Ironman 70.3 Pennsylvania Happy Valley returned for its fourth year on a cloudy and mostly comfortable Sunday, and for the first time the event served as both a Pro Series stop and the North American Championships .
Trevor Foley, of Florida, took the men’s title with a time of 3:42:25, while Paula Findlay, of Canada, was the women’s champion at 4:14:02.
More than 1,700 athletes from 44 states and 43 countries competed in this year’s Happy Valley half-Ironman (at 70.3 miles it is half the distance of a full Ironman). They started the day at 7 a.m. with a 1.2-mile, single loop in Sayers Lake at Bald Eagle State Park, then embarked on a 56-mile bike ride that swung into Clinton County before traveling over Hubler Ridge to Pleasant Gap, going over the mountain and descending to Centre Hall, then heading through Linden Hall and Lemont toward State College.
The final leg was a two-lap , 13.1-mile run through the Penn State campus that included a loop through Beaver Stadium and ended on Curtin Road outside the stadium. In its first two years, the finish line was inside the stadium, but moved outside in 2025.
That change was originally made due to construction at the stadium, but organizers found finishing outside allowed supporters to be closer to the action and for athletes to immediately be able to celebrate with their loved ones.
“After seeing it actually go through and allowing the athletes to finish on the road, and then having their friends, family and spectators right there when they finished, and then the athlete could come off, fall into the hands of a loved one, everyone’s crying, you are so excited that you finished the course… that couldn’t happen in Beaver Stadium,” said Eric Engelbarts, president and CEO of the Happy Valley Adventure Bureau and executive director of the Happy Valley Sports and Entertainment Alliance. “Even if we could have finished in Beaver Stadium, I don’t think that’s the best approach. I think finishing on Curtin is a better route. And then the athletes still get to experience Beaver Stadium by running around a couple of times.”
First to cross the finish line, Foley trailed after the swim but made up ground during the bike leg, dismounting 34 seconds off the leaders. The 26-year-old then overtook second-place finisher Sam Long in the half-marathon.
“I kept hitting the aid stations hard and I kind of got a really nice second wind with about 5k to go and was like, alright, I’m gonna just put my foot to the floor and see what happens,” Foley, ranked No. 6 in the world, said. “And I’ve been smashing the run in training. So I really felt like all that run strength, especially here at sea level, just really came through those last 15 minutes.”
Long, ranked No. 3, finished in 3:43:35, just over a minute behind Foley.
“I guess I’d expect maybe slightly more out of myself on my best day,” the 30-year-old from Colorado said. “But I wasn’t maybe having quite my best day and had still a very good day. And Trevor was just stronger. So a great battle with him, and he deserves the crown. It was a great North American championship, and we all had fantastic races. The level keeps getting higher.”
Joining them on the podium was Penn State alumnus and third-place finisher Jason West, who finished in 3:44:38.
A 2015 graduate with a degree in kinesiology who competed for the Penn State triathlon club and won a collegiate national title as a senior, the 33-year-old was thrilled to be racing at his alma mater.
“It’s definitely really special,” West, a native of Downingtown who now lives in Colorado, said. “This is where it all began for me, the journey of this whole sport. It’s been amazing and I never thought I’d get the chance to come back and race here. Today, nothing came easy. It was incredibly rough. You have the family you’re born with and the family you make along the way. They were all here. They got me on the podium. Just really special. It’s the most emotional finish shoot I’ve ever had.”
On the women’s side, Findlay started strong in the water then built her lead on the bike leg. By the time she hit campus for the run, the Edmonton, Alberta native was fully in command, outpacing second-place finisher Lydia Russell by more than four minutes.
It’s Findlay’s fourth North American championship after she won three times when it was held at St. George, Utah.
“That might be a coincidence that it’s the North American Championships,” Findlay said. “I don’t think too much about that while I’m racing. I just try to do my best. And these courses suit me. St. George is great for me. This course was maybe even better than St. George. I really love the bike course a lot, so I just rode really hard and felt good from start to finish, which doesn’t always happen. So I don’t take it for granted, but it was fun.”
Russell, a Pennsylvania native who won the women’s pro field at last year’s Happy Valley Ironman, finished in 4:18:10.
