B.C. sweep in Ironman CdA

A dentist and a rookie swept the sixth annual Ford Ironman Coeur d’Alene championships Sunday.

It was a British Columbia sweep, too.

Dr. Tom Evans of Penticton, B.C., knocked off two-time defending champion Viktor Zyemtsev of Ukraine, pulling away in a time of 8 hours, 34 minutes and 22 seconds.

Zyemtsev, who was trying to pull off a threepeat, finished more than nine minutes behind Evans.

Heather Wurtele, making her Ironman professional debut, won in an unlikely dominating fashion. Wurtele, of Victoria, B.C., knocked off inaugural Coeur d’Alene winner Heather Gollnick as the Canadian finished in 9:38:58, nearly 12 minutes ahead of Gollnick.

The race was contested in nearly perfect conditions. The 112-mile bike course featured some wind, but otherwise the temperature was mild.

Both Evans and Wurtele collected checks for $12,000 as part of the $75,000 purse.

Wurtele was a wire-to-wire winner while Evans essentially did the same although he didn’t lead out of the water.

It didn’t take Evans long to overtake Bryan Rhodes, the first athlete to exit chilly Lake Coeur d’Alene.

Former CdA winner Michael Lovato pulled within a minute of Evans in the first loop of the bike, but couldn’t get any closer. Lovato made the transition from the bike to the 26.2-mile run trailing Evans by more than six minutes.

That lead grew to seven minutes before Lovato staged a brief charge. The Boulder, Colo., resident got within 3:55 about 10 miles into the run before he began to fade.

And fade he did. Zyemtsev, whose strength is running, passed the floundering Lovato with five miles to go.

But Zyemtsev, who overtook Evans with three miles to go last year, never could muster a charge.

Evans, who said that running isn’t his strength, knew he had to build as much of a lead as possible through the first two disciplines to be able to hold off Zyemtsev.

As it turned out, Evans felt as if he had a lot of gas left in his tank going into the run.

Evans, who balances filling cavities 25 hours a week to go along with 25 hours of training, turns 40 next month. His third Ironman victory is one he’ll savor for a while.

“My coach set up a really aggressive (training) program with a lot of high-intensity work,” Evans said. “I don’t have the time to train as much as I used to four or five years ago so a lot of it was very high intensity. My swim was way easier than most of my swim workouts. The bike was way easier than most of the bike workouts. I ran 10 (kilometers) easy and then started to work hard. The plan was to have a lot of gas left (on the run). The only way I was ever going to beat Viktor or Michael was to have a run that was somewhere (between) 2:50 and 2:55.”

His run split was nearly in the middle of his anticipated range at 2:53:56.

“No matter what you do, the run is where it all happens,” Evans said. “And I needed to run a fast run.”

Zyemtsev saluted Evans.

“Good bike, good run – perfect,” Zyemtsev said in broken English.

Wurtele, who stood out in the crowd because she stands 6-foot-2, thought she struggled a little bit finding a groove in the first lap of the bike. When she did find her stride, though, she wasn’t challenged.

In fact, Gollnick, who finished second for a third straight time at CdA, never got within 14 minutes of her in the run.

It was an especially sweet victory for Wurtele in more ways than one. Immediately following the race, she called her husband on her cell phone and found out he had just finished second in a half Ironman race near Victoria.

Wurtele won an age-group title at CdA in 2006 in her first Ironman. She seems to like Ironman debuts.

She finished 32 minutes faster than she did two years ago.

“Significant improvement,” Wurtele said. “I think I did something that I wasn’t necessarily expecting. I felt really strong all day. There are other women here that have such excellent resumes. I just tried not to get intimidated by them.”

Gollnick felt sick from the beginning. She needed several minutes afterward to recover before talking with reporters.

“When I got to the run I started wheezing,” Gollnick said. “I was proud of my day. It was probably one of my hardest races. I was really proud that I hung in because there were a lot of times today when I just wanted to stop or slow down.”