There’s no-doubt that the T100 Triathlon World Tour has added a lot of money to pro triathletes’ coffers (or, at least, the lucky 20 or so who have been able to compete). It is interesting, though, that even the top athletes from the series are still looking to keep the door open to be able to compete at IRONMAN races. Certainly the Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO), the folks behind the series, have been open to athletes competing at other races. It still has to smart for the PTO, though, that just a week after being crowned world champion at the T100 finale in Dubai, Belgium’s Marten Van Riel is on his way to race in Cozumel.

Van Riel will be competing in his first full-distance race. It would be silly to count him out. He’s only “lost” one long-distance race in his career – his runner-up finish to Jelle Geens at T100 Lake Las Vegas. In addition to his other T100 wins (San Francisco, Ibiza and Dubai), Van Riel won IRONMAN 70.3 Xiamen in 2019, Ironman Dubai in 2022 and 2023, and also won Ironman 70.3 Fortaleza last year.

Van Riel is looking to earn himself a slot for the IRONMAN World Championship in Nice next year. By nailing the spot this weekend, he’ll be able to grab that T100 contract and race that series without having to try and fit in an IRONMAN race along the way.

Of course we all know that there’s no guarantees with any IRONMAN race, let alone a first, but Van Riel won’t exactly have to rip things apart to get himself to Nice next September. As the Latin American Championship, the race offers five pro men’s and women’s spots for the 2025 world champs. And, while he’ll be taking on some seasoned IRONMAN types, including defending champion Leon Chevalier (FRA), who took fourth in Kona last month, American Chris Leiferman and Australian cyclist/ pro triathlete Cam Wurf, as long as Van Riel can remain patient and not push too hard too soon, one would think a top-five finish is quite realistic.

Kona for Knibb?

Women’s T100 world champ Taylor Knibb will be going after her third straight IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship in Taupo next month. The American has long had a “do it all” approach to her racing – she followed her Olympic-qualifying race at the Paris Test Event in 2023 with her second 70.3 world title and then her first IRONMAN in Kona, where she finished fourth. In Kona last year she made it abundantly clear that the goal was to get experience on the course in order to come back in 2025 and go after the win.

There’s no arguing that the T100 racing this year has offered some big names, lots of prize money and very expensive live coverage. The organization has been outspending its incoming revenue at an alarming rate. Which is why one would imagine, at some point, we’ll see the PTO try to put some pressure on athletes to race exclusively at their events. Especially if the first thing its world champions are doing after they win the titles is to get ready for an IRONMAN World Championship.

The post T100 Champ Marten Van Riel Sets His Sights on IRONMAN first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

I think the best way for me to introduce myself to my new home as a Senior Editor here at Slowtwitch is to recount the entertaining Forum thread I came across a few years ago. One of the answers to “You know you’ve been in the sport a long time when …” was “You can remember Kevin Mackinnon racing as a pro.”

Sadly, I remember those days, too. My last professional race was in July 1993. I didn’t know I’d be retiring at the time, but as I tore my plantar fascia on the way to winning the Sarnia Triathlon, I was setting my next career in motion. I had just graduated from journalism school a few months before and became a dad for the first time three weeks earlier. Two weeks later I was announcing at my first race. A month after that I became the director of the Triathlon Pro Tour and media director of a Canadian triathlon series. From there things continued – I soon became communications director for Ironman Canada and Ironman North America, and eventually moved on to being the managing editor of Ironman.com before becoming the Editor in Chief at Ironman.

Along the way I continued to coach, and because all that still wasn’t enough, also became the founding editor of Triathlon Magazine Canada.

After just shy of 20 years with the magazine, I put my last issue to bed two days ago. I’m thrilled to take on this new role with Slowtwitch. I look forward to joining the editorial team and helping to build out what is already one of the sport’s most iconic platforms. I’ll be coming on board to build on the work Eric Wynn and Ryan Heisler, along with all the regular contributors to the site, bring you each week. We’ll provide even more coverage, updates, news, training tips and gear reports. I also can’t wait to start join the gang in the Slowtwitch Podcast. (And that’s just to start! Stay tuned for even more coming at you in the New Year.)

Triathlon and endurance sports have been my passion for a long time. What’s always inspired me to stay involved is the incredible community that makes what we do so meaningful. I’m looking forward to joining the Slowtwitch family and bringing you all the latest on the sport(s) we all love. (That wasn’t an accident – look forward to more endurance-oriented coverage from gravel, trail running and more.)

The saying is “there’s no rest for the wicked,” and, as you’ll quickly learn, I must be very “wicked.” Over the next month I’ll be bringing/ you news and coverage from Ironman Western Australia, Clash Daytona and the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in Taupo, New Zealand. I am only on day one, but I’m already thrilled that Eric, Ryan and the rest of the gang have entrusted me to do exactly what I love to do – tell the stories and capture the images of athletes pursuing excellence. Whether that’s an age-group world champion like my wife, shooting age group athletes on the bikes on the lava in Kona, Laura Philipp nailing a huge day in Nice, or Patrick Lange amazing us all on the Big Island, it’s all inspiring for me. I hope you all enjoy the ride as much as I’m going to.

