lanzari. The be is a famous sweet. Yeah, the calis. It’s famous here in province. You need to try. Maybe we can go and buy some later together. Yeah, please. Yeah, it’s traditional. Okay. Honey, almond, melon, and white egg and orange. This is a perfect gift. If you’re in Exxon Province, you need to try the Kiss. Yeah. Yeah. Enjoy. Do you know the Rail Island? It’s an island when I grow up. They forgot to put it’s a French island. Now there is the full earth. [Music] Yeah. Thank you to Margelan Pierre and a fighting chance presented by Hoker. For more, watch short AFC episodes on Instagram at Ironman Try and full AFC episodes on proseries. And our Iron Man triathlon YouTube channel. Well, I love her laugh and I love uh you know that she’s committed to her sport. She’s only 25 years of age and uh her boyfriend racing same weekend at Laneri just uh yesterday and Majang getting the job done today. Beautiful shots of I think that’s a picture of the lead men and it looked like well maybe not. It did look like uh that’s the punk and he is leading this race. But that looked like uh Christian Blumfelt making a pass um over that uh that section. But uh the champ from last year laying down a really strong he is riding away from the cream of the crop. Some of the best cyclists in our sport. So uh this is um he’s burning a match but maybe he has many matches to burn. So you know we don’t know how he’s feeling. He knows this course. He’s won on this course and he’s like, I don’t care who’s here, who you are, I’m going to make you work for this win if you want to take it from me. Yeah. He’s also the course record holder at 34723 as well, you know, and then last year set the fastest uh bike time with a 20436. So, you know that he’s uh you know, he’s he’s got the bike ride uh you know, underneath him. He knows that that’s a a strength of his, but a run today. This is probably, you know, knowing that he’s going to have to get a bit of a lead on on the rest of the field, but he’s really giving it, you know, some concerted effort at this point in time, trying to build up a a good lead and nobody else was able to go with him in the early part there. um as that group was very very tightly uh you know bunched up together and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there was any you know or some you know penalties giving out uh given out today. So we’ll just have to wait and see uh on that one but Ruben’s wasting no time to getting away. So the strong German he is on the way. He’s only 12 seconds ahead there. We got Lebo in third as Christian Blumenfeld in 22 seconds down there. So, a lot of our top athletes here getting the job done. This is beautiful Axen Province in the south part of France here in in Province. We’re coming up to about halfway on the bike here pretty soon. They’re riding along just [Music] nicely. Hey [Music] [Music] baby. Meet Kicker Run from Wahoo. A revolutionary indoor running experience where you just run and your feet set the pace. We call it run free mode, a gamechanging technology that allows you to change speeds naturally, just like you do outdoors. You can even let popular training apps control the speed and grade for you. Kicker Run by Wahoo. It’s time to run free. [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. trying his hardest to get off the front. Reuben Zup punked has really put the hammer down today. Christian Blumenfeld doesn’t want to have anything to do with that. Riding along nicely and powerfully at this point of time. This is really, really strong racing right now. Miranda, as we started to climb up, you know, just going past that 20 km marker, you know that this race is starting to head upwards. When we get to that 60 km marker, it goes upwards sharply and then the the final and closing kilometers of this bike course today. We’ll finish in Axen Province where they’ll head off to a very very fast run. But right now, the pace is on on the bike ride. The wattage is high and the climbing is just about to start as well. Yeah, absolutely. Uh Reuben definitely taking his chances now. Uh he obviously is the champ from last year. Uh he doesn’t have the run on paper. He doesn’t have the run that Christian Bloomberells has. So he will need to amass a bit of a uh buffer. Uh I don’t think Christian wants any any piece of that though. And he is in this group. Um, we’ll see sort of how many athletes are sticking in this group, but I imagine a sizable um main pack chasing Ruben Zabunk right now. Earlier in the day, it was Jonas Shawnberg who’s on screen right now, who was our swim leader. So, still hanging in there in that chase group and all trying to get after this man right here, Ruben Sup from Germany. Really riding hard at the moment across the top of this course. Beautiful scenery in the background here in the middle of province here and known as as the, you know, one of the most beautiful flower field growing areas, sunflowers, lavender fields, and a lot of the herbs and spices from down here, cheese and wine, and you know, pick your poison. It’s absolutely gorgeous. And today, the weather has really come out and showed that this is one of the most beautiful regions in the world. Zank really working it right now on the descending and really hammering down these hills. Out goes the knee. He tucks in the inside leg here. Descending very very well. Not even the motorbike can keep up at this point in time. Absolutely. Yeah. Sometimes when you’re on the bike, you can uh descend a little quicker than the motorbikes. But uh just looking at some of uh Zapunk’s results of of late, he was first here last year of course and then he was second at IM7.3 Switzerland. Uh he went 26th at IMAN Frankfurt over the full and also 33 at the IM World Champs. So um longer distance races he hasn’t had as much success at least uh recently and uh a couple of podiums last year uh for the 70.3 distance races. Yeah, but when I look at his Iron Man Frankfurt and see four hours on the bike, I know that this guy can ride a bike. So uh when you take a good long look around, this is the Maritime Alps and this is absolutely gorgeous. not too far away from Nice where the Iron Man World Championships will be conducted again in September and we’re looking forward to uh seeing Sam Ladello back on the start line there and defend what was his world championship you know just about 18 months ago. So this is iron man 70.3 ax in promce and a lot of the top athletes train in this area you know clemen and majel pierre train down at niece margel pierre’s grown up in this area and knows the area very very well and getting back to our leader right now just trying to get down some nutrition at this point of time cuz he’s really burning through it at this point well she just talked to me a little bit about what it’s like to be like defending champion you have the M1 you’ve been giving the given the one bib ahead of the race. Um, what’s that like? And, you know, does it give you extra motivation? Is it extra pressure? I think a little bit of both. I think that the motivation is there that you know that you’re the defending champion. You’ve prepared and and raced well on the course before and then going into the race, you just have to know that your preparation is what you’re going to get out of your race results. If you’ve prepared well, you will get a good result. But if you haven’t prepared well and you’re coming in and there’s a whole bunch of other, you know, great athletes here such as world champions, Olympic champions, then you’ve you’ve got something else on your mind. And I I think that going into races like this, you have to have a clear frame of mind knowing that um you know, you’ve got a goal. You got plan A and plan B and a plan C and you just have to roll with the punches. But uh you know, if plan A doesn’t get go right, but what do you think plan A is? I think plan A for the Zupunct is to clear out. Yes. And um you know I we can see that what he’s trying to do is he’s you know creating some distance between him and the rest of the field. But if Blumenfeld’s got anything to do with it, it’s going to be a very very small amount. And Christian’s not um he’s not going to shy away from hard work. He’s all about the numbers. Christian Blumenfeld is. and he’s all all about you know biomechanics, sports science and just about everything you know nutritional formulas and um so you know that Blumenfeld and Gustaf Eden Casper Storers you know that the Norwegians have been known for their numbers you know running the numbers and everything but looking over this beautiful region here looking uh to the north you will see uh you know M vonu uh in that you know background way up there So this beautiful region you know has uh the climbs of Mount Fontu and you know some of the other beautiful training areas around Avignon and you know Salon de Province is not too far away which used to host uh you know Simon Leing lived there for years and we went up there to train with Simon for for a couple of those years and it was a lot of fun uh you know doing that But there’s just so much variety in this area to train and race with. Absolutely. And uh I was just checking the women’s race for a moment there. They’ve gone through 18 km on the bike and the big mover is Margelier. I can tell you she’s already taken 41 seconds out of the front women. So the top five are still together. Uh Louisa Pratt has fallen off. She’s around 20 seconds back. So still, you know, within reach but starting to fall back. But Margeline Pierre is making inroads on the front group already. Yeah, Margeline, we were mentioning she’s a very, very strong cyclist. She comes from this area, knows the area very well. She also lives now in Nice, which is not too far down the road, but Nice being the maritime Alps as well. A lot of steep climbing, a lot of pro cyclists live down there because the region has some of the best training. Margeline is, you know, training a lot of the time with her boyfriend Cleman and uh, you know, that’s got to be great for her and, you know, that she’s going going to make inroads uh, into this women’s pro field here pretty soon. So, you know, just talking about uh, our ladies out there with Lizzie Rainer, Lena Mesner, Lisa Purder, Marta Sanchez, Io, and Pratt. They’re just doing a great job of, you know, holding on to each other and riding along in a nice group formation, but at a really nice pace. And even Margeline Pierre to be catching up like that, you know, that uh yeah, the Marine’s riding very well because I think you know these women are really motivated to keep the pace hot. I just wonder if you know they’re kind of caught um looking at each other and not just focusing on the task at hand. I think sometimes when um there’s some strong athletes riding together, they sort of get caught up in well, you do the work. No, you you go to the front instead of let’s all really just drill this bike so that we can duke it out on the run and you know keep uh the chases um at bay. But uh right now Margelain has the road to herself. She is in kind of in no man’s land, but I think she likes it that way. That’s a fair comment what you said, but the way I look at it is that early on it was the ladies that were overtaking each other and attacking each other, you know, very very quickly. So, I don’t I don’t think that they’re laying off the pace. I think that they’re going as hard as they possibly can and trying to figure out this pacing cuz they’re going uphill at the moment. You can see that they’re in the saddle in the smaller gears and Marane just is is just catching up a little bit by bit. Her average pace obviously is higher and she’s just biting her at time. She can’t do anything about, you know, the the the two minutes that she was down earlier on, but now you know that she’s making up time and she’s making it up quick. And we just have Nikki Bartlett on screen right now. She was around 355 back in T1. She’s making a little bit of inroads now. She’s at 340 uh 42 back from the lead. So Nikki Bartlett um slowly making her way. Uh three, four minutes is is a long way, but there’s still a lot of racing to go. Um and on a course like this, Nikki, I think, can make up a lot of time if she’s aggressive. Um on the technical sections, uh it looks like she has some some company on the bike right now, so she’ll have to make sure she keeps it clean. But uh yeah, I mean, these women are sitting around uh 4 minutes back. Yeah, I think that um sorry, 340 340 back. Yeah, I think that with uh you know Nikki Bartlett, it’s it’s probably going to come a little bit later than sooner and I I know that once they get to that 65 kilometer marker, that is when the race turns up and it turns up sharply and that’s where you’re going to see a lot of change in the field today and I think that that’s where you’ll get you know Melan she’ll be very very strong at that point point of time as well. So, all right. And uh we’re just going to chat a little bit about our Trid Dot partnership. In addition to the pro athletes out there racing, we have over 2600 age group triathletes competing. Among them are a number of athletes who use Trid Dot, the official training platform of Iron Man to get race ready. These Trid dot athletes get the unique benefits of expert coaching and AI powered training plans, including predictive race day splits to guide their strategy. Today, Trots’s athlete is Sue Dawson. Let’s hear from Sue about her goals and strategy for executing executing her race plan today. Hi, I’m Sue Dawson. I’m originally from the UK, but now I live in Portugal because the weather’s better for training. Um, I’ve done loads of Iron Man races. I’ve done this will be my 22nd um half iron man distance and I’ve done six fulls as well but I’ve retired from full and I’m currently doing the uh Iron Man 70.3 Exxon provence. I chose a because it’s hilly. I do like a hilly a lovely hilly scenic bike route. I’ve been training with trot for um one and a half years. It’s really structured and I like it and I feel fitter for it. My goal for this race um is to finish with a smile on my face. Um I want to enjoy it, enjoy the scenery and just finished. I’m past the days of actually wanting a specific time, but top 10 in my age group I’d be happy with. So for the last six months I’ve been coached by a tried coach, Matt Davis. um he’s a lovely guy and um I decided to go for a coach because I like the accountability. I like the fact that someone else is looking to see what I’m doing and can make any adjustments. So my goal for the rest of the year, well actually I haven’t set any races up yet, but I imagine I’ll do the Cas Sky 70.3 in Portugal because it’s my favorite race. So, we’ll be checking in on Sue’s progress to see how close her actual times are to her predicted splits. And uh at the end of the day race, you can check out Iron Man and Trot Socials to see how she finished. So, back to the action right now. Ruben Sup is really hammering down these hills here, Minda, and he’s really putting it on the line here on these technical descents. Yeah, absolutely. And this is where it’s like some risks kind of need to be made and uh the athletes are completely engrossed in the moment and you know they spend so much time on their time trial bikes it’s almost an extension of themselves. So um it looks a little bit hairy as they as they hurdle down uh the mountains but I can assure you they they’re well in control. They know what they’re doing. They’re flying around those corners. You got to be careful not to cross that center line. Um you know that can be a penalty. Uh but yeah, this is a downhill section. As you can see on the bottom of the screen, the light uh gray section is where he is currently at. So, he’s kind of rolling the downhill. He’ll uh do a little bit of a flat and then he’ll raise back up um into the that second aid station. So, uh a really quick part of the course right now. Hopping on down to the herb fields here and just about to get those sunflowers growing for the summer months ahead as we normally see them growing. You can see a little bit of fog up there in the distance as well. So, it is warming up here. A cooler morning, but it is going to get up to about 24 25° C today. So, up uh into the 77° Fahrenheit area as we can see right now along the flats as you were saying here. So, a nice time to get that nutrition going, a nice time to sort of set that pace and a nice time to think about the wattage that you’ll be, you know, putting out at the moment. Then as they approach the uh second aid station on the bike, Marinda, they’ll be going up sharply again. Yeah, absolutely. And uh that’s usually strategic. They like to put the aid stations on the uphills. Of course, uh the athletes tend to be going, you know, a little bit slower and they’re able to sort of uh get in and get the aid that they need. So, typically we try to put the aid stations on the slower sections of the course uh so the athletes can safely um rehydrate and get on that nutrition. But right now he is still on a slight almost fat falls flat on the downhill. Um he is flying really flying at this point of time on our women’s side of things. Uh you know really good job today by Imola from France and also Mesner and then also you know up there in the lead of our women’s race here Nikki Bartlett was she’s actually in the chase group but uh they are working hard trying to take some time back. It looked like she um is trying to get rid of she was sort of stuck in a little group. Uh this is back to the the lead pack of women um um now. But uh we were just looking at Nikki Bartlett and I think she was sort of trying to get away from uh that small pack of women that she found herself with. But uh yeah, we are with uh the leaders I think here now. Um, try to get a a closeup of one of the numbers, but uh, nope. Actually, this is still with Nikki. So, Nikki is leading this more pack Sarah Funks in that group. So, another one of our favorites uh, pre-race, but uh, a lot of racing left to go there. Sitting around 340 back. Um, we are with race leader Ruben Zapun. He has cleared out uh, daylight between him and the men behind. Will Christian Bloomfeld bridge the gap and the closing miles of this bike Big [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Meet me halfway. [Music] Yes, it’s perfect. [Music] There’s no limit to how far a dream can take you. Start in your own adventure now. Katar [Music] [Applause] [Music] Airways don’t stop the beat. Can’t control my feet. People in the street. Come on everybody and move your feet. I don’t stop the beat. I can’t stop. Can’t stop the beat. I won’t stop. Won’t stop the beat. Go. [Music] Coming out of the water in the men’s pro race, there was over 25 athletes were separated by about a minute and now it is dwindling down to about 12. I’m Greg Welch, joined by three-time Iron Man, world champion Minda Carfrey. Marinda, we’re off to a great start in both of our men’s pro races and our women’s pro races as they all get after that wonderful $1.7 million of bonus money as we go now past the lavender fields here in Ax and Provence. Yeah, we see the men’s field really starting to string out now. We were 25 strong. We have Reuben the punk. He’s off the front 35 plus seconds ahead of the sec the first chase pack and that’s 11 strong. Uh Blumenfeld is in that pack. Um and then the rest of the men have sort of dropped off another 20 to 30 seconds behind the Christian Blumenfeld pack. So sort of two distinct chase packs, but they’re all chasing this man on screen right now. Yeah, Goober. And there’s Blumenfeld. Sters and Sam Dickinson from Great Britain. There’s Dup from France as well. Y Shamberg is hanging in there and so too is Caspiaak from Poland. There’s Ped and Zorgotti from uh there as well as Zack House from Luxembourg. Vilen is last of the group there at around about 47 seconds down. So, Zapun with a 35se secondond lead over Christian Blumenfeld and Goober are really trying to pull this back in, but I think it’s going to happen over the second part of the course here today. When we get to 65 kilometers, it really does rise up. Yeah, the athletes now in a slight uh downhill or sort of a false flat and they will start to edge back up again. So, it’ll be a gentle sort of false flat climb up into um the second aid station uh before they descend again and then they hit that um distinct, you know, five to six kilometer, 5% grade um um legit climb. Um that’s the main uh big climb on this course. But you can see the lead um 35 plus seconds. That’s what that looks like. You can’t even see anyone behind him when they’re riding at 60 km an hour or 35 mph um on those slight downhill sections. Zupt is really having a great ride out here in Province at the moment along the flats. We can see that he came off the descents just a moment ago. Just really risking it and pulling out that outside leg and you know getting it over really you know giving it to his machine today. Christian Blumenfeld will be one of the athletes in that chase group with Goober that will you know understand how much you know they can give up to our leader here Zupun at the moment. But on paper they can probably give up about two to three minutes over the run course and still get the job done. But that’s something that they uh don’t want to be thinking about too much. Uh you know that deficit. So it’s all work and all action out there in the fields here today. So you can see that just rolling through now and just keeping that pace up. The men are really keeping the hammer down. Yeah, they they need to um you know punct not known for his uh run ability, but still you don’t want him to slip too far ahead. you know, when you have that number one um on your bib, uh you can sometimes kind of find a little bit extra uh find some superpowers. And I think he’s finding those right now on the bike. Um and he’ll hope to have um some pretty strong legs. He ran around a 114 last year. We’re thinking Christian Bloomfeld will run sub 110. So, you know, probably looking to be in uh Christian Bloomfeld and and some of the men in this pack’s uh favor as we stand right now. But uh look, we we see the refs. Yeah. Yeah. Race race race officials here and referees Marinda, you know, just you pulling upside. You can you can see why, you know, one athlete has to, you know, once they commit themselves, they have to take the whole group here and and go right to the front. So the the pace obviously, you know, they’re trying to keep it on to get after this leader here, Zupun. But Zapunked, I tell you what, he’s just out there and he’s not going to risk it. He doesn’t want to be in that group. He wants to keep the pace up himself. But you can see back there now some of the athletes are trying to, you know, make a concerted effort to get back up to Zun right now because they probably feel as though things were slipping away a little bit. Yeah. And the course like this as well. Um so the punk the punks knowing this race having you know been the defending champion it is a little bit of a it can be out of sight out of mind. Um you can see back there the men are not too far back. It looks like they are starting to bridge back but that is what probably is on Reuben’s mind. Can can I get out of sight out of mind? Maybe they’ll let me go. And I don’t think that that’s going to be the case. I think uh that main pack of men are very motivated to get to the front of this race. Majalain Pierre continues her chase in the women’s field here at the moment. We can see that the men’s are only 48 12 kilometers from the finish line and the women are about 10 more kilome. They are 56.8 km away from the finish line there. Pter leads Raina Mner Sanchez and Ezimolo. There’s Pratt still sitting in there and Margeline Pierre is really doing a great job of catching up. Yeah, Melain was around uh 140 uh 145 out of transition behind the lead pack. Now she’s down to well in the last check we saw around 110 behind that lead. So making inroads on the lead women. Uh we’ll hopefully get some more updates uh shortly, but she is definitely putting the pedal to the metal and riding very well uh this early stages of this bike ride. And of course, uh, Margeline knows this course like the back of her hand. She grew up here and, uh, has ridden this bike course many times. I think this is one of her first ever triathlons and she did as an age grouper. So, um, now to be, you know, a favorite in the pro race and and get to race in front of your home crowd. I think sometimes you just can find a little bit extra magic out there and a little bit extra motivation and power to just suffer more than you maybe can at other races. But uh she is looking really great here today. Yeah, Margelene did qualify here in 2019 for the Iron Man World Championship and and that’s where you know it all started for her. So this is home to her. Uh well she doesn’t live here but she grew up here and home to her right now is in Nice not too far away. But Margeline’s results last year were absolutely incredible. You know I world championships in Nice. She finished in in fourth place in Zelami. She was eighth place and you know it was a great race. She’s been uh you know really building on some good results. 