Denmark's Helle Frederiksen inflicted a ton of damage over the rest of the field out on the bike course to set herself up for the victory at IRONMAN 70.3 Augusta.
Once again, Haley Chura (USA) put her swim prowess on display in Augusta as she smoked the 1.2-mile river swim in 20:42. Helle Frederiksen (DEN) followed Chura up the boat ramp 21-seconds later while the chase group of nine women all exited the water two to three minutes back of the lead pair.
Once on the bike, Chura and Frederiksen powered away from the field. Frederiksen grew impatient with playing "follow the leader" and stormed to the front of the race at 10 miles and proceeded to build upon her advantage throughout the remainder of the bike. Frederiksen dismounted her bike with with a staggering 10-minute advantage on Chura and Mel McQuaid (CAN) while the rest of the field was more than 15 minutes off the pace.
Once on the run, Frederiksen kept the heat on full blast to maintain more than an 11-minute buffer between herself and second place. As Frederiksen was going over her victory speech in her head in the second half of the run, the field behind her started to shuffle dramatically. At eight miles, Malindi Elmore (CAN) ran her way into second while Jeanni Seymour (ZAF) was flying through the field and closing in on second fast. Frederiksen would claim the victory in a winning time of 4:10:45 while Elmore held off a hard charging Seymour to claim second by an 18-second margin.
Top 5 Pro Women
1 Frederiksen, Helle DNK 0:21:02—2:17:44—1:27:36—4:10:45
2 Elmore, Malindi CAN 0:26:02—2:27:10—1:22:29—4:20:06
3 Seymour, Jeanni ZAF 0:22:49—2:32:19—1:20:59—4:20:23
4 Brennan Morrey, Ruth USA 0:27:08—2:26:55—1:24:20—4:23:08
5 Chura, Haley USA 0:20:42—2:28:29—1:30:00—4:23:46