We prove that Ricci flows with almost maximal extinction time must be nearly round, provided that they have positive isotropic curvature when crossed with $mathbb{R}^{2}$. As an application, we show that positively curved metrics on $S^{3}$ and $RP^{
3}$ with almost maximal width must be nearly round.
In this paper we analyze the behavior of the distance function under Ricci flows whose scalar curvature is uniformly bounded. We will show that on small time-intervals the distance function is $frac12$-Holder continuous in a uniform sense. This impli
es that the distance function can be extended continuously up to the singular time.