12th place at Iron Man 70.3 Lab alone uh as well. So Margeline is on the rise. She’s young. She’s 25 years of age and she’s got uh you know a really really talented uh and and great future ahead of her. Yeah, absolutely. seeing her race in Nice in her home uh town where she lives now and and and racing so well. Uh finishing fourth at at an iron man distance race was uh an incredible breakthrough. I think uh you know we’ve been sort of seeing some of her um results um you know just over the the last years. It looks like she might be have bridged to the front pack now cuz she was riding solo. Uh I think she may have picked up uh some of the lead women. I think she might be in the lead right now, will she? Yep, she’s right up there. Margeline Pierre is just riding an exceptional race today and really putting the hammer down and taking prisoners at the same time here. So Margeline now on the descent here. You know that she’s getting past that, you know, 30 km marker. We saw Zapunk coming down here just a moment ago. Knowing the roads is a really big advantage on the rest of the field, Minda. And as she knows these roads so well, you can take those risks. You can take those risks. And I think you just sort of know how hard you can push the turns. You see how she’s not even sort of getting out of the arrow bars. She’s not breaking. She knows she um can throw the bike around the corner and it’s not going to slide out. Uh uh she knows the camber of the road. she probably knows, you know, there’s a bump or a or a pothole here or there. Uh I think that that’s um that’s just such a great advantage when you’re racing a technical course like this where there are climbs and descents and narrow roads. Um and we are just getting Yes, this is Margelane in the lead. Um we just saw a picture of uh the women that she had passed. So she has made real quick work. A minute 50 she was out um of the water behind the leaders. She made that up in the first 30 km of this bike race and she is taking this one um by the horns and looking really good doing it. Charlene Clevel as well from France is having a a good bike as well. You know trying to get around these corners really fast and then get back into the saddle and and keep the uh the pressure on is very very difficult when you’re going up and down in heart rate. The legs are screaming out you know maybe a little bit of lactic acid buildup as well. But back to the men’s race right now. Zupunked. We saw that last time check that he was getting caught a little bit by Blumenfeld. Uh his group at the uh the front there just pushing exceptionally hard. So going across the flats before we start rising up again. Our men’s race is getting interesting at 1 and 1/2 hours into this race today. So swimming that’s all done. They’re around about halfway on the bike ride at the moment and then they will start coming into the closing kilometers. But before they get to the closing kilometers, we’re going to go up toward the aid station number two. We’ll go back down and another steep uh you know part of the descending and then at 65 km. That’s where it’s going to go up sharply. Yeah, absolutely. This uh bike will get very interesting at the later stages when the legs are starting to get a little bit tired and then all of a sudden yes, there’s a nice uh um you know 5ish kilometer climb at 5%. So, uh, yeah, we will have some, uh, a great riding to come, but, uh, this is the second pack of men, um, chasing down Reuben Zapun right now. And they are on a slight uphill. It looks sort of like they’re still going very quickly, but I can tell you they are at a slight rise. And you can see that by the course profile at the bottom of the screen there. Gregor Payet was in that group just a moment ago there. And we can see that riding along nicely. I love the the setup here of this athlete. Got a very high cadence. He’s got a really nice uh look over the front of his bike, over the cockpit of the bike there, looking very arrow. Uh I think a lot of the athletes these days, you you see that they’re, you know, doing these 3D uh printed, you know, bars up the front there. Talk a little bit about the cockpit and how things have changed around a a little bit. Yeah, so for those who don’t uh recognize, cockpit is sort of where the athletes have their arrow bars. So the athletes cockpit is that front area of the bike where and how that setup is. And you’ll see some athletes will have their hands um sort of um raised up so close to their face. Others will have them a little bit lower. But um the whole deal is that you want the air to be able to travel around you over your head and around your body as smoothly and as um cleanly as possible. You don’t want any like air getting kind of caught in between your um arms or in between your face and your arms. So you’ll see the athletes with their heads like down as low as they can making themselves small um so that the air can travel um over their backs um and they can move or slip through the air um more efficiently. Jonas Shamberg here just riding a nice race just uh sitting in that second position right at the moment getting along the course nicely. He was our early swim leader today. comes from an Olympic distance background where he won uh you know medals at world championships especially representing Germany at the mix relay there quite a few times there Marinda and now deciding that uh enough was enough and now it’s time to you know step up the pace with Iron Man 70.3 here so you know for Shamberg he’s riding along at a very good pace at the moment we know that he’s a very good runner as well and finished third place at Iron Man South Africa recently as well yeah we just saw Casper Stors go um in front of uh Christian Blumenfeld and I I I was noticing that uh usually when an athlete slots in like that, the athlete who they’ve slotted in on um gets upset. Uh but Christian just hopped up out of the out of the bars and sort of slowed down a little bit and let him let him pop in there. And that makes sense. Those two men trained together. Um we call him the the Norwegian train, of course. Uh the third member of that Norwegian train is Gustaf Eden. He is not having the best day. He sort of missed that front pack of the swim and just is sort of drifting back on the bike. But uh we have a really cool fighting chance presented by Hoka on Jonas Stroberg. We’re going to go and take a listen to what he had to say. I’m not I’m not like a person who likes like rice in the morning like cooking and no I can’t eat it. Perfect. Huh? What’s the plan this afternoon? So, swimming this morning and then went here and now a bit running. First a little sandwich and then we go. Can we come in? Yeah. Yeah. We’ll see you crib. Yes. I just saw it like 10 minutes. But let’s go inside. This is the penthouse. [Music] Hello. Hello. They look familiar. Welcome. So, is this are you going to make like what kind of sandwich? German, French. I normally cheese, ham, everything. Yeah, that’s a masterpiece. It’s good, huh? Looks like a fivestar sandwich right there. Yeah. So, what’s the plan for this weekend? Try to be smart. European races are always hard. The 70.3s, so good field. Christian is smart. He’s always like clever in the racing and on the run. He’s super strong. Where you going? Going to race down and then onto the run course. Try to enjoy it. Especially here in France, they know all my name. So, they always like Aliu, Ali, Ali, Ali. Uh, what do you think of this course? Uh, none that you’ve been on it, but from off the paper, you know, lake swim, pointto-point bike, city, hot city run. I like it when it’s actually really hot. The hotter the better for me. And uh I heard it’s really hilly. You need to save some energy for the last climb and for the even for the run. It’s like with all the twists and turns, it’s not a fast course and you need some energy for that. Yeah. Try to go with a Norwegian train and go for another podium. How was that? Nice. The up and down all the way like pretty tricky. It’s actually like Yeah, it’s quite a technical run. It’s good for smaller short guys, but like me turns is not my strength. It’s your run. See you tomorrow. See you tomorrow. Thank you to Yoda Shamberg and a fighting chance presented by Hoka. For more, watch short AFC episodes on Instagram at iron manry and full AFC episodes on proseries. And our Iron Man triathlon YouTube channel. So, as we get back to the action, Minda, that was Yona Shamberg. you know, he comes from the shorter distance as we’ve been saying, but he’s had a very successful switch over, you know, to the Iron Man distance. Iron Man 70.3 distance as well. And right on screen there, looking very good. Zunked, however, looks like he’s getting punked a little bit because the uh the group is coming back slowly at our race leader. That’s uh Pier Leor on screen now. Uh this uh this group I believe is around one well it’s the second chase so it’s not the Christian Blumenfeld group. This is the group right behind that. Pier Lor probably with Christian one of the fastest runners in this uh field. Cameron Maine also is in this group. Uh uh I may be mistaken. and they may have bridged back up to the Christian Blumenfelt group, but this was um dispatched from the Christian Blu Blumenfelt uh group when we last were able to uh catch up with those two groups and their timings. Yeah, still sitting about a minute back from our uh chase group. Uh sorry, the uh the lead group up there with Christian Blumenfield. That is the chase group because they are chasing Zupunk. This is the second chase grip and Pier C just sitting down there on the cow cow horns there as we say and really not in that arrow position. So you know that he could be pushing a little bit harder there. So the pace may not be as fast as he really wants there. But I I do think that he might be very close to his limit as well. Yeah, that’s true. Well, she um some of these sections um the athletes will you know get up out of those bars and um you know rest your shoulders a little bit especially if there’s an uphill section. But yeah, I mean you see Zapunked at the front here is not taking any time out of of the bars. So traveling at a bit of a quicker uh clip, but you’ll see the men here descending again. Uh they’ll make a short descent and then they’ll have another small climb and then they’ll have a nice descent down. uh along the flats before they hit that uh that that 5% climb at around the 50 sorry the 65 km mark. They call the um this course very hilly and they are certainly right. They’re going upwards again. They’ll be descending in a minute and then they’ll be onto the flats one more time. The men’s race is going. We’re not here to sell you on this life. You already chose it. No shortcuts, no hype, just work. Same as you. Built to outlast, endure. 40 years in and we’re just getting warmed up. Welcome to the Ohana. [Music] You [Applause] Here’s Elizabeth in the middle of the perfect workout for her. To create it, we analyzed her biometrics and genetics, her recovery rate, injury risk, and aerobic potential, her recent training sessions, the temperature, humidity, and elevation, the demands of her next race, and billions of data points from athletes just like her. With Trid Dot, Elizabeth gets faster faster. And what does she have to do? I just opened Trid Dot and did my workout. Tr do we do the technology, you do the training. [Music] Hey, hey, hey. [Music] Iron Man 70.3 Axon Provence is brought to you by Morton. Get used to it. And by Ruby, the indoor cycling experience. Well, Lizzy Draer is really making a forge toward the front. They’re riding very nicely through the flower fields, through the lavender fields, but they’re all chasing Marshal Pierre. Now, Marelain came with a deficit of over a minute out of the water behind, but now making the way to the front of the race. The powerful young lady that hails from this area in Axen Provence is really getting the job done today. Mirinda and showing a lot of uh you know patience, but I would say uh you know just a really good tactic as well. Yeah, she uh took uh basically rode through this small pack of women uh to the front and and you saw her now taking stock of you know who’s in there. Uh she must have decided she was sick of uh leading and um let one of the other women come around and now she’s going to go back to the front and put the pressure back on these women. Uh this front pack is five strong. We have Margelane, Lisa Me, Lena Mesna, Lisa Pertier, and Marta Sanchez, and also Lizzie Rainer in that group. So that’s five strong. Emlo has flipped off the back of that group. Um so too has Louisa Pratt. Um so now five strong and Margelan Pierre is making them work for it. Yeah. Well, uh, that’s absolutely why, uh, you know, those two athletes have fallen off you and Pratt because Margeline Pierre is really putting the pressure on and turning in the screws at the same time. She turned around just a little bit ago to see what was actually going on, you know, taking stock. That’s a that was a great word there, Minda. And she knew that she had already gotten rid of two of the athletes that were in the top five there before. So, she knows that the pace she’s setting right now is a good one. It’s probably a pace that’s going to give her a little bit of a um a lead coming off the bike there, I would imagine, today because once they start hitting that hill uh at 65 km, that’s where Margelet will excel. Now, when they get off the 71 kilometer area, that’s where it’s all downhill. It’s a big descent and then flats back into Axom Proancece where they’ll head out onto the run course which doesn’t really suit Margeline like it would uh you know do another runner but Margeline is one of the top three runners here today anyway. Yeah, I think so too. I think uh you know she she knows this course um this course has a lot of um twists and turns on this run. Three-lap run course through town. A lot of turns, a lot of U-turns, a lot of weaving through um through town. So, uh, an athlete, um, needs to be able to find their rhythm amongst the chaos. And I think when there’s so much turning and weaving, um, it’s hard to find that rhythm and it’s hard to stick to that rhythm. So, um, the athlete who manages that the best will be the athlete obviously that comes out on top. But, uh, right now we’re looking at the lead of the Pro Women’s Race in Axon Provence. This is the sixth race of the Iron Man Pro Series. And the Pro Series is definitely heating up, Welshy. Yeah, seventh place. We got six behind us already. Last one uh St. George, Utah, just uh last weekend, which was a great race down there as well. Lionel Sanders uh getting the job done as he did in Oceanside. And then also Paula Finlay. So, both winners at Oceanside, both winners in St. George. And now that we’re heading over here now to Europe in the EMA uh area of the world, we can tell you that Margelane Pierre is, you know, hailing from France, hailing from this region, getting the job done and looking very good. This region has hosted a lot of trial in the past. This is one of the very f first areas that hosted the world championship in Avenueon in 1989 as well for the Olympic distance. So enriched and uh and steeped in history here. It’s triathlon in the the Alps, the maritime Alps and right here in Province as well. So, Zupant really taking some risks on the descent right now. You can see that he’s just swinging that bike from one side of the road to the next. Yeah. And as I said, uh the athletes at this stage of the race um and on descents like this, you almost kind of have to take a couple or you’re riding the the limit, right? like you’re he could be more careful, but it’s every single second um really matters. Uh he’s trying to get away. He’s trying to amass a a sizable lead so that he can have a cushion or a buffer between himself and uh people like Christian Blumenfeld. Of course, he doesn’t know how far back they are. He doesn’t know who’s back there. Is Pier Core in that pack? Um is Christian Blumenfeld? Where’s Gustaf Eden? Um, all he knows is that he wants to get as big a buffer as he possibly can to try and hold on to this title. Uh, and you know, right now he’s he’s holding on to that lead, but uh just how much of a lead he has. Uh, we’re waiting to get some more updated splits and we’ll bring those to you as soon as we do. But this is back to the lead of the Pro Women’s Race and Majila Pierre is riding very strong here today. She brought her bike legs and she’s putting them to really good use today. For a woman that’s only 25 years old, she’s riding like a pro and you can see that that elastic band is it’s still strapped to the the shoe there. And I can imagine that uh that over time is going to take a little bit away from you, believe it or not. Well, she what why do they have elastic bands? Like what is the purpose of that elastic? purpose is it just holds the the bike shoes in place, you know, when they hop on the bike at the mount line and it holds it in a a horizontal um position so that when they jump on the bike the you know it’s just there. But you can imagine over time that that little amount of pressure there will be a big amount of pressure at the end of the day because you can imagine how many revolutions that she’s going through a minute. Now her revolution count right now RPMs looks like around about in between 90 95 I would imagine. So you can imagine how many that is going to be over the course of 90 km. Yeah, totally. And and of course the uh the idea is with those elastic bands that they should snap. So you uh tie that shoe to your crank or in her case she kind of put it on the the rear axle. Uh and usually they break, but uh hers has stayed intact. Uh she probably doesn’t. Actually, I bet she does know cuz I I feel like you can you can feel anything on your bike and I bet you she knows it’s it’s intact. But it’s not stopping her from putting down a very strong bike. And as we move back to the lead of the pro men’s race, Ruben Zapun, the defending champion here in Axa Provence. He won this race riding a 204 last year. Will he ride faster today? I would imagine he will because he’s got a a whole group of athletes that are really putting the pressure on him. you know that of you know Steepniaak and uh you know Hirs is right in there and uh you know Christian Blumenfeld and Shawnberg’s still in there but I I would imagine that maybe a little bit faster than last year the 204 but on this type of course it’s a it’s a undulating course with a couple of decent clims so a 204 is very respectable when you come to you know a course like this Zun is really doing a couple of things here Miranda he’s trying to you know distance himself away from the rest of the field. Number one, because he probably feels as though he doesn’t have the run speed, and number two is he’s going to use his bike uh you know, strength here. So, they’re the two factors uh you know, that’s coming into play right now. But back onto the uh back onto the flats he goes. As you can see that he’s got uh another descent coming up and then after that descent, he will have a a nice long 10 kilometer u you know, part along the flats before he does uh you know, climb up on that steeper section. Today the steepest section is going to be that 65 to 71 kilometer area as we see Lisa Pura now just coming through from Austria. Now Lisa said during the week that she really wants to have a strong bike. Uh we mentioned at the top of the show that she comes from that Olympic distance background but now at 70.3 she was never able to you know show the strength of her ride or you know that discipline because it was uh you know draft legal. But in Iron Man 70.3 she can do her thing. So let’s hear a little bit about uh Lisa Purder and the fighting chance. Not magic arrow on this course. Look like around like yeah this nature and these hills I [Music] like. Yeah, I’m really happy how my season started. Yeah, I hope it stay like this or get even better. Yeah, I did like Olympic distance for short course distance for like 14 years and I think after four Olympic qualifications I just need a little change and I just got love with the long distance and yeah I enjoy it a lot. Yeah, every day is different, you know, like you don’t know what you expect, where you will be and I just like go in the nature and meet different people and it’s so much more social. Yeah. So, the 70.3 and the Iron Man distance are really suiting you well. Yes. Like I love it because finally I can show a little bit my bike strength. It was a little bit a problem in the short distance with the drafting. So, I was always behind and I stayed behind and now I just Yeah, I can use the strengths a little. So, you’ve podium four times in your last five races. Who do you think you’re going to be your biggest competitors this weekend? Yeah, I look at the stat list and I think it’s going to be a big battle on the run. Emily Moria or Lena Ma or Mata Sanchez? I think it’s going to be exciting and close race. a pro series features in your season. Yeah, like for me I have now Texas finished third and I will see how this is going and I going to decide after that. A long season and a lot of races. So I still have time to decide your expectations for for this weekend. I just want to get the best out of me again and surprise myself again. And yeah, if I have a good day, finish podium, finish on the top. So let’s see what the day brings. [Music] Thanks to Lisa Pertiierre. Fighting Chance Fighting Chance presented by Hoker. For more, watch short AFC episodes on Instagram at ironman try and full AFC episodes on ProSeries. And our Iron Man triathlon YouTube channel. Margelain Pierre really getting after it on the bike here today. Lisa Pura on a favorite discipline is trying to get back up to Maj Pierre Mner from Germany