The post Hello Slowtwitch, I’m the New Senior Editor first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

It seems like every year there’s more hype about the quality of the field racing the IRONMAN World Championship. Most of the time that’s media or Internet personality driven, hyperbole trying to drive up page views or social media engagements; the fields are usually somewhat the same.

It’s a little different this year when you have three former world champions all saying the same thing: this has potential to be the closest and most competitive World Championship race of all time. And that doesn’t just have to do with the margin between winning and second; it’s likely to be a battle all the way through the final paycheck-earning place of 15th. The last time men were in Kona, there was a 24 minute spread from winner Gustav Iden to 15th place Matt Hanson — and it took an 8:04:54 from Hanson to even earn that paycheck.

Here are my bold predictions for this year’s race.

Course Records Will Not Fall

It takes the right mix of athletes racing, weather conditions, and gamesmanship for this particular course record to fall. Although we have seen the record books seemingly re-written all year at big races (e.g., Magnus Ditlev at Roth), that doesn’t look to be the case for today anymore.

Namely, it’s the weather.

There’s a high surf advisory out for Kona at the moment. Even when there’s just “texture” on the water, to borrow the phrase from Michael Lovato, it usually adds time to the swim. There’s an outstanding chance this race starts getting blown apart in the water. That’s bad news for athletes who have deficits to make up coming out of the water. But it also means a slow swim puts things behind the eight ball for trying to go under 7:40.

Once out of the water and it doesn’t get much better — rain showers in the morning, which will give way to cloudy and humid conditions, now with winds gusting up to 30-35 MPH out of the east. It’s all a recipe for your traditional sight of contenders walking on the marathon at one point or another. It will be less of a drag race and more a war of attrition.

The Top 15 Will Be Closer Than Ever

As mentioned at the start, the spread between first and 15th in the last men’s World Championships in Kona was 24 minutes; it was slightly more than that last year in Nice.

That said, there’s more men here this year than ever who have IRONMAN finishes under eight hours. And not only that, there’s more men who have shown aptitude for racing in the kinds of conditions that we should expect on Sunday. It’s unlike any other year. All of the major pre-race favorites have raced well in hot and humid events. And that’s before starting to talk through athletes on the verge of a breakout performance, or the Kona veteran who glues together a race that you never see on camera until they’ve landed a paycheck.

My estimation is that the margin between first and fifteenth will sit at 19 minutes. It should make for some great watching — and furious typing — on Saturday.

My Podium Prediction

My head says this is another Sam Laidlow party. My heart says this should be Magnus Ditlev‘s moment of triumph.

So, naturally, I’m picking Kristian Blummenfelt to win.

It is impossible to ignore Blummenfelt’s ability to race competitively in just about anything. I’m pretty sure that you could put him in winter triathlon this off-season and he’d wreck everyone. Although he wasn’t the tour de force you’ve come to know at this year’s Olympics, he reminded us all about his ability to race IRONMAN well with his 7:27:21 at Frankfurt. He feels inevitable.

I think Ditlev, Laidlow, Blummenfelt and Rudy Von Berg are likely to start the run together, having dispatched the chasers into the wind on the return trip from Hawi. Von Berg does not have the run resume the other three have; I say he is the first to drop from the group, but won’t falter; instead, he’ll hold onto a fourth place finish. The other three should battle into the later stages of the marathon, where Kristian will pull away on the return from the Natural Energy Lab. I expect Laidlow in second, Ditlev hot on his heels in third.

Might as well throw fifth place in here: Patrick Lange. He’ll have a healthy deficit coming off the bike but should be able to run through a bunch of guys, as he always does. The run course record might be in question with him — as it always is when Lange is in the field — but I don’t think that will be enough to catch the other four.

Other Bold Predictions

Quick ones here:

• Lionel Sanders will crack the Top 10, but it’s going to take a true Sanders turn your insides out performance to do so.
• Gustav Iden will not, as he’ll try to race like he did in 2022 but not have the reserves of fitness to do so.
• Antonio Benitez Lopez is a popular pick in our forum discussion. I think he’s thereabouts but eats some Kona humble pie at some point and winds up 13th.
• I’m putting the over/under on bike position penalties at 4.5; I’ll take the over. Too many guys in not enough real estate, especially after what the swim is likely to do to the field.
• I’m taking Matthew Marquardt over Trevor Foley; Leon Chevalier over Arnaud Guilloux; and Jackson Laundry over Matt Hanson.

How to Watch

If you’re in the United States or Canada, tune in live on OutsideTV (formerly known as Outside Watch). Everywhere else, you can watch on either DAZN or via the IRONMAN Pro Series website. Replays will be available on YouTube for everywhere except the U.S. and Canada, where it’s back on Outside.

