An American won the women’s field of the Ironman World Championship for the first time since 1996 — and it was not only her first time competing, but she is a new mom who gave birth just 18 months ago.
Chelsea Sodaro is the first American to win Ironman since 2002, when Tim DeBoom claimed victory, and the first woman since Paula Newby-Fraser won in 1996. But, even more incredibly, she’s only the second mother to have won the Ironman women’s field. And it was a win that no one — not even Sodaro — saw coming.
“My mind is pretty blown right now,” she said in a video shared by her sponsor, 2xu. “I think that I thought I would win this race one day maybe, but I did not think that it would be today.”
She added, “I think it doesn’t really matter how big the race is; Skye is always the biggest gift waiting for me at the finish line. It’s pretty special.”
When Sodaro discovered she was pregnant, she was in the midst of searching for a new coach to help her dominate the elite stage and had her eye on Dr. Dan Plews. When she asked Plews to work with her, she was nervous to share that she was expecting, worried he would turn her away.
“I told him I would totally understand if he didn’t want to take me on because that was not part of, you know, the initial plan,” Sodaro said in an interview earlier this summer with Triathlete.com. “And the first thing he said was, ‘That is so exciting. That’s the best news, I’m so happy for you. And yes, I would still like to coach you, and how can I support you?’ I think that’s really unique for a male coach to respond that way, especially one who is so accomplished and so good at what he does. I just feel really lucky that he believed in me.”
Sodaro trained while pregnant, a journey shared on Instagram, and was clear that her battle to take on Ironman was about much more than just a medal.
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In June, she competed at an Ironman race in Germany, where she came in second and made the second-fastest women’s Ironman debut in history. She then came in third at a race in Canada, and through it all, focused on making her daughter the most important part of her life, no matter what.
“I want Skye to feel like she’s the center of my universe, regardless of whether I’m doing this or not,” Sodaro said. “I want her to see what it looks like to pour yourself into your dreams, and that being passionate about your career and being a good mom are not mutually exclusive. And that you can do all these things, but you don’t have to do them by yourself.”
READ: Doctors told her to abort her daughter with hydrocephalus. She’s so glad she didn’t.
Then, in Hawaii, she blew everyone away with a win that no one saw coming.
“I think this is the culmination of things being right in my life, and having perspective,” she said in her post-race interview. “You know, this is freaking incredible, but the greatest gift at the finish line is my little 18-month old.”
Sodaro made it clear during interviews that it was her family who made it possible for her to succeed. “I don’t have a super big flashy team around me, but I have an incredible team,” she said. “My dad has sagged every ride in the last month, my mom has taken care of my daughter because child care has been such a struggle, my husband is a Reno firefighter, this is really hard! This is for them! This is a life highlight. I will never forget this.”
But what’s to come, she said, is even more exciting. “And I’m pretty stoked that I, I think I’m gonna get to take the rest of the year off and be a mom.”