having a good day on the bike as well as and now they start to make a few turns out there on the course. So getting a good look at our field here just riding through is Pierre Rafal from France as well. So going through some of the local roads you can see that beautiful rock formation looks a lot like Mount Vontu. uh and the way that that formation is just a few kilometers up the road as well. So our males only have uh 36 kilometers to go on the bike road here heading through some of the beautiful fields here in province in France. [Music] This is where I want to be, baby. [Music] [Music] What do you want? Uh, you know what’s that uh really good non-alcoholic beer I keep hearing about? Do you have that really great non-alcoholic beer that I keep seeing? Do you have a non-alcoholic beer that actually actually tastes good? It’s athletic. You’re holding it. You mean athletic? You’re looking at it. I think you mean athletic. It’s not funny. Ask for it. [Music] [Music] [Music] You know, and we know the thing about challenging yourself is you’re always looking for what’s next. [Music] Through the flower fields, through the wineries they go and through aid station number two, Zupank. Pun still leads our men’s pros here at the Iron Man 70.3 Axen Provence taking another sneaky look over his shoulder and he’s still got the gap that he had about 30 kilometers ago. So Zupun really holding on to the pace at the moment Minda and as we get to the crux of this men’s pro race in the next 10 kilometers we are going to rise up sharply and that’s where Zupun is going to have to either make another move or just hold that pace. Margeline Pierre on the other hand is really doing a great job of things. She’s showing maturity uh you know for her young 25 years of age and uh you know just how to get it done as well with a deficit coming out of the swim. This young French lady is really tearing it up. Yeah, she is tearing it up and uh she knows how to handle a bike. She uh rides these roads uh very comfortable on these mountain roads. Uh lives in Nice France. So used to descending quickly, um going in and out of the canyons, taking the turns uh fast. So yeah, she’s doing that here today and um has control of the race right now. She does have company with her um and some good runners, but uh right now she is looking fantastic. That’s M34. Yeah. So just going through that 60 kilome marker from France going through the 60 km marker. So that’s who we have on screen right now. I’m wondering if this is an athlete that’s maybe bridging. So he was riding along with Christian Blumenfeld, you know, for the last 60 kilometers or so. So Gerber is now from France. He’s trying to get after Zupun here and uh having a dig in his own right with only less than 30 kilometers to go at this point of time. So coming off uh the aid station number two, they’ll just rise up a little bit and then one more descend to go down to that 65 km marker. So in the next 4 kilometers, this is where it’s going to rise up. Yeah. And as you said, Welshy, uh is this a moment for the athletes to really just crank it and try and put more time in or is it uh just maintain pace, maintain power, and don’t do anything stupid? Just depends what they got left in the tank. You can you can just see that Zupt is out there to go get after it. And he he is on the climb. Yeah, he’s on the clean climb now, but he’s you know desperately trying to get rid of the athletes trying to put in a lot of time between him and the chase group here because he’s not the runner as the other athletes are with Pierre Le sitting back there with Christian Blumenfeld sitting back there. You know that these athletes are going to uh you know wait until the run to try and seal the deal with the with the last discipline today. But Zupun has absolutely uh he can’t just sit there and just wonder what may have been. So he’s got to get after it. He’s got to use this climb to the best of his ability and just hold it together. Nutrition is going to be a very important factor in the last 20 kilometers after he gets through this climb cuz once he gets onto the bike onto the run course here, you know, you’re not going to be out of sight and out of mind. You’re going to be right there with each of the other athletes and get a good look at the other athletes, too. Yeah. And I I misspoke a little bit earlier. It did look like he started the climb, but that’s at 67 km. He’s probably at about 63 km now, 62. Um, given that the the athlete behind him just went through the 60. Um, this is Yeah, this is where those cars need to clear out. Let him have the road to himself. And you can see that they’re realizing that they need to get out of there. He’s just moving so quickly. You see him? Get out of the way, please. Um, and they will do that. But he has got a few more kilometers before he’ll hit the climb. It’s 4 km and the average percentage is 5%. So, um he is got to keep the pedal to the metal now and then you’ll see him um climb up uh in the next sort of probably how many minutes? 5 minutes inside of the next couple of minutes for sure. And it’s going to rise up and we’ll get to the highest part of the course as well. And then a screaming descent back into Axen Province over the last you know 15 kilometers or so. It’s all downhill. So, it’s it’s going to be all out on this last climb, I would imagine. Mirinda, and then they can recover before they head out onto the run course here today with three laps. I was just mentioning a moment ago that this course that they have is twisty and turny on the run, the 21 kilometers. So, you got three 7 kilometer loops and uh you know, they’ll be able to get a look at each other, you know, several times per lap. Yeah, that’s uh good and bad. It depends on if you’re gaining on athletes or if you’re losing time. you know, if you’re you’re the lead uh like this man will be, um the athletes behind him will be able to get a really good look at him many times and sort of be able to gauge, okay, how what pace do I need to hold to, uh to limit this deficit or completely erode this deficit. Um so yeah, while the bike maybe, you know, you can get out of sight, out of mind because it is sort of uh twisty and turny and uh very wooded, um the run is not that way. So, uh, yeah, he’ll, you see him checking over his shoulder again. Um, I don’t think there’s anyone in sight, but, uh, he is trying to get a a good look and see if anyone sort of bridging up to him. Um, as it stands right now, we don’t think that anyone has, um, made that bridge. riding along nicely, knowing that he’s got a little bit of a gap on the rest of the competition here today, but also riding nervously and knowing that you’re going to have to give everything in the tank today with such a stellar field right behind. He has won the race. The defending champion knows how to get the job done from last year. Will he be able to get it done today? Now, that’s where it all comes, you know, into his mind at this point. What am I thinking? Is it the wattage that I’m putting out? Is it how much do I have to save for the run? Is it the nutrition that I have to put into my body? Because around about 10 kilometers ago, we looked at this shot and we could see athletes coming into the fray. Now, he’s cleared out once again. Yeah, absolutely. And and I don’t know if it’s a matter of that pack uh sort of pulling up or if he sort of put the pedal to the metal again and uh is putting out more power. He you did see him take some and that’s a better view and we cannot see anyone um anywhere uh so far. We’ll we’ll try and hopefully keep this for a few moments if we can see that chase pack coming through. But right now he really looks like he is cleared out there. I see uh a little something on the last turn and that might be um Nathan. It came down to about 35 seconds, you know, about 10 km ago, and it now it looks like it’s actually gone out the other way. So, it looks like it’s about 45 to a minute. And if that’s uh if that’s the fact, we can tell you that that’s Christian Blumenfeld’s group back there. And uh you know, Gab from France as well. So, this guy is getting the job done. He’s doing a really nice job of it. He’s just kept the pedal to the middle and uh and just keeping a nice pace. It’s his own pace at the moment. So, let’s just hope that he can just, you know, get up this next climb and then descend into town there. Ax and Provence. Remember, this was a pointto-point uh, you know, uh, bike course. And they rode, you know, from 20 kilometers out of town is where they swam today. And then they’re riding all the way back into town via the long way, the long loop, but they call it here in Axen Province. But, uh, Zupun is really, really doing well at this point of time. He’s got a very nice pace happening at the moment. But this beautiful uh scenery here today in Axom Province and not only with those lavender fields and the wineries and everything where this is just such a great place for a lot of athletes to train during the year as well. The one thing that uh it does get a little bit hot in in summer but the mist trials come in every other week or so. There’s a a very strong wind that comes off the Mediterranean and uh when it does blow it blows here. You’re speaking from experience while she Yep. I’ve trained many a times in this uh these roads. Yes. And of course uh I am Minda Cafrey and I’m joined by Greg Welsh here. Today we are bringing you all the action from Iron Man 70.3 Axen Provence, the seventh race in the Iron Man Pro Series and we are getting some beautiful aerial view here. We have the men’s race heating up. They’re just about to come into that final 4 km climb uh at 50 sorry 67 to 71 km. That uh that 4 km will be in there. It’s 5% uh average for that little section and then they’ll do a nice descent and head back to Axon Provence. Right now Ruben Sapun is in the lead and he is making great work of that. We are back with the second pack or the chase men’s pack. Christian Blumenfeld is in this group. We have a couple of other favorites. Shromberg is in this group. We have Goober in this group. Sam Dickinson I believe. Casper STS as well. Um it looks like a massive group actually. So I think I just counted around about 15 athletes that have all come together here. So Blumenfeld to Sam Dickinson and then you got Yona Shamberg, Casper STS and then Stephak from Poland. Dupi is in there from France. Payet is in there from Luxembourg also Zyotti from uh Italy. And then you’ve got Zach House in there as well. Valen is there. Chetchedelli from Italy. And then you got Salazber from Switzerland. Vilheim Hirs from Germany as well. So on the climb we go. This is the most important part of the day for Zup Pun. Will he be able to keep the distance between the group and himself or will the group start racing up this climb? This is where Zub Punked has to really dig deep. The wattage is going to go up sharply. So are the roads here. You can see that all the riding on the road here for these athletes to show them a little bit of support. But now it is Zupant that’s really got the work to do. Down into the small chain ring it goes up the cadence and now we are on the climb. Yeah, we are most certainly on the climb. You see Zapunk there hopping out of the saddle and uh I think this is sort of a welcome change for the athletes uh getting out of the arrow bars, stretching out the hamstrings, the back um and just getting out of the saddle and put, you know, they do put down a little bit more power when they go up over the hills. Um but yeah, he’s definitely trying to keep the pedal to the metal. Um we will get accurate splits to just as soon as we can. Unfortunately, Reuben Zapunked forgot his GPS this morning and so he’s the one guy we really would have loved to have had that on. Um but he forgot to put it on. So we don’t have an accurate split right now, but uh we can tell you that that chase pack is large and it has some very heavy hitters in it. Yeah, just like when they got out of the water there this morning, it did separate in the first, you know, 50 kilometers on the bike with some big gaps heading out there, but the gaps have been closed off. I mean, you know, the Christian Blumenfeld group was out over a minute and a half uh on the other group and they’ve all come back together. So, Zapunk just is the only one that’s been able to get away from the group and hold a decent pace down there today. But swinging that bike over the hills here on this challenging and hilly course here in Axen Province is Zupton. And there goes Christian Blumenfeld right to the front that he goes and starts to apply the pressure on the rest of the athletes here. So Blumenfeld, the Olympic champion, the Iron Man world champion is now getting to the front of the race. Hey guys, Christian Bloomfield here in XMP for the my third race uh in the pro series this year. Uh hopefully doing better than in Oceanside where I had a flat uh puncture on the bike. So uh lost tons of points. So I’m here to secure a good bunch of points and hopefully 2,500 and grabbing the win. I wouldn’t say very tricky course, but it’s like it has a bit of everything. like you have uh like a lot of turns and it’s difficult to keep like a overview of how the field is playing out. Like typically like in Texas we had some dead turns and we could sort of take the splits to everyone. So we had like an idea of where the chases were and how the group in the front were you can almost count all the athletes but here because of all the technical aspect of the course and you have like the twisty turns you don’t really know where you are compared to the guys you’re racing against. Yeah. So Pier is definitely one of the faster runners and what he did with the 66 something uh in his 7.3 few weeks ago shows that he’s in shape but uh he didn’t win the race. So he means means that also he got dropped on the bike and this is a course where he can also be uh pushed on the bike because it’s not that easy to stay in the pack. So if I’m taking advantage of my strength on the bike maybe I can get away from him so I don’t even have to run against him. Thanks to Christian Bloomfeld for those uh thoughts and yeah, I think Pier Lor, that’s the athlete we’ve been trying to hunt down and see if he has been able to stay intact with this u main grouper with Christian Blumenfelt and Christian Blumenfelt uh at the front of this group now and being the aggressor trying to split this up because this is one large group of men chasing the leader Reuben Zapun. All the men who are in contention are on this climb right now. Nice little fun fact on the area where we’re at right now. We’re in Montan Sikto is a favorite subject of Paul Cesan who painted in it over 80 times in his lifetime. He was fascinated by its changing light and form and his studies of it helped pave the way for cubism over emphasizing structure over realism. So that’s a little fun fact for you right here on Montana San Fu. So back to the lead of the race we go. Zupank is having a good day out there from Germany. He was right up there in the swim lead as well as we had about 25 athletes head out there. But it wasn’t long after that that he really did clear out. Now he’s getting a good look at the valley below. He’s going up, rising up sharply here in Axen Provence. After this climb at 71 kilometers, he’ll be making a screaming descent over the flat part of the last part of the 90 km bike ride here today in Province. So, Axom [Music] Proce T2 coming up for Zup. But will he have enough in the tank to get it done? Blumenfeld is on the chase. And you saw him sort of I wonder if he was admiring the view. It looked like he was kind of looking out and admiring the view a little bit. Take a take a moment to uh smell the flowers. You’re in the lead of this Pro Series race. Uh pretty cool uh for him to be able to do that right now, but I can assure you his mind is more on keeping that lead and extending it for as much as he possibly can, getting a cushion between him and the runners. Uh, for sure Christian Bloomfelt, the man that’s on sort of everyone’s lips. Pierre Laora, uh, the man that Christian Bloomfelt didn’t really want to run, have to run against. So, um, we will be able to get as he gets to the top of this hill at 71 km, we’ll get a, uh, split on him and then we’ll be able to figure out who is in that main pack that is chasing him. And this is, I believe, the second on course, Nathan. It’s a really nice silhouette of a bike rider going up a hill in beautiful Hexom Province uh in this beautiful province uh region here in the south of France. It’s absolutely gorgeous. We’ve got a great day. It’s going to be perfect race conditions right now for our athletes that are trying to qualify for the Iron Man 70.3 World Championships coming up in Marbaya at the end of the year in Spain. And that will be the last of the Iron Man Pro Series races as well, where $1.7 million will be given out and shared between all of our top athletes as they go for every point and every second matters all the way to the finish line. 2500 points are on offer today for our winners of the men’s pro and the women’s pro divisions. Now, the Iron Man races being worth 5,000 and the World Championships are weighted just a little bit different and a little bit more again. So the race will be on right up until Maya. But right as we get back to the race course here is one of our Frenchmen in second place here trying to get after Zupun. Yeah. And they are on the other side of that climb. They’ll be coming screeching down the other side and 20 km to get back down into town. Um and onto that run course in Axon Fance. A threelap run course, 7 km per lap. It’s a twisty turny run. Lots of turns, lots of U-turns. Um, and weaving in and out through town. So, um, the last bit of this bike course just coming up here. You know, Yah Shamberg on his Fighting Chance interview there, he said that he doesn’t like doing the U-turns. He’s a taller athlete and and he looked at Bradley Vice and he said, “Well, you’re half the height of me, so it’s easier for you to Yeah, you got a lower center of gravity.” I thought that was a pretty funny comment that he made. But uh anyway, I think that um you know, good things come in small packages if you would agree with me. Yeah, absolutely. And the punct here is our leader. It looks like he actually is still on the climb. Um it’s a 4 km climb, so a substantial climb. You can get your heart rate up. You can do some damage on on that amount of uh um distance. and he’s trying to take a look around, see if anyone is coming to join him. No one in sight right now. Reuben, you’re looking good. Freshly paved road. Beautiful surface here. Reuben looking around trying to get a little bit of an idea of where he’s at in the race cuz he really hasn’t had the opportunity to get a split like the rest of the athletes out there today. So, Reuben just goes back into that beautiful position down there, hiding behind the hands. is there getting into the most aerodynamic position that he can at the top of the climb. He’s got a wonderful descent happening here and that’s where he can make a little bit of time on the rest of the competition. Now, like what we normally know, Minda, we we comment on it all the time as we watch Melan Pierre trying to accelerate away from her competition on the women’s side is that when you’re in a group uh you know, formation, it tends to slack off the pace a little bit and it it’s not as fast to descend. But Margeline Pierre, look at this setup on her bike riding a beautiful cadence at the moment and only one athlete has been able to uh you know keep up with the pace of the young French woman. Yeah, it looks like uh these two have cleared out from the rest of the pack and uh you know that was six strong. Of course, Margeline Pierre made up around 150 out of the swim. So, we had six women out of the water um leading and then we had Margeline make that bridge and now it looks like she has formed a partnership with a male athlete. No partnership. Yeah. So, I think that Marshall Ampier has now pulled out in front of the rest of the uh the women’s competition here today as we see uh it looks like Clevel going through there at the moment. So, uh, Lena Mesner. This is Lena Mesner. Lena Mesner. So, let’s go and take a a listen to Lena right now. Hi, I’m Lina Mesner. I’m from Germany and we’re here for the 70.3 race in exam for on Sunday. I’m a strong swimmer, so I think this is a good opportunity for me to to make it a hard swim and then going full gas on the bike. And I think, yeah, this is my strategy for Sunday as well. It’s a really different bike course. So, I think it’s more manageable alone than in Yolo. And I hope I will have a good one on Sunday. I hope it will suit me better than two weeks ago because I’m new to 70.3 distance. So I’m not used to ride like 90k straight in arrow position. So I’m really looking forward to have some sections of the course where I can yeah relax a little bit more. And I think I’m because I’m having a short course uh background. I’m very good at technical parts. And there are a lot of technical parts on the course. So um yeah, I hope I will have a good ride on Sunday. Well, she’s having a good ride for sure. Lena Mer, she had a great swim as well. And today, well, you’re out in the uh the wonderful provincial sun right now. You’re going past some of the most famous wineries and this region puts out a lot of agriculture as well. So, you can see getting overtaken by one of our age group athletes at the moment. Age group men’s athlete going past our women’s pro athletes. So they’ve taken around about 50 55 kilometers to uh get up and make these passes. So little bit of uh passing happening in the minor placings at the moment, but nobody’s been able to keep pace with Margeline Pierre. Yeah, we saw Margelain take stock of uh you know where she was at. She bridged the gap to these women a minute 50 out of the water behind them or out of T1 I should say and then bridged up within 30 km. uh took the lead and then sort of sat back for a little bit and it looks like she is now cleared out. But that’s uh that was Lena Meisner on screen and she just had Lisa Pertiier go past her. So uh these two women uh in the chase pack chasing down Margeline Pierre who is the local girl and she is really riding well today. Riding a great race. She was at a deficit of over a minute and a half when she left transition area there on the women’s pro side of things, but now uh really found her legs at the early part of the bike ride and made her way up at about the halfway point. Now she’s cleared out. The rest of the athletes here now have a job to do. It’s either to try and catch up or Margeline Pierre is just going to slip away. She had a ninth place just recently at a first race of the year in Valencia. And coming into this race knowing the the roads, you know, better than anybody else here in uh Province is Margeline. She grew up in Reunion and spent most of her childhood in this area and now makes her home in East France in the Maritime Alps not too far away. Thank you so Margeline knowing these roads very well uh being able to you know get those cornering uh you know skills uh going here today and and really making up a lot of time on the rest of the ladies. So coming up to the 2hour and 10 minute part of this race about about the halfway point of our women’s race today. Margeline Pierre is now cleared out and Margeline she just loves these kind of courses. We saw her excel in Nice. And now here in Axon Provence, another local race. Margelane is just cruising. She’s going to come to the climb and I think make some more damage. And we have so much more action coming up. The women about to hit the climb, the men coming into the Ruby T2. Here’s Elizabeth in the middle of the perfect workout for her. To create it, we analyzed her biometrics and genetics, her recovery rate, injury risk, and aerobic potential, her recent training sessions, the temperature, humidity, and elevation, the demands of her next race, and billions of data points from athletes just like her. With Tridot, Elizabeth gets faster, faster, and what does she have to do? I just opened Trid Dot and did my workout. Trot, we do the technology, you do the training. We’re not here to sell you on this life. You already chose it. No shortcuts, no hype, just work. Same as you. Built to outlast, endure. 