“I came off the bike in fifth and was like, well, this is all I’ve got today,” Russell said. “I could just stay here and it would be my best Pro Series finish because I was sixth at North American Champs last year. So to move up all the way to second, I was really happy with that.”
Grace Thek, of Australia and ranked No. 3 in the world, took third in 4:20:36.
“That was a really hard course out there,” Thek said. “It made me work very hard towards the end to get that third place.”
Among the non-Pro Series age group competitors, Gavin Ketola, of New Hampshire, was the top men’s finisher at 4:06:38. Julia Day, of New Jersey, was the top women’s amateur in a time of 4:40:54.
State College’s Garrison Famiglio was the top local finisher with a time of 4:29:59.
‘A VERY BIG DEAL’
The original three-year contract for Ironman 70.3 Happy Valley ended in 2025, and a return for 2026 was not a certainty.
But in August, Ironman and local officials announced that not only would it be back for year 4, but also that it would be a Pro Series event and the North American Championships.
“This is a very big deal,” Engelbarts said. “This event, this caliber event, the notoriety behind this event doesn’t just happen. This is a very highly sought after, wonderful thing that we have here. Ironman, in reviewing all things, determined that our course that we have here is championship caliber and put that North American Championships and the Pro Series here.”
As local officials were negotiating with Ironman in 2025, they had seen declining participation each year, from a high of about 2,000 in 2023 to about 1,100 last year, partly due to date changes and a natural falloff after first-year interest. But Ironman 70.3 had “a lot of great advocates” urging its return, Engelbarts said.
The 2025 event included a field of professional women competitors, who Engelbarts said advocated for Happy Valley to be a Pro Series race, and the regional representative for Ironman was “one of our big supporters.”
“The third group of stakeholders that came to our rescue were the actual athletes themselves,” Engelbarts said. “Our race last year rated one of the highest that they’ve ever seen across the globe as far as the athlete experience. You combine that, pro, the amateur athletes and then actually our regional reps from Ironman all advocating made my job a lot easier. We let them speak for us. We’ve got a beautiful swim, we’ve got awesome roads, and then of course you can’t beat the Beaver Stadium run on campus.”
Getting the North American Championship and a Pro Series event elevates the Happy Valley race “to one of the premier stops on the global triathlon calendar,” according to Ironman. It included a larger professional prize purse with first place winning $7,500 and more age group qualifying opportunities for the World Championship, which will be held Sept. 12 in Nice, France.
Registrations, meanwhile, climbed back into the range of the first two years.
“We’re definitely trending up,” Engelbarts said “This is really kind of in line with year two of the Ironman. Year one I think we definitely benefited from, if you remember, there was Canadian wildfires going on. They had canceled the race [in Canada] and everybody came down, plus it was a new course; it’s the shiny stuff. And then all the Penn State alumni came back. Year one was an absolute banger. But is that actually sustainable, with all that went on, on an ongoing basis? We’re definitely excited with where we’re ending up this year.”
The Ironman has also been a boon to the Centre County tourism industry, generating $3 million to $4 million in economic impact annually.
Engelbarts said it has met expectations in that regard and is evaluated through a number of metrics.
“One of them is obviously the economic impact to the local area as these athletes travel in and they’re staying in hotels and eating in restaurants, shopping at businesses, spending their money in the local economy,” Engelbarts said. “But then also we value the media, the publicity and then ultimately the brand, particularly when you are looking at the North American Championships of the Pro Series. This is a full broadcast team coming in. It’s being streamed across all Ironman networks. It’s going to be watched worldwide. We’re talking millions and millions of views on Happy Valley in general.
“And then the community support as well. We get upwards of a thousand volunteers coming out. So, Ironman has a very strong reputational brand. And when you put our brand here in Happy Valley up, and combine that with the brand of Ironman, it’s a powerful combination.”
Whether Ironman 70.3 Happy Valley will return for year five has not yet been determined, though Engelbarts said either way it will not be a Pro Series event.
“We’re definitely in negotiations right now,” he said. “We’ve got several meetings set up. In fact, with all the Ironman crew here, [we’re] doing some meetings even when they’re here. The goal is to hopefully come to an agreement in which we’re both satisfied and continue this moving forward. But at this point in time, no promises. It’s really fifty-fifty.”
