Edmonton's Paula Findlay set for Ironman world championship debut in Kona

Edmonton's Paula Findlay, 37, is making her Ironman world championship debut this Saturday in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, after two decades competing in triathlon. Findlay punched her ticket to Kona by winning the first full Ironman race she ever entered, in Lake Placid, N.Y., in July, covering the 3.8-kilometre swim, 180-kilometre bike and marathon run distance for the first time.

Findlay has built her career on shorter distances, winning three straight North American half-Ironman (70.3) titles and finishing in the top three at that distance 22 times. She also won the 2020 Challenge Daytona T100 event and was ranked the world's No. 1 woman in that distance in 2011. She said she entered Lake Placid partly to test whether she still wanted to keep racing after feeling stale in the sport, and ended up loving both the race and the training.

Findlay trained in Kona in September to acclimatize to the heat and humidity, which pushed race-day temperatures to 35 C last year when leaders Taylor Knibb and Lucy Charles-Barclay both dropped out of the marathon, allowing Norway's Solveig Lovseth to win. She said her approach in Kona will focus less on competing directly with rivals and more on managing hydration and nutrition over the longer distance.

Other Canadians in the women's pro field include Toronto's Tamara Jewett and Danielle Fauteux of Kamloops, B.C. Brock Hoel of Kelowna, B.C., is the lone Canadian men's pro, having set a national Ironman record of 7:29:56 in Texas in April.