40 years in and we’re just getting warmed up. Welcome to the Ohana. [Music] [Music] What do you want? Uh, you know what’s that uh really good non-alcoholic beer I keep hearing about? Do you have that really great non-alcoholic beer that I keep seeing? Do you have a non-alcoholic beer that actually tastes good? It’s athletic. You’re holding it. You mean athletic? You’re looking at it. I think you mean athletic. It’s not funny. Ask for it. Margelain Pierre continues to lead the women’s pro race of the Iron Man 70.3 Axom Proancece. He’d make quick work of it with a deficit of over a minute and 30 seconds out of the water. But into the lead of the race she goes right now and just really really rocketing away from the competition. Yeah, Margelene just looking rock solid um in that arrow position and she’s um yeah, she’s taking this race and making it her own. On paper, she is not the best biker, but when you put her on a course like this, I mean, she’s one of the best in the world. Uh we saw it in Nice. Uh of course uh we had Cat Matthews and uh and Lara Phillip as well um on on that race course and they are the best cyclists in the world and she was right up there with them. Um uh riding just phenomenally well and for a 25year-old woman I mean this this young lady has such a bright future and we’re just seeing her um power on full display right now. You’re very mature racy. You see that taking on some nutrition just a moment ago there and uh not in any hurry whatsoever to uh you know put it back into the cage there and just uh you know spinning just uh freewheing actually uh just out there for a couple of seconds just recovering and maybe taking a couple of deep breaths and I think that’s important from time to time to just reset and you know as they make their way through this field as we go through the wonderful sunflower fields now of Axom Province as they’re making their way back into town some of the uh vines as well out there from the wineries and getting very very close to the climb here for our women’s pro athletes. Our men’s pro have gone across the top. We can see now down at the valley there, the lavender fields in the the foreground there as we can see the maritime Alps in the background. Absolutely gorgeous racing here. We’ve been treated with a wonderful day. Started out a little chilly, 12° C or 52° F. It now is up over 20° uh in the Celsius and uh around about 75 degrees Fahrenheit at the moment. Uh humidity is just uh kicking down around about 65% and the wind is pretty minimal. We’re just at about 5 kilometers out of the east northeast. Yeah, really perfect conditions. Um I think we do see an athlete in the background here. This is the lead um men. This is Reuben Zapun leading the race. And I’m going to hazard a guess that that’s Nathan Goober. Yeah. Yeah. From uh from France. From France. Um so he is the only one sort of in no man’s land between Zapun and the main pack that contains Christian Blumenfvelt among many others. Yona Stroberg, Sam Dickinson, Casper STS, um Stephaks in there. Du there. Payet also Zognati and Zach House. We got a large uh contingent of athletes there just lining up right behind Zapun and getting ready for that 21 kilometer run now. You know they’re going to be charging out of transition area. It’s going to be a little bit of a trap too for some of them Mindo as they go out you know very very fast onto the run courses. Now this has been a challenging bike ride. So you know that this over you know a more of a flatter course it’s going to take a little bit more out of the legs. The legs are going to be sizzling a little bit coming off the bike here today and a little bit jelly like feeling for them running out the first part, but uh so let’s hope that they get out there on a nice even pace and give themselves an opportunity to work into the three laps here today. We’ll be able to give you a good idea of the runners opposed to the bikers out there today. But as we see Mara Lane right now just using every piece of the that very narrow road as she makes her way through some of the wineries and like I said it’s a it’s a very big agricultural region uh you know world famous for some of its herbs you know herbs to provenance are made down here and especially lavender fields and and all sorts of uh you know growing down here as well. One of the most famous things about Axen Province is its markets during the week as well. I’ve been been a big fan of the markets down there going down and get my legume and uh you know some of the olive oils that from the region and French wine and and also the fromage the cheeses that come from this region are really incredible as well. But I just love the architecture in this uh area of the world here in province. It’s just absolutely spectacular. And no wonder Zapuna was taking a good long look around before because it is gorgeous. It is gorgeous. I don’t mind a little fromage and veno. Um and uh it looks like a nice place to enjoy uh such things. I’m sure these athletes will be indulging after the race. Uh one of the best parts of racing so hard and and finishing it at lunchtime is that you can go out for lunch afterwards. There you go. You can visit one of the wineries or you can just hit the markets and uh or just get one of the local cafes down there as well. The ladies now are getting very very close to be able to get out of the saddle and stretch those legs. There goes Margelane on the first part of the climb here. As we can see their little elbow just uh raising up to about 5 1/2% here. That’s going to be about a four to 5 km climb here. So Marshall lane I I would expect is going to make a little bit more time up on the rest of the field. Sarah Pierre at 25 years of age. The young French lady is really on a tear today. She’s got that beautiful cadence happening right now. Looks like she’s just one on the bike here. She looks fantastic on the bike here and she really is making this thing a weapon. And uh you know, as we mentioned, I just think costs like this just suit her to a tea. She loves being up in the mountains. She’s very good at handling her bike. she can technically um you know carry a lot of speed through all of the descents which is really important when you’re racing because you those are seconds that you can take away from your competitors if you’re confident um on those descents. So Margelain, but you know, she’s a she’s a smaller in stature athlete, so that helps with the climbing too when you’re going uphill. If you’re a little lighter, um that certainly just makes uh the velocity uh stay a little bit higher, smaller, but very uh powerful. You know that uh you know, she’s she’s actually a really really good runner. And when you look at her run, she’s got great biomechanics. And when she does run, it doesn’t look like she’s running fast, but she actually is. But on a bike especially, she just looks like a fantastic time travel trailer. You can see when she’s in the saddle, look at those legs just going around, she’s pedaling circles. She’s pedaling 360°. There’s not any wasted energy in any part of that. You can see that she’s pulling up as well. She’s p pushing down with those quadriceps. Every muscle in her leg is engaged from the calf muscle to the hamstring to the quadricep. And Minda, that’s just, you know, beautiful cycling right there. Yeah, absolutely. Uh you love to see it, right? Like an athlete that’s just in their element doing what they love to do and just putting out um some great power. This looks like the second, third, and fourth on screen. So these athletes as well, sorry, fifth. So there’s 1 2 3 four athletes. So that’s uh second through fifth uh on screen and they are chasing Margel Pierre. Um, these women would be Lena Mesnner, Lisa Pertner, Marta Sanchez, and Lizzie Raina, I believe are in this group of four. And the lead now for Mara Lane has gotten to be just over a minute right now on these ladies as they started the climb there. So, Melane is just starting to clear out and you can see that our athletes on the chase here at the moment. You’ve got Lena Mitner there from Germany. She’s really trying to work hard at the front to keep the pace up. And then you’ve got Lizzie Raina sitting in third position here at the moment and Lisa Pura sitting in fourth. Well, actually third on screen at this point of time, but she’s sitting fourth in the race. And then also Marta Sanchez from Spain. So these ladies are working nicely. They’re working at a very uh you know legal space between each other’s bikes here at this point of time, but Margelane just too strong. Yeah, Margeline just uh was able to just get away and u as we said I think a course like this it’s kind of out of sight out of mind. I mean all of these women know that Margeline is up the road but I don’t think they have a choice. She, you know, breached that 150 in the first 30 km of this race. In that first 30 km was kind of a bit of a grinder up uphill, a sort of a couple of rollers, but uh now they’re on the true uh climb of this race. Um where the athletes will climb at an average 5% for 4 kilometers. Uh Marta Sanchez in the foreground here sitting at the back of this group. And then we have Yeah. Lisa Peridge just sitting there the next wheel and then you got Lizzy Raina and then right up the front there you got uh Lena Mesner from Germany she’s really trying to uh you know set the pace there but look at this the leader has really cleared out she has cleared you know out and and even to a point where you know the the ladies just weren’t even able to hold on because of the the power that this young uh French lady is really putting out right now is everything that she needs to and she needs to get out there and and establish a very decent decent lead. Lisa Pura this year is uh having a very solid start to 2025 and and she’s one of the ladies that I look to have one of the fastest uh you know foot speed here today for the run. So Margeline as we were saying before she doesn’t really have a weakness. She’s a good swimmer. She’s a terrific biker and she’s a great runner. So you know good on her. She’s just going to have to keep that uh the pressure on right now because over the last 20 to 25 km where she’s at or actually no round about the last 20 km where they are right now is where that she’s going to have to uh you know control herself and try at the same time make a little bit more of a gap in between the runners here. But you can see just heading around that hair pin there just absolutely beautiful out of the saddle very smooth goes back into the saddle looking great. Yeah. Yeah. And well, she it’s a kind of a an interesting uh predicament. You’ve you’ve created separation between yourself and the main other contenders of this race. Um do you like push extra hard or do you ride within yourself? What’s you know, I guess it depends on how confident you are with the run? I I think for Margela, she’s got to ride within herself because she’s clearly the number one cyclist out there today in this race. And so therefore, you know, she can only do what she can do. And the other ladies are, you know, they’re left at uh, you know, their own devices here. And that is to just, you know, keep that pace uh going according to their uh levels. And uh, why go over it? You’re not going to give yourself a a chance to have a good run today. And at this point in time, if you’re someone like Lisa Pura, you know, you got to know that Majain is a good runner, but I don’t think there’s anything that Lisa can do about it because when you look at it, she’s riding in on third wheel and uh you know, it’s it’s not getting the job done. But let’s go back to the men’s race here for a second because Zapun is now heading back into Axen Province and he’s just about to uh head off onto the run course. He’s done an excellent job today, Miranda. I have to commend him for doing, you know, what it needed to be done from from him and that is to hold that chase pack at bay. The chase pack was down to about five athletes. Now it’s back to about 12 to 15 athletes. Now what he’s done is really nothing short of amazing. And that was an incredible bike split by our men’s leader here today. Remember last year he did a 204. So as soon as we get some, you know, times that come through, we’ll let you know exactly what uh Reuben was able to do today. We’re heading off um the bike right now into the Ruby transition area number two. Minda, he looks pretty good. He looks great. He looks his stride is nice and long. He doesn’t look like he’s pulling up short at all. Um you know, he’s making quick work of this transition. It looks like it’s another long run through transition. Um he’s taken the helmet off uh and he is just moving through transition right now, trying to get in and out of there before anyone else does. Uh, it’s always good to, you know, make sure they don’t get get eyes on you um early. But again, this race course is three laps, a lot of U-turns, a lot of out and back sort of, uh, winding through uh, the town. So, uh, he, yeah, now in transition, he’ll grab his bag, find that number. Both long transitions. Uh, T1 and T2 today. So, lots of extra uh, time being spent in transition here. So, uh, you know, working on those transitions is very, very important. Taking a seat. Helmet goes off, but that needs to go back into the, uh, the bag and be replaced back on the rack there. So, Zupunk still got a bit of work to do, but he is making sure that he puts those socks on. So, he’s taking his time to make sure that he is comfortable, having a good look around as well. But, Zupun, he’s h got a good little lead, but our next athlete is just about to come into transition as well. Well, he’s going to have a over a minute and a half lead on our next athlete here and it might be Gabber from France as well. So, we’ve got Zupank from Germany and looks like our second place finisher is just about to head into the Ruby transition area as Zupank makes his way out. So, Germany number one in our men’s pro race heading out here in Axen Province and this looks like let’s see the number 34. Oh yes, I believe that is Nathan Gubar. Yep. Gabber Gabber from France coming into transition and we will be able to get a split uh on him probably around 90 seconds. Uh Welshy as you you guessed you eyeballed um and he is making his way through transition again. Long transition and we will the clock will start on Christian Blumen. Yeah, I can count up to 90, Miranda. Any further from there is a little bit difficult for me. But um today we’re looking at Zupank from Germany. He is the race defending champion as well. So he knows these roads in Ax and Provence and how to get it done. He’s got three loops of 7 kilometers now. A very twisty, very turny uh sort of a race circuit around here through the beautiful old streets of Axom Province. This uh place was founded in 132 BC. Miranda, believe it or not, as we get Zupunk now going through at um through transition there, but his bike time today was a 20351. So just faster than his uh time of 204 um last year. So we can see the group just coming off uh you know just chasing down this pay just coming through at the moment. There’s Christian Blumenfeld. He’s running uh nicely into transition, but our race leader, Zupun, is really heading out super fast here today. Yeah, and we have um all of the men coming in now. We have Casper Stors in there, Cas Casper Sepniaak, we have Sam Dickinson and Christian Bloomfeld, Tom Vilen, of course, Nathan Gubar came in second. We have Gregory Pavet P. Uh Czecharelli is going to yeah Jon Shamberg was in there. One of our race favorites. Zack House Dupi is there and Andrea Salber from Switzerland. Leo is just coming in and Vilheim Hirs. So you’ve got 15 uh actually 14 athletes just coming in within 2 minutes and 33 seconds of our leader there today. So what a race that we have on our hands. Zupant running out very very quickly. But look at this. Christian Blumenfeld just going to work immediately overtaking athletes left, right, and center. There is Zupun right now just running out through the streets of Axen Prom. The run course is 21.1 kilometers long. And now we can see that this race really heating up in the south of France. Yeah. And Christian Blumen felt a 230 23 sorry deficit on the lead. So he has some work to do to make up to uh Zupun, but again Zupun around a 114 is what he ran last year here. Uh Christian Blumvelt hasn’t done this race before, but on paper he should be under a 110. Uh so favor is in Christian’s hands, but again paper doesn’t mean anything. And as we look at the Wahoo Element Bolt bike time for Ruben Sapun, it is 20351. Just a smidge faster than what he did here last year when he won this race. Christian Blumenfeld making quick work of his transition trying to get after this young man right now. Ruben Zuptails from Germany. He is the race defending champion as well. And going just faster than he rode last year is a good sign of things to come. Now he’s running out very very fast here at the moment. The run course is 21 km long. This is the Hoka fly human fly 13.1 mi. Three laps. It’s a rolling course as they go past the fountain for the very first of three laps here today. But Zun is really not wasting any time. Mirinda running out very hard. But it’s Blumenfeld that’s on the chase. Gabur sits in second. Vivian was in third place heading out. Dickinson, Stephenak, then Blumenfeld, Shamberg, Veil, and then Czecharelli from Italy, and then Pay It rounded out the top 10. It was Casper Stors, one of our early race favorites as well in 11th place. So, Zupank gets it done in the first two sections over the swimming and the biking today. Can he hang on for the run today? Three laps and 21 kilometers the distance between him and the finish line. And a charging bull by Christian Blumenfeld. He is on the hunt. Yeah, absolutely on the hunt. And as we look at the Ruby transition to top three fastest males times, Viven from France 153, Steepniaak in 154, and Dickinson in 156. Race favorites out on the run course right now here at Iron Man 70.3. Axen Province, the seven race of the Iron Man Pro Series. 18 races, 17 locations, and a wonderful host of countries. Nine countries involved in this year’s Iron Man Pro Series that’ll all finish up in Marba coming in November. But it’s Christian Blumenfeld now that he’s made his way to the front of this course here in the chasing position. Second, third, and fourth. Simon Van from France is also running very well up here at the moment. Nathan Gubir from France. So Christian Blumenfeld has company, but he’s got company that’s going to chase with him. Yeah, this is second and third on screen right now. So a punct sitting in first. Christian making quick work so far. Christian’s taken out about 25 30 seconds. He’s now 147 down on Zapun. So, Christian really moving, but uh you see this windy run course. Now, this uh race like this when it’s windy, it’s sort of hard to find that rhythm. So, you kind of have to get around the corners. Uh try to keep your pace into the corners and uh take all the tangents, too, because anytime uh a race is kind of windy like this, you can waste a lot of your um or just run extra if you’re not taking the tangent. So, um, keeping your wits about you and and taking the shortest line at every turn, um, super important. But, uh, yeah, this man is being hunted. Well, Zupunk right now is, uh, you know, into his race pace at the moment. He ran out very, very hard here, but he’s now settled into a nice looking pace, more like, you know, the pace that he needs to be carrying through 21 km. He did run out very, very quickly. So that might come back to haunt him a little bit later, but as the lactic acid may set in, but at this point in time, what a great race that he’s having. Van from France is having a good race, too. But Christian Blumenfeld, his group is now trying to chase it down. Gabur is having a good day for France. Sam Dickinson right up there in the top five at the moment. They’re all under two minutes from our race leader. So Minda, we’ve got lots to report on over the next uh you know hour and I think that it’s all going to change here round about halfway. Yeah, I think so too. I think uh Christian and Vavan Simon from France uh these two on screen on the right hand side uh look to be running together and definitely making inroads on our leader but a lot of movement down further. Sam Dickinson, uh Shroberg, Casper Stor’s down in ninth place. Uh we we definitely have a race on our hands. And Pierre Lor just popping on. He’s in 15th. He’s uh 327 down. So he is probably our fastest runner with Christian Blumenfelt on paper. Again, paper sometimes doesn’t mean that much when it comes to race day, but it’s still good to have that information. Um he has the pedigree. Um, I’ll look to see him run through the field. Yeah, look out for Pel Core because at 3:27 right now, that’s going to come down in a hurry and and he will be one of the athletes to look out for today with his background in triathlon coming from the Olympic distance background and and doing very well at that. He’s a WTCS winner and also represented his country at multiple championship level races. All right. So, Zupun is making his way around Axen Province on this threelap course at 7 kilometers in distance. Very, very flat, but Minda, I would imagine that just, you know, settling into that pace and making sure that you get the nutrition plan uh you know, on path straight away here as he follows the leader on the bike there. You can see just making his way around this beautiful city. Yeah, it has to feel pretty good to be leading uh this race and and you know def being defending champ and wearing that number one we were chatting about earlier that that means something and um that’s a motivation in itself. We used to always joke uh you know you have to beat your number so when you’re number one uh there’s only one spot uh available for you if uh otherwise failure. Just kidding. U but he is definitely putting together a really great race. the pedigree of the athletes behind him chasing um some of the best in our sport and and legends of our sport. Uh so he is definitely having a really great day. But uh these two men here, Christian Blumenfeld um and the Frenchman running together and they are on the hunt. Leon Chevelier just getting off the bike as well, but he is now at 6 and a bit minutes down on the rest of the field. So you can imagine that Leon is going to run through the field a little bit as well. But Blumenfeld at this point in time just running along nicely and uh just getting the job done as we can see that uh he’s being paced