Ironman Mont Tremblant 2018 – Analyzing Results

Course Conditions

This was one of the slowest years in Mont Tremblant. The day started with an extremely slow swim, and while the bike and run times in isolation were relatively normal, there were only a few athletes who were able to put together a good race across all three legs, leading to an adjustment of -2:24.

One of the athletes having a great all-day performance was Cody Beals (in his first IM!): He posted a new bike course record (improving Jordan Rapp’s 2015 time by just 33 seconds) and overall course record, beating TJ Tollakson’s 2014 winning time by almost six minutes.

Male Race Results

Cody Beals put together a fantastic first Ironman. After swimming with the front group, he took the lead in the second half of the bike leg and never looked back: The fastest bike and run legs also meant that he was able to post a new course record on the hard course in Mont Tremblant. Even though it was not a sub-8 finish, it was still one of the best performances of 2018!

Second place went to Lionel Sanders. He had an improved swim (still 2:30 behind the lead group) but whenever he seemed to put in an effort, it just fell short. He probably wanted to put out a statement for his Kona competitors, but it seems he has to make a couple of adjustments to perform well in eight weeks. (Watch his own race analysis .)

Third place went to Matt Russell. It was another third place finish for Matt in a Canadian IM, just three weeks after IM Whistler. In the last part of the run he was able to almost close the gap to Lionel, unfortunately he ended up just one place short of securing enough points for a Kona slot. Hopefully he will still be able to race in Kona after his horrible accident during last year’s World Championships, if not this year then fingers crossed for 2019!

Female Race Results

When the start list for IM Mont Tremblant was finalized, it seemed to be a race between three main contenders: Liz Blatchford, Lauren Brandon and Meredith Kessler. All of them would have secured their Kona slots with a podium finish. And for the whole day there was never an indication that these three would not make the podium.

As expected, Lauren was leading after the swim with a good margin and she was also riding well enough to start the run with a five-minute lead. But usually her challenge is on the second half of the run, so when Meredith was able to close the gap and took over the lead it was a great surprise to see her continue to run well. Even though Liz hadn’t been able to do much run training with a small injury, she found her running legs and took over the lead from Meredith. But then Lauren found a second wind, was able to re-take second place and even narrow the gap to Liz. In the end Liz was able to take the win with the fastest run split, Lauren was just over a minute back and Meredith finished third, being able to take the foot off the pedal in the last few k.