How Jansen Her Ran Down the Field to Finish 4th Overall at IRONMAN 70.3 Desaru Coast

On 26 July 2026, Jansen Her crossed the finish line at IRONMAN 70.3 Desaru Coast in 4:14:20, good enough for 4th overall and just 24 minutes and 45 seconds behind the win. The finishing time tells you where he ended up. It doesn't tell you that he spent the first half of the race well outside the top ten, or that the run leg alone cost five rivals their positions. This is that race, checkpoint by checkpoint.

The Field

The race was never really in doubt at the front. Evgeny Tikhonin (Kyrgyzstan) took the lead on the bike and simply didn't give it back, soloing to victory in 3:49:36. Jed Radbone (Australia) held 2nd from midway through the bike, and Ilya Kosov (Kyrgyzstan), who'd led the field out of the water, rounded out the podium in 3rd. All three finished more than ten minutes clear of everyone else and were never seriously challenged.

The real contest was for 4th, and it ran through a strong chasing pack. Kuok Yuen Teh, Malaysia's IRONMAN national record holder (he became the first Malaysian man to break nine hours over the full distance, running 8:56 at IRONMAN Denmark in August 2024), was always going to be dangerous. Isaac Tan, who represented Malaysia in triathlon at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, briefly held the outright race lead himself: he was first out of T1. Between them, Shahrom Abdullah, Mohamed El Akkad, Daniele Meli, James Plant and Jia Xian Tai made up a genuinely deep group. Jansen Her started the day behind every one of them.

A Quiet Start

Organizers shortened the swim to roughly 1km because of choppy water conditions on the day, so times here run quicker than a standard 70.3 swim leg. Even so, there was no hint of what was coming. Ilya Kosov led the field out of the water; Jansen exited in 17:27, good for 15th, safely inside the race and nothing more. T1 didn't change the picture: still 15th, 20:09 in, as Isaac Tan grabbed the lead heading onto the bike.

The Bike Move

The bike leg is where the race quietly turned. Over 90km, Jansen worked from 15th to 10th, a five place gain that never generated a single headline moment, because nothing dramatic happened: he simply rode away from the group behind him faster than the group ahead of him could hold on. By Bike 79k he'd caught and passed Isaac Tan, the man who'd led the race off the bike start. He came off the bike in 2:44:20, 10th overall, and moved through T2 in 11th as the run began.

The Run Down

This is the heart of the race. Over the next 12.5 kilometres, Jansen ran down seven of the ten riders who'd started the run ahead of him, everyone except the three who went on to finish 1st, 2nd and 3rd:

• Run 2kpasses Mohamed El Akkad, moments after leaving T2
• Run 2.9kpasses Marcel Krug
• Run 7.5kpasses Shahrom Abdullah and Jia Xian Tai together
• Run 8.5kpasses Kuok Yuen Teh
• Run 12.5kpasses James Plant and Daniele Meli together

Press play below to watch it happen in order, with the live standings panel updating at each pass.

Five overtaking moments inside 10.5km of running, seven riders passed in all, two of them doubles. By Run 12.5k he was into 4th place outright, and from there to the finish line, he simply held it.

Holding On

The podium finish still eluded him. Tikhonin, Radbone and Kosov built their advantage on the bike and through the first half of the run, and Jansen's own strong run leg, while enough to move him from 11th to 4th, wasn't enough to close those particular gaps: he finished 16:52 behind Radbone's 2nd place and 10:32 behind Kosov's 3rd.

The compressed axis below shows both stories on one screen: the podium's gap at the top, and the tightly fought pack he worked through below it.