very very nicely through the race right now and as Reuben’s gone through he’s running an average pace there very very quickly there 3minut pace uh you know starting out so we we saw what he was doing early on and that’s why we commented on the on the really fast speed that he went out at 3 minutes probably a little bit too fast but uh they settled into because you know 3:15’s uh average should be a a better time to get the job done but uh when you go out hard like that very hard to keep that pace up. Yeah, I think uh you know the adrenaline coming off the bike uh you know some crowds in transition you see him looking adrenaline. Yeah, I mean I feel I think that you know that that comes into it and then you just sort of have to you know calm your nerves and settle. He does keep looking behind him and I just want to whisper into his ear that just look forward. there’s, you know, no point in looking behind. Just keep pushing forward as best that you can. Um, you know, if there’s some someone coming, there’s nothing you can do about it. All you can do is focus on what you’re doing right now. And that time is is coming down. They’re about 121 back. That’s Christian. Um, Yonas Stroberg is 129 back. And Sam Dickinson is running with Yonas as well um in fifth place. So our top five through the first 2.7 km of this run. Uh so almost half a lap. Um not quite I guess but uh the opening few kilometers Christian is moving along with Simon Van Vivan. Van yes Vienn is moving along with Christian Blumenfeld coming up to that halfway marker in the first lap 7 kilometers. Got three of those to come. But it’s all Zapart from Germany. Swimming great, biking even better, and hanging on to the run. [Music] [Applause] [Music] control people in the street. Come on everybody and move your feet. I don’t stop. Don’t stop the beat. I can’t stop. Can’t stop the beat. I won’t stop. Won’t stop beyond the finish lines. Our commitment goes the extra mile. We are the Iron Man Foundation. We’ve given back more than $55 million to support our mission of leaving a positive impact throughout race communities. Without our amazing athletes, volunteers, and givers, we wouldn’t be where we are today. Together, let’s continue this journey of impact. Join the Iron Man Foundation, and be a part of something extraordinary. [Music] [Applause] Meet Kicker Run from Wahoo. A revolutionary indoor running experience where you just run and your feet set the pace. We call it run-free mode, a gamechanging technology that allows you to change speeds naturally, just like you do outdoors. You can even let popular training apps control the speed and grade for you. Kicker Run by Wahoo. It’s time to run free. Off the bike in the top five today. Yonas Shamberg, our early swim leader here at the Iron Man 70.3 ax. And Provence is now trying to get the job done in the early part of the run. Now the run is three laps of 7 km, 21.1 km or 13.1 miles in total today and the tall German is really getting after it now. He’s chasing down another German. That is the leader in Zupant. He is now a little bit over one and a half minutes behind Zupant as he tries to get after his compatriate. Christian Blumenfeld and Simon Viane from France are really putting down a concerted effort to run as a duo and do some of the pacemaking, but Dickinson and also Stornak and Gabur are now falling off the pace. Yeah, Yonas Stroberg looking really good here on the run at the early stages. Uh he has Christian Blumenfeld and Vivan in his sights. He has a nice long stride. Um, and they’re going slightly downhill at this section. So, you sort of see him opening up that stride a little bit and really rolling down the hill here. But, uh, this is a real race. Uh, there’s a lot of athletes uh within, you know, that 1 minute to 12 down. So, down to ninth place. So, a lot of racing yet to go. But this is our leader, Reuben the Pun. Uh the men behind him are taking away his lead very quickly. So we will I’m pretty certain see a lead change probably toward the end of this first lap. But uh he is running very well. It’s just that Blumenfeld and Vain and Shroberg and Dickinson are also running very fast. Yeah, Viane and Blumenfeld ran out as a duo. They’re running very nicely in the first part of the u you know the runway over the first 2 km but it was Yonis Shamberg that had the fastest average um average speed going through there at the 2 kilometer marker. So look out for Shamberg to uh start catching up a little bit as well. Zupta has gone out at a very cracking high pace on the run course here early as you can see just running downhill through some of the the beautiful parks here in Axen Province as well but he’s got company from behind that he’s going to be Blumenfeld and Vain they are making their way up toward this guy now if Shawnberg can hold that pace it’ll be very interesting over the middle part of this race because things might all come together. Yeah, I think uh he will run up on Blumenfeld. It just be a matter of what happens then and how hard have they biked, right? Like what’s left in the bike legs is uh some athletes going out too hard. Um or you know it’s kind of a bit of a cat cat mouse game at this point. Uh pushing your competition out. Yes, as we see Schwamberg has run up onto the shoulder of Viv Vivan and Christian Bloommerfelt sitting in third right now. So this is second, third and fourth on screen and they are all chasing Zapunk. This is amazing to watch right now. This is real racing. This is where it uh is going to get very interesting cuz Blumenfeld, you know how tough he is. and Vain. This is Vie’s biggest race of the year so far and he’s got some fresh legs happening. Yannis Shamberg has already raced Iron Man um South Africa where he finished third. And what about Texas Iron Man for Christian Blumenfeld where he went so fast a 724 and and just absolutely amazing on that day. Does he have the ability to recover in time to uh you know get his legs back into that uh you know shape there, Mindo? Yeah, that’s the big question mark, right? Like Iron Man and that was a big performance racing in Texas, really hot. Um he ran very very quick. Um just a phenomenal performance from Christian Blumenfelt in Texas not too long ago. So I’m just wondering if maybe there’s a little bit of that uh still in his legs. The man is incredible though, the training that he’s able to has been putting down since Iron Man Texas. it seems that he’s, you know, you know, back and recovered. Um, but I think, you know, when you come into a race and everyone else is sort of peing or having their day. Um, most days I’d still bet on Christian Bloomfeld cuz he just is that good. Um, but maybe maybe today that little bit of that Iron Man Texas is still in his legs. Well, he ran a 234 that day. So, you got to remember that that might be in his legs. and he ran a 10719 in Oceanside, but he did come off the bike with a flat tire and, you know, try and make himself back into the top 15 there. But, you know, when he when he raced at Oceanside, he put it all on the line on the run anyway. So, 107 that is just so good on a course like that. Margelain Pierre from Nice, France. She grew up in this area here. knows the roads very very well. She is now getting the job done in the women’s pro race here in Axom Prommont. And I tell you what, Minda, this young lady has been very impressive today with only just a minute and a half deficit out of the swim. Made a very good jump start to the bike ride today. Got up into the lead and now accelerated away from the rest of the women professional athletes. And now on the descend into town, she’s taken the race by the horns and just accelerating away. Yeah, Margeline putting together just a phenomenal swim bike. I mean, yes, she didn’t swim as fast as the other women, but she was in striking distance and and caught up uh within the first 30 km and then she was able to put distance between herself and the other main contenders. And now uh riding into town, uh she’ll get off the bike in first place. And uh let’s see what she has in her legs. Did she over bike? I don’t think so. I think this is just uh the perfect course for her in terms of a little bit of climbing um and just the the sending um and she is such a great little bike bike bike handler that she’s able to use those strengths to just take seconds away from her competition and and now you know one of the best runners in the field too. I think uh Lisa Pertiierre is probably the one athlete I think um on paper who is faster um but you know we’ll have to see what that deficit is to the next women. Majane one I man Portugal in 2023 with a run time of 3 hours and then last year after that very very difficult bike ride in Nice. She ran a 302, a very credible run time uh you know down there in the code deserve a flat run course, but I tell you what, coming off uh you know that bike course at Nice, your legs are just absolutely smashed and the last part of that race, you know, might be downhill and the you know about the last 8 kilometers is dead flat. So there’s absolutely no respite whatsoever. You got to keep those legs going and then you know put together a very very fast marathon to have a good day there. And when she finished fourth there, she was 24 years of age. And uh I tell you what, it just, you know, bodess well for this young lady in the future. So Margeline Pierre is now making her way in toward the Ruby transition area number two. And by the look, she’s going to carry a little bit of uh a little bit of a lead with her. Yeah, absolutely. I think uh just how much of a lead, right? That that’s all the question. What will that ticker say when she runs out of transition? How much of a buffer does she has? Does she Does she need to be aggressive? I think she’ll be a pretty aggressive out on the start of the run um just to try and make sure she puts the you know the competition in her rear view mirror. And uh we’ll see what uh what she has in the legs. Short little climb up to the highest point in Axen Province before descending into the finish line there. and she’ll swap that the bike and the helmet today for maybe a sun shade and uh some sunnies and a nice pair of running shoes and and head out onto the run course because at the moment she’s really demolished the the field on the bike ride here today. But she’s got four chases that are trying to you know limit the amount of time that they’re going to be in deficit when they get off the bike today. Now Lena Mau has been one of the ladies there that really pushed the pace there in the in that chase group and then also Lisa Purder. She comes on, you know, from a 12 years of racing in the Olympic distance uh uh there and she’s uh you know, gone out and said that, you know, she loves 70.3. It’s a different uh race uh you know, set up for her. All right, so let’s get back to our men’s race. The Punk is still leading. He’s coming up to uh the end of the first lap of the run course here today. He’s leading by Shamberg. Look at Shamberg. The two Germans out there are getting the job done. Van from France is in third place. says Christian Blumenfeld from uh Norway and also from Norway, Casper Stors is sitting in fifth place as well. So, two Germans and two Norwegians and a a local boy from France in the top five. Yeah, Stor moving up with a field in on that run there. He cut off the bike a little bit uh further down the the field. Uh certainly uh starting to make some inroads on the end of the run, but we see Margelane Pierre now making her way toward the Ruby T2. She’ll take her feet out of those pedals so that she can hop off that bike before the dismount line and she’ll hand her bike off to some volunteers and she’ll be into that long transition. She’ll grab her bag and get out onto the run as quickly as possible. And also seeing the men’s runners on the right hand side of the course gives her a little bit extra motivation to get out there and start her half marathon the 21 kilometers. Margelane Pierre now comes down the treeline streets of Axam Promont and exits off the bike and the dismount line right there. Pierre now of France is the leader on our women’s pro race here at the Ruby transition number two. She was 1 minute and 30 seconds down after transition area number one, but now finds herself in first place over this long transition. Still running with the helmet on. And will she put the socks on? I think so. On a windy course like this, but we look at the Wahoo Element Bolt. Bike time. She’s rode a 2211 for the 90 km. That’s 56 miles. So, we will see what the next fastest bike split is. But uh yeah, I think uh you know, I think socks are a good idea when especially when the course is super windy like this. Typically your feet will slide around a little more in your shoe and um maybe it won’t be a problem for the first lap, but maybe by the third lap you’ll you’ll start to feel it. The blisters will start to come up and um you know in worst case scenario it can really like hinder your running um at the latter stages of the run. So there we go. pink socks 6 minutes faster than the time set last year by Marian Legro uh from France. So, and it looks like a bike course record for Majelain Pierre uh with a 221. So, congratulations to the 25year-old French woman here as she’s in Ruby transition number two and really with a fast time. There goes the helmet into the bag there. Very smart racing, not wasting any time by doing one thing at a time there. There was a couple of things. multitasking in transition. And just like that, Margeline Pierre is out onto the run course with a healthy lead. Yeah, it looks like a 145 over Lizzy Raina and Lena Mesna and Marta Sanchez 151 back and then Lisa Pertier as we see on screen um 153. So almost 2 minutes back to Lisa Pertier who on paper as we mentioned is the fastest runner on C on um in this race. Um Margel and Pierre probably also one of the fastest runners on course. So it’ll just be a matter of who has what left in the legs after that really tough bike. Yeah, it looks like Margeline’s running out sensibly at the moment. Just getting into a nice groove uh straight away just like on the bike today. She looked absolutely fantastic on the bike. She’s got a really nice um you know turnover at the moment. I love the arm carriage as well. Very relaxed, you know, from the 25year-old. This is uh good going so far. It’s early. Yeah, it absolutely is early and and she does love to let the hair flow. She likes she likes to let the hair free and run free. Um so she’s you see her there. Let the hair out so I can uh release my run power. She’s working on it. She is working on it. Yeah. Yeah, that’s what she says. So, okay, we got three laps on the run. The distance 21 kilometers. Let’s go over and have a look at the run course map right here in Axen Province. Yes. So, 13.1 miles, 21 km. Three laps will run through the heart of Axon Province through city parks and around the Fountain Dear before finishing on Miraboom. And that’s uh right there where we are right now. Just heading on into that finish line right there at the course. Mira. So there’s Van from France. He’s now in second position. Shamberg who made that really aggressive move early on is now just in there as well. There’s Christian Blumenfeld. And uh this is really good to see this coming through the aid station here. The athletes just getting all fired up going through there. Shamberg in second place and there’s Van just going through at the moment. Yes. So we saw Zapun um actually was in the third. So I haven’t seen Shamberg initially. We did have him running with Vivan and Blumenfeld but I don’t see him. So he may have been um he may have dropped off the back of these two men but they this is first and second on screen right now. We saw them go second and third. Yeah first and second. They’ve passed Zapunked. They’ve gone past they’ve gone past the punct. Yeah. So, uh the the image we saw earlier was the punct behind them. Um so we have first and second right now. And as we look at the AG1 run supplemental stats, Simon Van M23 was running an average of 317 minutes per kilometers for that segment. Um and we’ll we’ll get another split at 30430. Well, things can change like that when you’re offcreen, that’s for sure. And I tell you what, that came back fast. And Vain, he’s running a great race at the moment. Now, last year, race of his life. Yep. He’s having the race of his life. Uh, for sure. Like last year, he had a couple of good results, but this is his first Iron Man 70.3 of 2025. So knowing that he’s got a really fast set of legs happening the moment, he’s going to have to hold off. The fastest guy in 2020 is the Olympic champion. That was Christian Blumenfeld. This is Steph um this is Katpa Steppnak now from Poland as he makes his way through the competition as well. Casper Stor is up there as Chamberg is. Dickinson Payet and Steppnak Goober is still in there and Pier Le look out for Pierre. He’s already made up a minute and 27 seconds. Holy moly. Piercore is rolling. He’s 122 down from the lead right now. Vain leading. Blumenfeld second. Zapont going backwards. Casper Stor’s about to pass him or probably already has passed him. Yonas Stroberg dropped off the pace. He was running with Blumenfeld and Vain um moments ago. Sam Dickinson 41 seconds back. uh Casper Stipniaak who we are on screen with right now 113 back. So uh yeah we we missed a little bit of the action there um in the lead change but uh we have a race on our hands and Kristen Bloomfelt looks like he’s having to work very hard to stay with the van. Yeah, we talked about running out hard, you know, out of transition area and Yonas Shamberg ran out really really hard. Look at Casper Stors. He’s just made a, you know, easy progression just running out there smoothly and sitting in third position at this point of time. So, you know, using some good tactics there as we can see Casper Storms and uh, you know, getting to the front of the race there. It was Vienn. He’s wasted absolutely zero time to get up there. Now looking at this is Greg Payet from Luxmbourg just going through at the moment. Looking like he’s got a very nice little stride happening. Love his forward lean. He’s got that chin tuck down there and just pointing the shoulders at the target. I love the forward lean there, Minda, because gravity never lies. No. Yeah, you have a forward lean to help. Um it’s almost like a controlled forward forward forward falling. So if you lean forward, the gravity sort of helps take you forward and uh it sort of helps with um keeping that pace going. So, you’re not just using your legs, you’re using your um your posture to continue to run fast. At the lead of the race, Vienn and Christian Blumenfeld. You can see a slight little grimace on the face of Blumenfeld. But if it wasn’t that, it wouldn’t be Christian because he wouldn’t be trying hard enough. So, because Christian is one of the guys that loves to hurt. Look at that leader out there. He’s just giving it absolutely everything at the moment. So the end he is having the race of his life and look at that. He just absolutely looks like um you know signs of Alistister Brownley. I I just think that he looks a lot like Alistister Brownley when he runs and you know up on the toes like that as well. So Christian Blumenfeld not giving an inch but Caster Casper Storms is really giving us a good race today as well. So our medal positions Van from France is in first place. Blumenfell and Stors in third place right now. So, the two Norwegians chasing down the Frenchmen. Yeah. And as we look at the lead two men, um Christian is just so tough and you know he’s hurting. You know, he has some Texas in his legs. You you know, but in and this young young athlete Von is having the race of his life. There’s not too much time between them and Casper Stors. Casper Stor’s having a fantastic race today. Again, Casper, this is his third Pro Series race in Oceanside. He didn’t get too far into the run before he u pulled out. He finished Texas. Um and I expect him to to finish here today as well, but he’s only like sitting six to 7 seconds back uh from these two men. So, uh he is well and truly in this race as well. Christian taking a look back to gauge on where he is in the competition and what he’s got to do to get the job done. Van is running a a mighty race at the front there trying to hold off an Olympic champion, an Immare world champion. What would you be thinking, Minda, when you’re in that situation as we get a good look at Margeline Margeline Pierre now running free with the hair? She finally got the hair released. We’ll get back to the men’s race in just a second, but she said, you know, during the week, look, I love being free. I love racing with my hair down. And today, good for you. You’re in the lead. You can do whatever you want to do. But not only that, just to be able to lead off the bike and lead a race full stop in your hometown. And she grew up just outside of Axon Province. Uh lives in uh Nice, France now, but uh she’ll have a ton of support out there on course. Um and yeah, I mean just to go out there, be leading a race and have, you know, so much support in your hometown. I bet her family’s all there, her friends are all there. Uh but yeah, good for her. Um, run free my girl. Getting the ice there. Uh, just tucked up in some of the sleeves there. And you know, it is warming up a little bit, but the athletes here just trying to keep their cool around the streets of Axen Provence. This is a beautiful region of the world. Very popular in triathlon. Two great races going on at the one time. Men’s pro leader from France. Women’s pro leader from France. Well, you could say it’s some sort of French day here. [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Applause] [Music] Hey, hey, [Applause] [Music] Stop the be and [Applause] [Music] go. Don’t stop the beat. I can’t control my feet. Keep your people in the street. Come on everybody and move your feet. I don’t stop. Don’t stop the beat. I can’t stop. Can’t stop the beat. I won’t stop. Won’t stop. Iron Man 70.3 Axon Provence is brought to you by Qatar Airways. Going places together and by AG1. Better finishes start with AG1. And Greg, we are with Pierre Lor who is fastest on course right now. He is just about to make a pass into I think Gregor Payet into seventh place. So he’s starting to roll through the field. He is running faster than the lead duo of Vienn and Blumenfelt and Stors. But he has still a fair way to go. He’s still around 117 back from the lead, but he will make his way through this field. Let’s go over and listen to Pier Leur about what he says about this race. I am Pierre Lor. We are in X and we are racing 70.3 X on France. My tactics will be to be in France on the bike and then uh take like just uh moving on my own race pace. Uh, and I think trying to uh to be technical on the on the run with uh going through uh the corners really fast. I think this is really important and still relax. Well, definitely the fastest runner on course. Now, France are going to be very happy about what they’re seeing here at Axen Promce today because in our men’s pro race, it is Simon Vienn. He is leading. He’s having the race of his life. Now in the women’s pro race, it is Margeline Pierre. She’s leading her race here as well as having a very, very fast bike split. Taken down the course record there, only a minute 30 down off the swim and now into the lead of this race. But what we’re witnessing on screen right now is the fastest runner in