All the talk before IRONMAN Texas was about the World Championship-worthy fields and there were fitting winners as Norwegian superstars Solveig Løvseth and Kristain Blummenfelt ran out the impressive winners.
But also making her mark with one of the best results of her career was Spain’s Marta Sánchez in third.
She was second behind Margarita Ryan in the swim but got through T1 quickest to lead the bike before the big three of Løvseth, Taylor Knibb and Kat Matthews powered past.
However a devastating puncture for Matthews effectively put her out of the race and Sánchez was able to clock a sub-three hour marathon to take the final spot on the podium.
Family bragging rights
“It’s unbelievable, I couldn’t imagine being on the podium with these ladies,” said the 2024 IRONMAN South Africa winner afterwards.
That in itself was a fantastic result and booked her Kona spot again – but there was more.
For IRONMAN Texas was the first time that she and her husband Arnau Pericas Figueras, an age group athlete, had taken part in the same race and they had a bet between them that whoever was fastest would get a whole year off household chores!
Writing on Instagram, Marta explained: “I started triathlon because of him, and 13 years later for the first time, we’re racing an Ironman on the same day. Hope this gives me some extra motivation to go faster (a year without doing the dishes sounds like a pretty good prize😮💨).”
Both in the top five
So the big question now was whether Arnau could go under Marta’s 8:31:06.
He produced a brilliant effort to make the top five (out of 218) in his 35-39 age group and was 14 seconds faster than Marta on the bike but she was quicker on both the swim and the run to win the bet by 20 minutes as he clocked a nonetheless impressive 8:51:39.
She was on hand to present him with his medal when he crossed the line and while a year of doing the household chores sounds a long stretch, he did point out: “Luckily we are travelling most of the time 🤣”
Congratulations to both of them!
