Canada’s Paula Findlay takes underdog role into Ironman world championship debut

She’s won three straight North American half-Ironman titles, also called Ironman 70.3. Findlay has finished in the top three in those distances 22 times in her career.

Findlay also won the 2020 Challenge Daytona — a 2k swim, 80k bike and 18k run now called a T100 — at the Florida speedway against a stacked international field.

The two-time Olympian was also ranked the No. 1 woman in the world in that distance (1.5k swim, 40k bike and 10k run) in 2011.

Findlay saw her Ironman debut in Lake Placid, N.Y., in July as a successful experiment.

“I was having a lot of success at the shorter T100 and 70.3 and I sort of found that to be my sweet spot. I was making a good living at it,” Findlay said.

“The Ironman just kind of scared me. It’s just so long, so overwhelming and the training is completely different in some ways.”

But she was also beginning to feel stale in the sport. Findlay wondered how many more years she wanted to be a triathlete.

She wanted to give Ironman a shot before she called it a career, so she entered Lake Placid.

“I went there just with the goal of seeing if I liked it, seeing if I liked the training for it and I ended up winning the race and actually loving the prep for it,” Findlay explained.

“It’s such an unknown distance to me. I knew I trained and prepared for it properly, but you never really know if you’re ready for something that’s twice as long than I’ve ever done.

“It rejuvenated my love a little bit for the sport. It was fizzling because I’ve just been doing it for 20 years.”

Hawaii being the birthplace of Ironman almost 50 years ago, and the punishing heat, humidity and crosswinds that racers battle there, give it exalted status in the endurance racing community.

“Now that I’m racing it and prepping for it, I feel that for sure,” Findlay said. “It’s crazy how much more my sponsors care about it and my fans and my supporters.

“Everyone wants to, if you’re not going to win it, just be there and do it because of this history that it holds and being such a harsh, crazy environment to do an Ironman, like an Ironman’s hard enough already, but do it in those conditions is totally insane.”

Toronto’s Tamara Jewett and Danielle Fauteux of Kamloops, B.C., join Findlay in the women’s pro field in Kona.

Brock Hoel of Kelowna, B.C., is the lone Canadian men’s pro. He set a Canadian men’s Ironman record time in Texas in April at seven hours 29 minutes 56 seconds en route to sixth place.

Kona’s humidity last year put race temperature at 35 C. Taylor Knibb of the United States and Britain’s Lucy Charles-Barclay were running first and second in the marathon when they pulled out, and Norway’s Solveig Lovseth went on to take the women’s crown.

Findlay, who lives in Bend, Ore., with husband Eric Lagerstrom, trained in Kona in September to help her acclimatize.

“I’ve prepped for the heat sort of artificially in my garage doing heat training, but I don’t live in an environment like that,” she said.

Findlay says Kona will be less about trying to beat other women to the finish line, which is her mindset in shorter distances, and more about managing hydration and nutrition in extreme conditions to maintain a steady pace and see where she ends up.

“I’m healthy, I’m fit, I’m prepared as best as I could, but I don’t know where that will put me,” Findlay said.

“It takes the pressure off to have that I’ve-never-done-this-before approach to it. People that have gone there and won or had a top five, all eyes are on them. I’m a little bit flying under the radar, which is cool, because every other race that’s shorter, I am one of the favourites.

“It’s cool to have the ability to do really well here, but not have any pressure to do well. It’s kind of just up to me.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 8, 2026.

Donna Spencer, The Canadian Press

by The Canadian Press

Canada’s Paula Findlay takes underdog role into Ironman world championship debut

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