this race. He’s picking off one by one, just inside of the top 10 off the bike. And already into seventh place is Pierre Lor. They haven’t even hit the 11 km marker right now. So, Pier Leo is on a mission right now. And it looks like with this turnover, this race is far from finished. Viain might be the leader from France at the moment, but look out for Laor, but when you look at Marshall Lane Pierre, she’s got a beautiful pace happening at the moment and just getting the job done over Lisa Pura and Lena Meisner from Germany at this point of time. So the young French lady, 25 years old from Nice, France, is getting the job done and running along here in Axen Province just fine. Minda, yeah, she’s looking great. The women behind are taking seconds out of her. Not um chunks of time, you know, a few seconds here and there. So uh Lena Mesner sitting in second, she’s about 144 down. Um and as we look at the Ruby transition two times, Margeline Pierre was through transition super quick in 208. Lena Mesner Mesner was uh 212 down and Nikki Bartlett uh was 217 um out of transition. But uh we look where Nikki Bartlett is. She’s around 7 minutes back from the lead. But Nikki is very fast runner. It’s just that those top five women are really cleared out and Margeline the lead of that pack. Love the way that Margeline is running right now with no real urgency in the legs. Just into a beautiful pace, beautiful rhythm and that’s what you have to establish, you know, in these races like we, you know, we saw some of our men’s athletes that just run out full of adrenaline and just ready to get after it, but it’s it’s not sustainable. You just cannot run out that fast and hold it. And um you know this young lady is running along with a lot of maturity I must say today that she’s just shown a you know race for the ages. Yeah, she’s finding her pace and she’s uh relaxed and finding that rhythm. Um she she looks fantastic. Uh she does not need to panic. She has still 145. Um but we are looking at the top three men. That’s I believe Casper Stors in third, but we have Christian Bloomfelt sitting in second place there and then Van from France leading the race here in on Province. And with Pier Leo, you know, really showing some pace at the back, you know that these athletes are getting a split from the side of the road. But Casper Stors right now from Norway is having a great day as well. Looks like Vienna is just trying to, you know, keep his turnover, but struggling a little bit. There’s Christian Blumenfeld. He is just looking at that heart rate monitor, just making sure that all of his numbers are lining up at the moment. He looks across at one of his training partners and and just says, “Hey, Casper, take a look around. What do you see?” Uh, not much, Christian. Let’s just keep it going there, bro. What do you think uh Vienn thinks if uh Stor runs past him? is like he’s trying to fight Christian Blumenfelt and then one of the other Norwegian um athletes on the Norwegian train they like to say um comes up and runs on your shoulders as well. Now he’s got um two training partners um hunting him down. I really don’t think that Vain has looked behind but now what he can sense is what he’s hearing. And I think that what he’s hearing is 4 feet hitting the ground. Not uh not of him and and Christian Blumenfeld, but six feet hitting the ground with Venne Blumenfeld and Stor. So I think that right now he might be just thinking, well gosh, I’m leading this race with Christian Blumenfeld. But where did Casper Storms come from? So now he’s up into the top three as well. So we got three athletes racing along for the medals. But this is far from over because I do think the Pier Le core over the last lap of the run is going to do something spectacular. And here he is right on screen at the moment. Look at this turnover that Pierre has. Look at the drive in those arms. Those arms are driving forward. Look at his knee drive. He’s coming up onto the back of Shamberg right now and he will overtake them like they are standing still. Look at Pierre Lorgo. Beautiful running. Look at the chest out. He’s just really thrusting himself forward there. The arms are even going forward. Look at the motion, the turnover. Shamberg side to side. Pier Le Core straight ahead and straight past. Yeah, he made real quick work of that uh passing Zapant as well, our um race leader off the bike and through the whole uh bike portion of this race. But uh unfortunately for Zapun, it is a triathlon and 21 km run. But Lor looking textbook um and aggressive. You see the um effort in his face. He’s moved up into fourth place now. So he just has Blumenfelt, Villan, and Storms ahead of him. Uh they’re still probably around a minute up the road. Uh will he be able to catch them? I mean, I don’t know. Welshy, this is coming down. This is No, this will be interesting. You know, like I said, I think that the last lap of of this run race is going to get very interesting. Like, you’ve got someone like Vienn right now from France. He’s leading the race, right? He’s been leading ever since they overtook Zup, the early run leader. It was Christian Blumenfeld that didn’t even, you know, come to the front. He’s let Vienn do all of the pace setting. Was that because he wanted to let his training partner, Casper Storms, catch up? I don’t think so. Casper’s running a good race, but now what they have to worry about is what Pierre is doing behind them. Not Margeline Pierre, but Pier Le. So, as we do see Margeline Pierre come up here on the run course, she’s doing her own race. Look at the, you know, this stride is is just, you know, speaking volume. She’s just got that, you know, pace going at the moment. She’s running along at a, you know, a decent pace here at this point in time, you know, and at at 5 kilometers into it, she’s still got the lead and the other ladies are trying to come down on it. Now, what we’re looking at here is Mner from Germany and also Lizzy Raina, you know, they’re working hard, but they’re not taking the chunks of time out that they expect to. And and that was a good call on your side, Mindy. You were saying that they’re only taking a second out here and there. And if Margelane can, you know, just keep that pace going, then that’s all she needs to do. Well, this is why Margeline Pierre went through 5K in 1831. So, she’s just over 6 minute, well, no, right around 6 minute mile pace. That’s uh equals like a 118 uh 119 if she can hold this pace uh which I think will be good enough um to win the race, but she has to hold the pace. Um, you know, I don’t think she’s gone out too too fast just yet. At 2.7K, it was 144. So, when they do get to the 5 kilometer marker, you’ll be able to tell exactly what that is. Just slowing only a fraction going through the aid station there. Margelan Pierre is racing very, very well today. just thinking about everything and putting everything together and going through that aid station, making sure that she gets in all the nutrition that she can possibly down at that point of time. So, you know, 147 at the the 2.7 and what’s it going to be at the 5 kilometer marker for the chasers? Yeah, I mean, we’ll get that uh information momentarily. I mean, I I think again I think it’s going to be a few more seconds. I don’t think that they’re going to be taking um you know given that she’s running 6 minute mileish pace or you know 345k pace. Uh yeah actually they’ve lost time. So it looks like Lisa Lena Misnut same time 147 to 147 and Lizzy Raina at 148. So they’re all basically they ran 3 seconds faster than her through five. Um and um Lizzy Raina ran at 1824. So Lizzy ran 7 seconds faster of her through the faster than her through the 5k. So unless she slows down significantly, I I mean I don’t see this going the other way. I don’t think they’re going to be able to speed up. It’s just a matter of whether Marane’s gone out too fast, which I don’t believe she has. Yeah, that can possibly happen. you know, over the the last lap and a half or so, but at this point in time, looks like the 25year-old French lady is just running super well at the moment and in control of this race here in Axen Promise. [Music] [Applause] This is where I want to be. Heat. Heat. N. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Meet me halfway once heaven. Yes, that’s perfect. [Music] There’s no limit to how far a dream can take you. Start in your own adventure now. Katar Airways. [Music] Things are heating up on the streets of Axen Province. It was Simon Vain from France over the first couple of laps who was our early leader on the run here after overtaking Zup. But now the pace is on. The 2020 Olympic champion, the Iron Man world champion has now decided it’s time to go on the run. Casper Stors from Norway, the only man to keep up with this incredible human and triathlete Christian Blumenfeld. Now, just a few weeks ago, he was a 724 finisher at the Iron Man Texas, running at 234 and bringing it home for the victory there today is going to be Christian Blumenfeld. Will it be Blumenfeld? Will it be Thorns or will it be somebody else that is really putting up a fight of his own? That is Pier Le Core. Pier Leor came from a magnificent deficit off the bike here today to run himself up into fourth place at the moment. But will the Frenchman catch the other Frenchman? Will it be Van to fall back one here today? Well, anyway, now it’s time to check back in with our try dot athlete Sue Dawson to see how predictive swim time compared to her actual swim time today. Sue Dawson wearing 621 today predicted a 3919. She was very very close a 407. So she was only around about 40 uh 42 seconds or so off that prediction. So well done to you Sue Dawson and congratulations. And Sue is now out on the bike course and we will check in with her at the end of the race day. Iron Man and Trident will post her finish time along with her split times on social media. But back to the action here in Axon Provence. It looks like Christian Blumenfelt’s had enough of running with everyone else. He is clearing out. Clasper Stones cannot go with him. Christian Blumenfelt is a man on a mission. So when you’re running out, you know, you got Christian Blumenfeld on your on your tail like you know Simon Vienn was uh you know just moments ago. Simon just probably thought, well, I’m having the greatest race of my life here and I got the Olympic champion right behind me, but I’m controlling him. But Minda, did you ever see a sense of urgency from Christian? He was just looking down, biting his time, looking at his watch, looking at his heart rate, making sure that he’s, you know, got enough left in the tank. And now he made that acceleration. Casper Stors, his training partner, tried to go with him, but no, he was denied. Christian Blumenfeld, sense a little bit of something else happening behind him. Yes, Christian, you’re right. It’s Pier Leor. He is the Frenchman that you should be worried about because he is really flying down the streets of Axen Proce and the lady who’s getting the job done running a very nicely paced race today is Marshall Lane Pierre from Nice France. She grew up in this area right here in Axen Province and knows the streets very very well and today she is a great pace happening at this point of time and getting after the victory herself. Yeah, Margel Pierre holding her own. Um the women behind her are so far unable to really take any meaningful time out of her. They took a few seconds here and there early and then she sort of holding steady right now. Lena Mesner sitting in second right now. Lizzy Raina sitting in third. Mart Sanchez falling back in fourth and Lisa Pertier falling back a little further down at 240 back now. Lisa Pertiierre was an athlete we thought might be able to uh match Pierre or even make inroads on Pierre, but uh maybe that Iron Man Texas performance from her uh recently um still in her legs. And then we see Nikki Bartlett moving up into the top six as well. Yeah, we can see the uh performance stats on the 5 kilometer run point. Marshall Pierre running along at a great average pace at 340 there. So really really cool to see that Meline is doing a nice job of it. There is Lizzy Raina just trying to get the job done here as well. Leisa Lena Misner has been strong all day uh too. But uh I got to tell you what this young Marshall Pierre today has been really really impressive with the way that she’s just gone about her business and you know gotten to the front and trying to hold on to it now. But she’s going to be met with a little bit of competition because Lena M is not going to give up. Nor is Lizzy Raina, nor are the rest of the ladies out there today. And maybe Lisa Pura has a little bit of Iron Man Texas still left in the legs as well. Yeah, absolutely. And we did actually, you know, early in the run, we were talking about Christian Blumenfelt, maybe has Iron Man Texas in legs. He didn’t look great in the first lap. You know, I saw a grimace. I I wondered if he was on the ropes a little bit, but uh maybe he was just biting his time. I think he took a little bit of time to come into his uh pace and to feel good. You know, when you’ve done Iron Man racing, it takes a little while. So maybe that’s the same for Lisa Pertier as well. Um having come off an Iron Man now shifting gears and trying to find that extra gear in 70.3 racing. It might just take her a little bit to get those legs going again. Well, let’s just take a little bit of time out to, you know, talk about a learning moment and a teaching moment. A learning moment is that someone like Yian Shawnberg went out way too hard, got into that second position there really early and then just faded. Whereas someone like Christian Blumenfeld with the experience that he has, he’s a veteran athlete, moved his way up in the field. He didn’t go to the lead, he let somebody else lead. He went to the lead when he felt it was time to go. So that’s just a learning and a teaching moment. Let’s go back to Margeline Pierre right now. Just running through uh the streets here. She’s coming up to around about halfway uh or actually up to the 7.5 km marker as she makes her way through this course in Axen Proancece along the flat roads here and you can see that she’s just getting the job done. Just turn over is one thing. One foot in front of the other and Minda what’s going through her head right now with a lead. I think right now she’s uh she’ll be getting splits and she’ll know um you know what’s happening behind her. She’s holding steady at the 7.5 um K. Lizzy Rainer is right right running at 145 sitting around there. Lena Meisner has started to drop back a little bit. So Lena Meisner’s lost about 15 seconds um in that last time split. So Marlane just needs to keep doing what she’s doing. She looks great. She looks cool, calm, collected, and she’s running free. Yeah, we can see the tracker there. um refreshing about every 30 seconds on the GPS out here today. So you can see that Marshall Pierre now got um over a minute and 25 on Lizzy Raina and also Lena Mner just falling a little bit further back there. So you can see that Meline is doing a great job in the pace setting. Lizzy Raina not giving up without a fight here, Mirinda. But Margelan Pierre just uh the strength of the young French woman today might have enough in the tank to get the job done. Yeah, I feel like Lizzy Raina looks fantastic. She’s holding her own. They’re running basically even pace and and they’re running at a good clip. They’re they’re moving along really well. Uh but she she’s going to need to find an extra gear if she wants to win this race. And Margel Pierre does not need to do anything. She needs to just hold her own, keep that pace, keep that focus, um and just keep rolling along. Um she’s ticking along really nicely. She has a great pace going on. Um and she looks fantastic. And now we go back to the men’s lead and that’s Christian Blumenfeld. Um, I think he’s just going to sprint the last lap. I think that’s uh that’s his his ammo and and something that only Christian Blumenfeld can do. Well, there’s a certain initiative and it’s called every second matters because now he’s in the lead of the race. He wants that 2500 points, but he wants to put some distance between himself and the rest of the athletes here because at the end of the year, every second is going to matter when it comes down to winning, you know, your fair share of $1.7 million. Now, they’re going to walk away with, you know, over $200,000, you know, in that’s going to be in your bank account should you win the, you know, Iron Man Pro Series. And I think that’s exactly what Christian’s thinking about right now. I need those points because in Oceanside, he was bitterly disappointed with the flat tire. Over to Iron Man, Texas, 5,000 points. Here today, if he gets the job done, 2500 points. He got a few points down there at Oceanside, but not as many as he wanted. So he can do another 70.3 race and another Iron Man race, you know, or actually two more more Iron Man races. He’s going to be lining up in Iron Man Frankfurt coming up here pretty soon as well as Iron Man N the World Championships in Yeah. in September and then finishing off with Marba. That is his whole year right there. Gustaf Eden has gone out and said that he wants Iron Man Niece, but Christian said, “I want the Iron Man Pro Series and everything else in its way. Absolutely. I think uh Christian Blumenfeld is trying to get a perfect score and we going back to Pier Lur here. It looks like he’s got some company on the run now. Dickinson has run back up onto his shoulder. I believe that’s Dickinson. Um but uh Pierre Lor not able to hold pace with Christian Blumvelt. He was making inroads, big inroads. Um at one point it was he was 39 seconds down from the the trio of um Storms Blumenfeld and Van. Um but now he’s blown out to you know a minute back. Um he’s only 40 seconds back from Van which is a podium spot. Uh Casper Stor’s um only 5 seconds back from uh Christian Blumenfelt. But uh yeah, these men are moving out there on the course now. And this is the last lap of three laps. So closing stages of this run now. And I do believe that um you know, Laoya has a legitimate chance to still finish on the podium. Just depends what Vain does at the moment because the other French man still sitting in third spot, but it was Christian Blumenfeld that really ran away from the rest of the competition just a moment ago. Now a little bit of an uphill as Christian looks down at his heart rate monitor one more time to just exactly gauge what he has to do to get the job done today. He does want to distance himself from the rest of the competition. We talked about that because you know over the initiative here is to build up as much time on the rest of your competition to keep them at bay. Keep their points at a minimum, keep yours at a maximum. And that’s why this incredible series has been set up like that. It’s thrilling. It’s always going to come down to the end. And Christian today, he recognizes that. He’s got an 18-second lead now on Casper Storms. He wants that to be a minute, maybe a minute and a half. it won’t happen, but that’s what he wants. Yeah. I mean, I think uh I I think also there’s something to be said for having, you know, the fastest run split. Uh just having bragging rights on the fastest run split. I don’t think that’s going to happen because uh Lor just took so much time out of uh Christian when he was running um with Van um at the start of the run. And you know, we look now uh Vian’s at almost a minute back from Christian. So, uh, Lour last check was around a minute. So, we’ll see if he has been able to move up on Van. Um, but yeah, Christian just he just looks like he’s he’s sprinting and accelerating. You saw him grit his teeth and run up over that hill. Um, you know, it’s incredible. This man is just there. There are no words for what this man can can do. Superhum is a good one. Sam Dickinson moving back up into fourth. It looks like Pierre Lor may have gone out a little hard in the start cuz he’s sort of now faded into fifth. He’s only a few seconds back from Sam Dickinson, but he’s now sitting at 129 back. So maybe that podium um place is slipping out of his hands. Maybe it’s slipping out of his hands, but Sam Dickinson just showing a a really strong and resilient race here today at 126 down now. Vienn has gone out to 57 seconds. So, he’s definitely fading as we can see right now. You can see that he’s losing a little bit of time to the ground there. Just shaking it off a little bit. Looking down at the heart rate monitor as well. But it looks like the two Norwegians might have the first two spaces secured today. And it’s going to be France and maybe Great Britain and France that, you know, round out the top five. But Vain is going to try and get this job done today. this will be his best race in his career if you ask me uh to get the job done against the likes of Christian Blumenfeld. And nothing, you know, more can be said about the the Olympic champion. Just when you think that he’s done and dusted, just when you think that he’s down and out, he just seems to find that extra gear. He’s a he’s a superhum. He’s a he’s an incredible champion and he just knows how to get it done. He knows how to hang tough and he knows how to just like, you know, put the intimidation factor on the rest of the field as well. Look at this. He’s absolutely sprinting toward the finish line, always checking where he’s at with his body, always in tune. The signs of a champion. Yeah, absolutely. I think he’s always looking for more. I think uh that is a sign of a champion. They’re never satisfied. They could always find faster time here on the bike. uh what can I do better on the run? How can I train harder? What can I do in this world of you know sports science? Um and you know we we see him I think he’s running more like probably 3minut um ks but uh at the last grab that he was at 320 which is 522 mile pace and that was at 19.4. So um yeah I mean he’s is flying. Oh that’s an understatement. He is absolutely cranking it. Not only that, but the cameraman having a hard time, you know, staying up with him as well, collecting all these uh content shots, and you can find all those on Iron Man Try on social media, Facebook, Instagram, and all over the place there. But Christian Blumenfeld is really, really showing us why he is one of the champions over the last 10 years. in 2018, I saw him for one of the very first times when he he won his first W, you know, CTS races down there in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. And then from that moment on, he just went from better to better to better and is now the Olympic champion. He’s I world champion. Turns the hat around. Know he’s getting very, very close to home. He’s only 1.3 kilometers from the finish line right now. And the fans here in Axen Provence are going to be treated with one of the, you know, one of the best 70.3 races, you know, of the year so far. I mean, it was great to watch uh, you know, your solo. It was great to watch Oceanside. It was great to watch St. George last weekend, but the way that this guy races and gives you everything, absolutely empties the tank on every race. Now, he ran 234 just a couple of weeks ago at Iron Man Texas, and now he’s doing this. This is a champion that’s I’d like to say once in a generation, but um I tell you what, it’s hard to put into words uh you know, any more than what we’ve been saying. Absolutely. And I don’t know, as you said, I think just when you think he’s on the ropes and just when you think he like doesn’t have any anything more to give, he finds another gear. And that’s what we’re witnessing right now. He, you know, didn’t look great in the first lap. He was sort of gritting his teeth a little bit and uh it looked like he was working hard and like he may actually get dropped and then all of a sudden he just changed his mind. He’s like, “Nope, I don’t know if the body just came around or if it was a mindset shift whereas like nope, I’m taking this win today and I am just going to increase the pace to break neck speed and you cannot go with me.” And um yeah, I mean incredible from every viewpoint. He’s in within one kilometer to go now. So around 3 less than that, 700 m. So uh probably a minute and 45 seconds until he crosses that finish line. Now it’s typically the way that you win a general classification in one of the, you know, uh cycling races such as the Tour to France. You wait until the second or third last stage of the whole tour and then you’re, you know, you’re one minute down on the rest of the field and you make that acceleration and go to the front and come in with a a decent lead at the end of the day. That’s how you get it done over the GC in the cycling races. But what he’s been doing here this afternoon, I don’t know if he’s been teasing the rest of the field or playing with the rest of the field, but what he’s done over the last 3 kilometers has been just absolutely incredible. And uh you know, as Iron Man says, it’s every second matters. This is exactly what he wants to do. He wants the 2500 points, but he doesn’t want anybody to get anywhere close to him because every second is a point. Yeah, I mean it’s about um getting max points for yourself but then taking away, you know, points from your competitors and um yeah, I mean at the end of the year when you accumulate, you know, those points and figure out, you know, where you’re at, if you can have your competitors or your biggest competitors, you know, here’s a weak point, then you can take some points from them. You know, why not? Why not? Uh, you know, you’ve got your foot on the throat. You may as well uh finish the chop. May as well finish the job. Last year’s winning tie was at 34723. Well, he’s absolutely going to smash that today by quite a few minutes as Christian Blumenfeld is doing to the rest of the field today is just showing them that he is the class of the field. Showing them that he is the world and Olympic champion. showing the rest of the field that he’s got another gear when it makes the difference. And now just high-fiving the crowd here in Axen Province. A great crowd, an educated triathlon crowd down here in the south of France. This is Province. It is one of the most beautiful places to race and train. But for Christian Blumenfeld, he’s not going to forget this day in any hurry. What a great swim he had today. The bike ride was incredible, but the run was exceptional. Christian Blumen Phil. He’s going to get the job done today with an incredible performance here in Axen Province to break the tape. In first place, the Norwegian gets it done. And your champion in first place, Premiier of Axen Province, Christian Blumenfeld. 34056. Breaking the tape there today, Minda. What a great run that he had today with a 106, you know. 10712. There it is. Officially 10712. Yeah. I mean, 10712 on a windy twisty turny course of No wonder the Wahoo Element Rival clock shows it right there. 10712 for the 21.1 km, 13.1 mi. That’s ex kind of exactly what he ran at Oceanside. that this course was I think more challenging with the twists and the turns. um he was so happy you’re coming he started celebrating you know a few hundred meters out and um just completely elated uh with that performance and and you love to see it a guy like Christian who wins as much as he does he still takes the time to to you know high-five the fans um celebrate this moment um you know I’m sure we’ll see many more of these but in the moment it’s important to celebrate it because you just never know when you’re going to step back on on that top step again. Countryman and training partner Casper Stors takes the silver medal and gets over the line in second place. But the local hero of the day today is Simon Vanne and he does get across the finish line in the bronze medal position in the third place today picking up crucial points in possibly the greatest race in his career. Right behind Christian Blumenfeld and Casper Storms. And coming in fourth place today, Sam Dickinson from Great Britain giving us a great run this afternoon. 34242 holding off a fast charging Pier Leo [Applause] and in fifth place. He went out very very hard on the run having the fastest legs over the first two laps. But it wasn’t to be. Pierre Le just falling a little bit short. Second Frenchman across the line, but rounds out the top five. And Welsh, look at these run times. We have Blumenfelt, Stors, and Laour all running 107 and change. Bloommerfelt taking the fastest one run in 10712, Storms 10717, Laour 10718, and then Van and Dickinson running 108s. This is incredible. This is a new era of running. Yeah, I almost think that Pier Le was going to run in the the low 106s today. I do think that he really suffered over the last 4 kilometers when Sam was able to, you know, pull away from him. So to have three athletes, you know, finish within 6 seconds of each other with a 10712 to 10718, that’s absolutely incredible running. Now we see Margelane Pierre just being overtaken by Bradley Vice just running along the roads there. Margelane is now running at a wonderful pace of a 338 per kilometer. Running along really, really nicely. She’s got a twominute lead over Lizzy Raina and now extending it. So, the pace that Marshalain has set today on the run has been good enough and she looks even better than when she first started out. Yeah, she’s holding. There’s Yona Stroberg rolling through trans rolling through the finish line there. He went out really really fast. Um he was looking fantastic at the start of the run, but uh I think uh came out a little bit too hot and and couldn’t uh couldn’t hang with the Norwegians in the end there. But uh yeah, going back to Margeline Pierre, I think she’s just paced this race really well. She knows her strength. She’s raced, you know, only at 25. She’s raced enough to know now, okay, this is my 70.3 pace off the bike. Um, you know, a hilly course like this, well, you know, it seemed that she put down a really solid effort. I think she’s used to doing that. She’s used to riding the hill. She’s used to running off the bike and running off the bike hard. But we’re back with the pro men here at the finish line. Yeah, Casper Steepnak just getting across the line from Poland. Uh, and then also just right behind was Nathan Goober. He was second off the bike today with a 111 and a 110 from Yonas Shamberg. And Yonas same sort of racing as he did in, you know, at the Olympic distance. He always ran really super hard off the the bike ride onto the run. So, you know, maybe a learning moment by Jonas there, but he’s he’s already had a great Iron Man uh result this year with a third in Iron Man South Africa punching his ticket to the Iron Man Nice uh you know, world championship for men’s this year. So, rounding out the top 10, Cameron Maine from Great Britain gets the job done with a 109. So, the run times today, Minda, very impressive. Yeah, a lot of guys going under uh 110. And we just see our bike leader Reuben Zapantke uh running a 114 about the same as what he did last year. Uh he finished good enough for 11th. So that you know two plus minute lead he had off the bike um only good enough for 11th but that’s what happens when most of those top 10 men were under 110. Maria Czecharelli comes in right now just inside of the top 13 getting the job done with a 31617. Andrea Salazber, an ex Olympic athlete from Switzerland, too. Iron Man 70.3 Exxon Provence Pro Series men’s winner. No doubt about it. It was all about Christian Blumenfeld today. Christian, how you feeling, mate? Feeling quite happy. Like felt uh like it was fun to ride through the bike course. It’s like it’s like little bit of everything and uh uh a little bit like challenging with the dynamic of being maybe 15 guys something up there and trying to do the descending right and being in a good position but I felt strong throughout the whole day and uh also coming off the bike uh I felt super comfortable from the beginning and I was just planning to go like for the last five or sixk like waiting until the right moment and uh quite pleased with how the legs were feeling when I was turning up the pace. We have to talk about that run. 2 minute gap between yourself and Reuben when you got off the bike. Within the first kilometer, you’d already taken 20 seconds out of that. And then the three of you got together, Simon and Casper and yourself. And it was just incredible. Sub 3minut pace for for some of it. That was insane. Yeah. Yeah, it was uh great fun out there on the course and also I think it was in the first lap when Yunas came up again in the downhill but then uh I felt that he was breathing quite heavily. So then when Simon was pushing up the pace in the uphill again, he got dropped uh quickly again, but then Casper was playing it quite smart behind and uh yeah, he had a poor transition. So he was like like catching slowly and uh yeah, it’s great to have uh two Norwegians back on the podium. Yeah, absolutely. Two Norwegians owning it and one Frenchman in the mix there as well. Our men’s champion, Christian Blumenfelt. And great points scored for Christian here in the uh Iron Man Pro Series. There’s 2,500 points on the line and every second behind you lose one point. Not a problem for you though, Casper. You’ve done very well. Not too many points lost. How you feeling? That run was incredible. Yeah, thank you. Uh it was a very chaotic swim and uh I managed to get to the front by the way back. So uh then I think I were fifth or something out of the water. Uh yeah and on the bike it was very chaotic. Uh so I tried to stay in the front uh before the hill. So then we I think we were three or four guys getting a gap on the big pack. So then we got caught after a while and uh yeah it was a bit front and back in the group. So uh yeah I felt it was not easy but not hard either. So it’s just like controlled and uh into the transition I had a very bad transition. So I think I were 30 seconds behind or something behind Christian and I’m out in a run. So I needed to just pace myself and uh I saw some guys went quite hard in the start and I was like okay just wait a bit and then I got up to the back and run past and then on the last lap I managed to bridge the gap to Simon and Christian. So uh yeah and when Christian went I managed to keep with him in yeah 400 m and then he bridge away. So I need to run my own pace. But yeah, I’m happy. An amazing second place finish. Thank you so much, Casper, where every second matters. Not many seconds lost for Casper Stones. Next up, the young man from France, Simon Van. He was someone who was out in front with Christian Blumenfeld for pretty much most of the run. Simon, when you finish on the podium in Exxon Provence in France, not far behind getting good points, you must feel really good as a Frenchman to be on that podium. Yeah. Yeah, it feels really good. Uh there was a lot a lot of support for me uh on the course all day. So, it’s really really good to to be on the podium. Uh it’s it’s a course I really like here. Uh it’s an awesome race. Great bike course, great run course, really tough. So really happy to to be on the podium. Congratulations to our third place man Simon Van getting himself some good points in the pro series. Thank you very much for the interviews down there and uh well done to our top three today. getting it done to again to Christian Blumenfeld from Norway and in second place also from Norway, Casper Storz and Simon Vienn, the French man getting it in third place today. We thought that Lea was going to make his way toward the front, but that just didn’t happen. But on the women’s side of things, it’s all France as well. Here we’ve got Marshalain Pierre, Lizzy Raina from Great Britain in second place, but sitting at 2 minutes down. In third place, it’s Lena Mner. She was our leader uh in the early part of the swim here today and now she has just slipped back a little bit into third place. But Margeline Pierre running through the streets of Axen Province, the streets that she knows very, very well. She’s getting the job done with just over a lap to go. [Music] of everybody. I’m going to be angel [Applause] [Music] united. Can’t control my feet. People in the street. Come on everybody and move your feet. I don’t stop. Don’t stop the beat. I can’t stop the beat. I won’t stop. Won’t stop the beat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Hey, [Applause] [Music] Iron Man 70.3 Axon Provence is brought to you by Hoka. Fly human fly. and by precision precision fuel and hydration. Personalize your race hydration with precision fuel and [Applause] hydration. And we are with women’s race leader Margelene Pierre. She is running away with this race. This young woman got out of the water around 130 down in the swim. Front pack of six women made their way onto the bike course. Margeline erased that deficit by 30 kilometers on the bike and then broke away and had the roads to herself the rest of the bike ride. Amassed around a 140 lead off the bike and now is is 220 up on Lizzy Rainer who’s sitting in second place and Lena Meisner is in third place at 331 down. Marta Sanchez is in fourth place at 347 DA and Lisa Pertier is in fifth at 447 down but Margelane running free and on the last lap here today in Axon Province. Yes, inside the last lap then Marinda, you know, you mentioned that she broke away on the bike and she just actually, you know, rode away on the bike if you ask me. She was, you know, just the the class of the field out there on the cycling part of it today. And now she’s just breaking them down one by one on the run here was 219. Now it’s about, you know, 221 to Lizzy Rain and now Lena M and now falling it back a little bit. Marta Sanchez and then also Lisa Perta and Nikki Bartlett still hanging in there, you know, just over 6 minutes down there. So I don’t think that any of the ladies are going to get anywhere within, you know, um, you know, distance of her at the finish line. So I think that Margeline is just, you know, laying down just a perfectly executed race today. A race of patience, a race that she just went out and just did her own thing. She swam at her own pace. She biked her own pace. That was too good for everybody else. And now she’s just running along as if she’s just on a long training day. Look at that. Just stretching out the arms in full control. This young 25year-old is really having a great solid uh, you know, day all around. Swim, bike, and row. Yeah, absolutely. And uh this race here in Axen Province was one of her first ever triathlons. She raced as an age grouper, never thinking that anything more much of it, that she would be professional or anything. And um turns out she’s pretty good at this uh little triathlon sport. So moved into the pro ranks at 25 years old. She has a fourth place finish at the Iron Man World Championships. That was last year in East France. um and just starting to create just a great um um race results. Uh portfolio. Yeah, portfolio is the word. I I think you know, Minda, it’s going to be interesting because we know that she can get the job done in Nice. I want to see what she can do in Kona. And uh, you know, she’s a good swimmer, but the bike ride in Kona is always that last 40 miles that really, you know, shows us who is going to, you know, do well in the race in the late stages. Danielle Reef did all the damage, you know, in the last part, you know, of the bike ride every year there. Uh, you know, it very well. He won the race three times, but I think that Margeline showing that she can just run um a steady race, not only through, you know, the half marathon, but through the whole marathon distance. I think that Margelane is one of the ladies that we should talk about, you know, leading into IM World Championships this year for sure. So, Maralain getting the job done. Lizzy Raina is hanging in there. Just looking like she’s losing a little bit of energy to the ground there at this point of time. Yeah, and just looking back through some of Lizzy Raina’s results earlier this year, she raced 70.3 Valencia and she finished third there. Uh last year in 2024, she won 70.3 Portugal, she was third at 70.3 Swansea, fifth in Mayora. Uh sixth in uh Valencia in 2024 and at the IM World Champs last year, she finished 16th. So um some solid performances um last year with the first to the third. I think she’ll be, you know, this year finishing third already in Valencia and now uh second. This is a rising star in our sport. Yeah, I do think that as well. You know, 16th in New Zealand last year on a very very tough race course there and uh really good results in Europe. So I think that uh you know things are looking very bright. Uh and then you know for Lena Meisner, Lena just uh you know working really really hard to get the job done today. Said that she was going to go out and swim hard. Said she was going to bike hard. Maybe it was a little bit too much, but she’s hanging in there. Still in third place right now and only at 334 down. So, you know, things are getting a little bit, you know, a little bit tighter, I would imagine, with Marta Sanchez because Marta is only about 14 seconds down on Lena right now. Yeah, it seems like Lena’s starting to show signs of fatigue. Uh, she’s starting to, you can see her gritting her teeth. Uh the wheels are kind of coming off a little bit and and Marta Sanchez um just very strong athlete finished second at Iron Man South Africa earlier this year. She won Iron Man South Africa in 2024. So you know she’s going to be strong toward the end of a half iron man race when she’s starting to come into her own. I think uh the Iron Man distance is a better distance from Marta Sanchez. But uh yeah, Lena Mesner now has to really dig deep if she wants to hold on to that last spot on the podium. Well, the finish line is packed down there right now. The local fans are standing 10 deep awaiting their hero and that is going to be Maral Pierre. She grew up in Reunion Island. Most of her childhood right here in Axen Provence now calls a home niece France which is just a little bit down the road in the maritime Alps on the coat deser Pierre is going to be the 2025 Iron Man 70.3 Axen Province champion running freely with the hair right now and running through the treeline streets here in southern France on a beautiful sunny day here which has been an incredible race So far, swimming, biking has been prowess. And on the run, holding on to a good pace. We’re not too far to run. Meet me halfway. [Music] Yes, that’s perfect. [Music] There’s no limit to how far a dream can take you. Start in your own adventure now. Qatar Airways. [Music] [Music] What do you want? Uh, you know, what’s that uh really good non-alcoholic beer I keep hearing about? Do you have that really great non-alcoholic beer that I keep seeing? Do you have a non-alcoholic beer that actually actually tastes good? It’s athletic. You’re holding it. You mean athletic? You’re looking at it. I think you mean athletic. It’s that funny. Ask for it. [Music] [Applause] [Music] With just a few kilometers to run in Axen Province, it is the local hero Marshall and Pierre that’s really getting the job done today. 1 minute and 30 seconds out of the water in her rears, but didn’t make it too long before she showed her face at the front of the bike course. Overtaking the women’s leaders at that time, a group of five athletes like they were standing still, Margeline Pierre went to the front. Once she got to the big climb at 67 kilometers into it, she accelerated away from the rest of the field. And now building an insurmountable lead of 2 minutes and 36 seconds over Lizzy Rainer from Great Britain. Lena Mesner from Germany sitting at 342. Marta Sanchez and also Lisa Peru right now are 4 minutes and 518 respectively down in fifth place. So Lizzy Raina right here trying to get the second place under the belt today is going to be a great result but Marshall Pierre is almost certain to run away with the 2500 points. Now she raced Iron Man 70.3 on the 27th of April already this year and finished in ninth place. So now it looks like a good block of training and a home race Minda is going to do it for Margeline Pierre. Yeah and just looking back through Margelain’s results of late last year she did not get a win. Um so I think breaking the tape here in obviously yes fourth at IM World Champs but uh you know some mixed bag results in uh 2024 7.3 LMC she was eighth. Um she did a few T100 events um and didn’t have fantastic results at those um 12th in Lasabas um in June last year. Um so kind of a mixed bag of results last year. The year before she won Iron Man Portugal. Uh she was seventh the Iron Man 70.3 world champ. So a great result there. Um, but I think to be able to break the tape in your hometown basically, um, and you know, not having not had a breaking tape moment in 2024, I think this is going to be just really special for her today. Yeah, I think you’re right. And the confidence build that’s going to go on the back of it is going to be monumental as she makes her way through 2025. And then people adjust the, you know, their seasons as well. uh you know when they get a good result like this and who knows she might be on the start line of another 70.3 here coming up pretty soon and then the iron man distance kick in and then once she gets to coner at the end of the year October that’s going to be one of the goal races for her this year and like you and I were talking about it we do believe that she is one of the athletes on the rise and she’s got a good swim she’s got a magnificent bike ride but she’s so steady so steady on the bike so steady on the run that those things win you major championships and I think that she’s got a a very good future coming up here at IMAD World Championships over the next few years. Yeah, absolutely. I don’t think she’s raced in in Kona yet. So, uh you know, will the you know, the strength that we saw in Nice um translate over into Kona? I think it doesn’t matter honestly. I think uh all she needs to do is just keep steadily progressing in all three sports um for the next 5 years. And when she hits that prime age, you know, late 20s, early 30s in my opinion, I think um that’s when women seem to start peing in the endurance um arena, if she keeps continuing at the state that she has, that’s when she’s going to start reaping the rewards and winning those big world titles and uh and bringing home things like that. But um today she’s putting together a phenomenal race. Um the women she’s racing against are very good um 70.3 and Iron Man distance women. Um, but she really just put together a perfect performance and now she’s, you know, on her way to breaking the tape here today. 2 and 1/2 km left to go. 1.6 miles. Um, and this race will be hers. Yes, we’ll have a new champion over the line within 8 minutes from now. Mareline Pierre, the local lady here, the local hero as well, is going to get a a rousing reception as she makes her away into Axen Province. And then when she breaks the tape, it’ll be deafening down there today because we’ve been treated already by such a wonderful race today by our third place getter on the men. You know, Simon Vang was incredible today. He was just solid on the bike, but on the run he gave it uh you know up to Christian Blumenfeld there for a while and then also Pier Le gave us a lot to talk about right up until the end of the run. But today it’s been all this young lady here and all the, you know, the credit and and the kudos go out to her for being, you know, just so rock solid and just absolutely loves riding these roads and, you know, this is where she lives and trains and just absolutely loves this uh, you know, type of topography. Yeah, absolutely. And uh, you know, you see her now um, rolling through the age groupers. We had a couple of thousand age groupers racing here today and there was 50 70.3 slots on the line for the age group races uh for 70.3 in Marbaya Spain which will be in November the end of this year. There are three spots on the line for the women. So three slots available for the pro women uh for the 70.3 world champs. So athletes are vying for those positions as well as of course I’m in Pro Series points and maximum 25,000 points uh are up for grabs here today um every second matters and that rate will drop at one point per second um as we wait for the second, third, fourth women to come through. So Margeline looking for that max points. Also $7,500 on the on the line for prize money for today. So, uh, racing for a lot of different things, um, here in Axon Provence, uh, I think just winning in her hometown will be just really special. Um, yeah, I I’m excited for her. It’s, uh, it’s always wonderful to have um, hometown heroes play out their childhood, probably not childhood dreams, as as Margeline mentioned earlier, she didn’t think she would be a professional triathlete. She kind of did a triathlon and then was like, “Oh, wait. um pretty good at this thing. So has followed this uh this sport after after that first performance um when she made the the world champs as an age grouper. Um you see uh Lizzy Raina here sort of uh starting to be a little unsteady on her feet. a couple of little potholes and uneven sections on the road and um that mixed with very tired legs at the end of the race um and carbon carbon shoes kind of uh can be a little unsteady but uh not long stack heights. You got to talk about the stack heights too because when you’re you know running around corners you got to be very very careful and and sometimes you know the cracks in the roads or different um you know levels of the surfaces when they you know lap over that’s going to be an issue as well. But they’re definitely giving the runners an advantage these days. We see Lena Mesner right now getting the job done in third place. So Lizzy Raina hanging on to second place nicely. Lena Mesner from Germany in third place. Marta Sanchez and Lisa Pura are still running along there in a little bit of a battle there, but I would say there’s more of a battle going on for third and fourth place with Lena Meer and Marta Sanchez because it is only, you know, down to about 25 seconds at the moment, which is, you know, something that can come down very quickly, but it it was down at 18 seconds. So, it is going out the other way. So Lena Meer might be coming good again. But this young lady right here, Margeline Pierre, well, we know she’s been good all day long. She’s been absolutely rock solid for over 4 hours now. And just looking as though she could uh probably go out and do the whole thing again. She does. Uh she’s very uh uh pokerfaced. She doesn’t really show much pain or um really anything. I think she’s been able to be kind of in cruise control. She hasn’t really been uh tested on this run. She was able to sort of run out at a nice pace. She held that lead. Um and again, you know, being a local, she would have had many people giving her different splits out there on the course knowing that no one is making inroads on her. She could uh really just keep her own, you know, her pace going and not really have to accelerate at all. So, I think she’s kind of been in um just right in her comfortably uncomfortable um zone right now. And um she’s almost at the finish line. 7 of a mile. 1.2 km left to go for Margelan Pia. Got an age grouper sitting right behind there just using that as pace. And I tell you what, that’s a pretty hard pace to keep up with. So well done to that age grouper at this point of time. So Margeline just running there, making that right hand turn coming up inside of the last kilometer. Now we can tell you that she’s at about 1.1 kilometer to go. Just about 0.7 mi here. So we’re around about 3 minutes and 45 seconds away from seeing our first women’s athletes getting across the finish line here. And Margelane Pierre doing a great job of it now. The crowd building in Axon Province. It’s a beautiful spring day just approaching the summer months and it does get very very warm down here in the summer months in Provence. But today, perfect race conditions. We started out with a very cool morning. We did have a little bit of steam coming off the lake uh down here this morning. Minda started at 12° C. Now it’s warmed up to about 23 24°. Absolutely perfect race conditions, very, very light winds, but the crowds have been spectacular around here today, especially for our French athletes. So Margelane, you know that she is going to get all the crowds attention when she comes down that finish line with just 800 m to run. Yeah. And you see her now she’ll zip up her suit. Um 800 m to run. I used to think uh two times around the track um when we got to the 800 meter. Uh that’s no problem. We’ve done that a million times. Um but she is now What’s that in yards? Yards. No clue. Oh, come on. 44880. Come on, man. That’s true. Yeah. Come on. I’ll translate for you in the imperial. Thanks, Walshie. Um, yes. Vel Pierre now 600 meters to go. She is making her way to that finish line and she is going to be greeted by some incredible crowds down here in Axon Provence. Friends, family, I think everyone has come out to support this young woman and she has put together a phenomenal race here today. Well, a smile is starting to appear there. You saw her just a moment ago, but she is uh well, you said it best. I think poker faced right up until the very end here. But uh a touch of a smile just a moment ago. So, getting very excited to finishing off the race today here with just 500 meters to run. Making sure that the race number belt is in place and everything is looking good. Well, Margeline Pierre, you should be very proud of yourself today because a great swim, a bike ride that you dominated. You took the bike course record with you today and that was amazing. Now, what have you got left in the run? Can you take it all down here today, Marshall Lane, you are going to be the champion and you are deserving of that coming into the finish line here in just a minute or so. Maralain Pierre to take it for France. Yeah, and just looking at some of the um run times in the history of this race and uh Tamara Dwitt has the run course record at 11329. Um um Tamara Dwitt of course just a phenomenal runner um in our sport. Um that time though was smoking fast. So incredible. That was from 2023 last year. Um Marian Lrand ran a 11652 And so that was the next fastest time that we’ve had here. Majane 400 meters to go. She is almost there. Um I don’t think she’ll be Yep. she’s already she’s around 118 so far. So she’ll be around a 120. Um but after that bike, she didn’t have to run any faster. No, it’s been a well uh well thoughtout race and a a very well paced race. And that’s what we, you know, have been talking about, you know, halfway through the bike ride there when she was just riding along at her pace. It’s not as if, you know, um, she went harder when she needed to. She just rode her pace and it was enough to just, you know, bike on by the people. There goes the arms up in the air there. She’s just asking the people to come on, get loud now. Marshall Pierre is now running in toward the finish line here to claim the 2025 Iron Man 70.3 Axom Provence. and she’s getting it done. Yes, Margeline Pierre is coming into the finish line to her adorning fans. She will be the 2025 Iron Man accent province 70.3 champion from France. Margelain Pierre 41122 taking the tape as well with a 11757 by the look of it through the 20.8 8 km mark, but a 11851 run time today. Gets it done with a total time just over that 4 hours and 11 minute marker today. Well done to Marshall Pierre. What a great way to celebrate and the crowd is absolutely going wild. They have one of their own, the champion Marcelain Pierre. And we have a look at the Wahoo Element rival run time. 11851. That’s a great run split after that super bike ride from Margeline Pierre. But I love to see her enjoying that finish line, soaking it up. And yeah, you could see the effort on her face. She was poker face throughout that run, but you could see uh definitely a big effort um to bring it home here today. And now we’re back with Lizzy Raina who is in second place and she is in the final few meters of this run course. 10 minutes faster than last year’s race winner there Marian Leon with a 421 was Margeline Pierre today with a 411 getting it done here. Way to go with a tongue out with her hair out and just cooling off at the finish line. Lizzie Raina having a terrific run here today. She was off the bike in equal second place with Lena Misner but just running away for the rest of the field in second place here in Axom Proce. And then Lena Mesner still hanging on to their third place here this afternoon. So, as we get our places separated here on the women’s race, Marshall Pierre takes the race and it’s Lizzy Raina that’s going to come up into second place. Running a little bit slower today on average, pace by about 7 seconds per kilometer there, Mirinda, but she’s going to secure a second place. Yeah, I think I saw just a fist bump just now. So you see her still very focused, but I think she will be really pleased to get across that finish line in second place today and on the podium. A really great performance from Lizzie Raina here today. And then on the right, we have Lena Meisner just trying to get to that finish line as quickly as possible. Of course, she had Marta Sanchez breathing down her neck a little bit there, but uh uh was separated by 25 seconds at the last time check. Um, so yeah, needs to just get get cross that finish line as quickly as possible. Li Lizzy Rina so happy we see her now entering the red carpet zone. Lizzy Rainer will come in in your second place position today as Iron Man 70.3 Axon Provence. A phenomenal performance here today from Lizzie Raina. Lizzy Rainer across the line with a 414 right now unofficially as she uh makes her way over there. We’re now waiting Lena Mner from Germany, but it is at the finish line here. Lizzy Rainer getting it done today with a 11954 on the run of course with an average time of 347 per kilometer pace here. 2 minutes and 50 seconds in the aras of our race winner here, Margeline Pierre and Lena Meister, the lady who led our swim for the most part today out on the bike. She was very, very strong until Marshall Pierre from France took over. And we have Lena Meisner now on the red carpet. She will come in at third place. And I’m in 70.3 Proce Lena Meisner third place here today. So the podium said Marelain Pierre once again gets it done in Ax and Provence. The young French lady 25 years old has spent quite a bit of a childhood in this area here in Axe now living in the Kot Desoo in the Maritime Alps in Nice and she gets the job done. Ley Raina from Great Britain in second place and an exhausted German by the name of Lena Meisner takes out third place today. So, our podium is set in our women’s race. Yes. So, Marta Sanchez uh coming across the line now in fourth place. She just wasn’t able to close that gap to third. Lena Mesner got the job done. Held on to that third place, but uh Martes on screen right now. She was second at her first Iron Man event of the year, which was Iron Man South Africa. Solid performance again here today from Marta Sanchez. Marta Sanchez, one of our strongest swimmers, was right up there and uh had another good day in Marta Sanchez and she’s always a a tough racer and getting it done here today in fourth position. So stage is set for our women’s podium coming up here pretty soon. Beautiful look at Axen Province overhead today. Absolutely gorgeous day. You can’t ask for better conditions for a 70.3 race as we look not a cloud in the sky, beautiful conditions and the men’s podium coming up in just a few. Yeah, they had phenomenal race conditions here today and Margelane’s finish time a lot faster than the last. Here we’re going to go down to the men’s podium right now in third place. Simon Van from France. And in second place, Casper Stors from Norway. But our champion today, the Olympic champion. He’s an Iron Man world champion. And today he’s your 2025 Iron Man 70.3 Axen Provence champion collecting 2500 points with an overall time 3 hours 41 minutes and 8 seconds. [Music] And they are handed the athletic brewing beers. They will enjoy a post-race beer or maybe just uh enjoy a post- race beer shower. Big smiles for Christian Blumenfeld, Casper Stoers, and uh also Simone Van is probably like, “Wow, am I allowed to do that to the champions?” But um don’t worry about it, Simone. You had a great race today. Yeah, fantastic race from Simone Van. Christian Blumenfelt. Another victory and on his quest for IM Pro Series champion. will be going for the championship through 2025 or already completing Iron Man 70.3 Oceanside, Iron Man Texas, Iron Man 70.3 right here in Axen Province. Next up for Christian Blumenfeld will be the Iron Man Frankfurt race coming up in just a little bit and then he will be all guns blazing for the World Championship in Nice coming up in the middle of September. and then on to Marbay of the 70.3 World Championship. So, Blumenfeld takes the crown again. And on the women’s side of things, Marelain Pierre with an impressive racing style today, picking up the gold medals. Blumenfeld for the men, Pierre for the women. Here’s Elizabeth in the middle of the perfect workout for her. To create it, we analyzed her biometrics and genetics, her recovery rate, injury risk, and aerobic potential. Her recent training sessions, the temperature, humidity, and elevation, the demands of her next race, and billions of data points from athletes just like her. With Trid Dot, Elizabeth gets faster faster. And what does she have to do? I just opened Trid Dot and did my workout. Trot, we do the technology, you do the training. Beyond the finish lines, our commitment goes the extra mile. We are the Iron Man Foundation. We’ve given back more than $55 million to support our mission of leaving a positive impact throughout race communities. Without our amazing athletes, volunteers, and givers, we wouldn’t be where we are today. Together, let’s continue this journey of impact. Join the Iron Man Foundation and be a part of something extraordinary. [Music] You [Applause] We’re not here to sell you on this life. You already chose it. No shortcuts, no hype, just work. Same as you. Built to outlast, endure. 40 years in and we’re just getting warmed up. Welcome to the Ohana. Iron Man 70.3 Axon Provence is brought to you by Brightling. Aspire for the ultimate finish line reward. and by Nana en enhanced athlete event experiences powered by Nana. Treated to two fantastic races today. All kicked off in the very early hours here in Axen Provence. It was Yiannis Shamberg that raised up first out of the water on the men’s. But Bry got into transition little bit earlier. We can see they’re now points available still on the men’s race there. 427 up. It’s already ticked by the women’s. We’ve got 1,850, but we’re going to go down to our women’s interviews in just a few seconds here. So, the time is still ticking. 422 on our women’s clock. 423. And here we go. Post race presentation with the Iron Man 70.3 Exxon Provenance Pro Series. And an absolute fairy tale of a finish for a young lady that used to study here in X. She raced here as an age grouper in 2019. You came second in that race from there. And that’s just six years ago. Six years later, Marilen Pier, you must be over the moon that you’ve won a race in France in a town that you know so well. Yeah, there is so much history here. So, I’m so glad and so happy to be able to put my name on this race, especially with the stock field. Uh I race on my own so it was like a good training day but on the race day with so much cheering from a lot of people my family friends so it’s so special and with this finish line like it’s so beautiful so I’m super happy to have a nice picture. So when you come back to a race that means so much to you a place that you’ve studied in and you have so many friends and family here but also being French and winning in France must be a very special feeling. How good is that? I struggled a lot with a lot of injuries. So, it was quite hard to be back into my training and my rhythm. I do do a lot on myself and I’m I’m just so happy to race with my horse. We train so many hours every day. So, yeah, winning here is just amazing and so special. So, I can’t wait for the after race and the party. At the pro panel, we were talking about the fact that your hair is your superpower. I really think it is. 2,500 Pro Series points. Congratulations. Thank you and see you in Hamur in two weeks. So there we go. That is our champion here in the women’s race. An incredible result for Margeline Pere winning in what is practically hometown because she studied here. Let’s chat to the young lady from the UK. She’s uh someone who was out miles ahead in the run uh or she was right up there the whole time in the run. Had a really good run split and uh changing chairs. But joining me, Lizzy from the UK. You must feel amazing. Yeah. I don’t um I don’t really have any words. I’m Yeah. Yeah. Just Yeah. Amazing. Pro Series racing. your first pro series race here for the year. You got some good points. You weren’t far behind. I think you were maybe a minute or so behind. That must be really good news and a good way to start the season. Yeah, really good. Um I won’t do any Iron Man, so um I’ll just do what I can with 70.3s. Um last year it put me in the top 50. Um so yeah, I’ll go for the same thing this year. Congratulations, Lizzie. We’re going to let you go and relax. Well done to you. Uh she was a young lady that we met at the pro panel here in Exxon Provence. Uh she was very confident. She promised us she was going to give us her best effort and she certainly did that. From Germany, Lena Mesna, it is so good to see you. Well done. Third place uh on the podium. Good points for you. A bit of an emotional finish. How are you feeling? Uh I’m feeling incredibly tired. It’s been a tough day for me out there. Uh, I think I died a thousand a thousand times, especially on the bike, the girls really put down the pressure and I just tried to hang on and on the run. I felt quite empty. Um, but yeah, I managed to sit in in third. I’m quite happy with that. One of the beauty things about the Pro Series racing is the fact that it’s every second counts. Every second matters. You weren’t far behind. Uh, you’re doing well for the rest of the season. Uh, I don’t know if I’m targeting the pro series as a whole because I’m not doing like full distances and I think to be in a good ranking position, you have to do full distances, but I’m racing 70.3 KCKO next week. So, uh, I’m taking it step by step and we’ll see which pro series races next for me. Well, keep scoring those points. Maybe we’ll change your mind. Lena Messa, third place in Exxon Provence. Well done to our top three out there today. Great racing in our women’s race. Marshall and Pierre once again, Felicia Tacio. Okay, let’s go over to our winners right now. Collecting 2500 points, Christian Blumenfeld, Casper STS also from Norway with 2469. And in third, Simon Vad at 2422, Sam Dickinson picks up fourth and Frenchman Pierre Leor at 2384. Rounding out the top then and then we’ll look at the Iron Man Pro Series standings. Christian Bloomfelt slides up the board into first. Yona Shroberg slides into second. Leon Shavalier up sixth into third and Casper Stors up sixth as well as well as Gustaf Eden both up six spots into fourth and fifth. So a lot of Norwegians up in that top five now. Welshie. Yeah. And a lot of people that raced today having good results. And there’s Czecharelli as well from Italy. And Cameron Maine collecting the points there and going up eight spots as well. Over onto our women’s side of things. Today was a great result for Marshall Pierre collecting 2500. It was Lizzy Rain and Lena Mesner. Marta Sanchez with 2227. There’s Nikki Bartlett that made her way up into fifth place. Lisa Pura slipped down to six. Sarah Spence, Charlene, Charlene Clevel, Lauren Jansen, and Louisa Yona Pratt. And we’ll go over and look at our Iron Man Pro Series standings after today’s race, the sixth, seventh race on the series. Uh Marta Sanchez moving up seventh now into first place. Annie Richman, that’s sliding down one into second. Lisa Pertier up 12 into third. And we are going to go over to the women’s podium. Picking up third place today is Lena Mesner from Germany. Had a great swim start to the race today. Held the pace for a very long time on the bike until Marshalline Pierre decided to turn up and take control. Then it was Lizzy Raina picking up second place here today with a 41456. But it was Melain Pierre picking up the gold medal in first place here in the 2500 points right here at the Athletic Brewing Pro Iron Man Pro Series race here in Axen Proce. So what a great day it was. Marelain Pierre, the local lady, very emotional at the end just saying that Axom Provence has given her a lot and today well it gave her first place and it did give her 2500 points as well. Yeah, Margel Mierre swimming at 2637, biking 2211, and then rounding it out with a 11851 for an overall time of 41157. Your women’s podium from Ax and Province. So, the ladies all set to celebrate right now with the athletic brew here. Congratulations. Well, none down the hatch, but over over the top it goes. There we have it. Mareline Pierre one more time. Lizzy Raina and Alina Mesner getting it done here in Axen Province. Great to see our athletes here just celebrating with all the dignitaries from this beautiful region in province as well in the south of France. What a great day we had. Perfect race conditions on a perfect day. As now for threetime Iron Man world champion Minda Carfrey. I’m Greg Welch saying thank you very much for watching Iron Man 70.3 AX and Provence and watch on demand replays of all Iron Man Pro Series broadcasts exclusively in the US and Canada. Sign up for Outside Plus today. Globally watch the proseries. Iron Man YouTube channel and any of our global distributors. The next Iron Man Pro Series broadcast is on June 1st. Iron Man Hamburg European Championship. So long for now. [Applause] That’s good. Yeah. We are now. [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] This copyrighted broadcast of World Triathon Corporation may not be re-ransmitted, reproduced, rebroadcast, or otherwise is distributed or used in any form without express written consent of World Triathon Corporation.