Lead Photo: Donald Miralle / IRONMAN
Sam Laidlow: Ezra Shaw / Getty Images for IRONMAN

The post Slowtwitch’s Predictions for Kona 2024 first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

In 2023, Ironman split the world championship into two separate days and two different locations. The women raced in Kona, Hawaii and the men raced in Nice, France. This year, 2024, women raced in Nice, France and men race in Kona, Hawaii. The men will start around 2400, the women had just over 1100 finish at Nice. While the intention was to have more inclusivity for women, the format of two races, two locations has failed.

Triathlon’s success is based on community. On a recent podcast, Andrew Huberman, the Stanford neuroscientist, pointed to the fundamental importance for adults to have strong friendships and community. Community and a sense of belonging are main reasons athletes begin with triathlon. It is a “community of pain” and surveys of triathletes, despite our narcissistic bent, return to “community” as the reason for starting in the sport.

So why separate us?

Why have two different world championship races? How does that format promote and encourage women in sport? It doesn’t. It separates us and puts women into an off-stage corner.

I started triathlon for the group atmosphere, for the social component, to find my people. While I am only one voice, I am a common voice. I was living and partying hard in Hollywood in the late 2000s, but that came to a halt when I stopped drinking, joined AA and lost all my “party friends”. It was a lonely time. In 2010 I was introduced to triathlon and the Los Angeles triathlon “team”. I did new and frightening things like open water swimming in Santa Monica. I bought a bike, like many new southern California triathletes, at Helen’s Bikes in Beverly Hills. I joined a run club. I rode with the 101 Ride in Malibu. I was in a community. I had a new happy hour.

As time went on, I made progress and began to want to see how far I could get in the sport. I hired a coach, improved little by little from the middle of the pack at Ironman to being on the podium. I qualified for Kona with a third place finish at Ironman California (three slots). My dream of going to Kona was realized. But as it turns out, this was the first year of a woman’s-only race and Ironman needed to fill the race with others who hadn’t made the podium. Ironman invited lots and lots of women to Kona. Women who came 50^th in their age group were invited. While this helped with inclusivity in the sport, it eroded the racing excellence of Kona. For women, there was no mountain to climb, just a slot to be accepted. The result: the recent women’s world championships in Nice, France was a ghost town with only around 1250 women toeing the start line. The world championship is for the best of the best demonstrated through proper qualification. It is not and should not be treated as a ribbon participation event. While I am glad so many other women got to experience Kona last year, there was a missing piece: the community in total. The men.

For the integrity of our excellence, for the achievement of sport, for the quality of the world championship, we need less is more. Proper qualifications all around. Make it hard to get in. Make it a pinnacle. One day in Kona (or somewhere). Both sexes.

Will a single-day format hurt women’s racing on the big island? Will the professional women in particular be hindered? Maybe. But the achievements of women on the island are underscored by the witness of the entire community validating our achievements as fellow racers, as spectators, as brands, as vendors, as a collective humanity celebrating our joint achievements. We did it because we could. We did it together. And we bragged about it for the rest of our lives.

The post One Day, One Race first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

This week’s sizable announcement between World Triathlon and the Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO) is a landscape shifter. The twelve-year agreement covers a wide variety of key items, with the headline one being the exclusive rights to the World Championship Long-Distance Triathlon Tour.

What it also indicates is that World Triathlon is no longer willing to cede long-course triathlon to IRONMAN or Challenge. Why there even is that split can be traced back through our sport’s history.

The History Behind the Split

IRONMAN, up until roughly 20 years ago, sat underneath the then-ITU (now World Triathlon) umbrella. The ITU was set up for one main purpose: to bring triathlon to the Olympic Games. Les McDonald was the spearhead of that effort. And he was ruthless in his pursuit of doing so. National governing bodies popped up across the world, as it was another requirement in order to become an Olympic sport. The ITU also began awarding a world championship in 1989.

It’s that series of two words that got the lawyers involved: “world championship.” The ITU took IRONMAN to court twice over the use of “world championship” to describe certain IRONMAN events. They lost. And then McDonald, together with national governing bodies, voted to toss IRONMAN, Life Time, and any other quasi-series out from underneath the ITU umbrella in 2004.

If you’re wondering why IRONMAN needs to have its own anti-doping program, or its own relationships with the various national federations it has events in, or its own rulebook: this is what it comes back to. And it can also explain why IRONMAN, occasionally, can feel like a bull stampeding in its actions: because it happened to them.

The Present Day

Between IRONMAN, World Triathlon, and PTO/T100, there are a total of nine world championships on offer in triathlon (I’m not getting into duathlon, aquathlon, etc. here).

• IRONMAN 70.3
• IRONMAN
• World Triathlon Championship Series
• Arena Games / eSports
• Cross Triathlon
• Winter Triathlon
• Long Distance Triathlon
• Triathlon Mixed Relay
• T100 Long Distance Triathlon Tour World Championship

And that’s before we start to factor in other production companies or race series and their crowns; Xterra, Challenge, what have you. It’s a fractured landscape at best.

It also results in some of the challenges that the PTO, or IRONMAN, have had in trying to create some of these so called “season long” narratives for their respective series. We have seen some athletes, like Kat Matthews, who have raced eight times this season between PTO and IRONMAN branded events. We’ve seen others, like Lucy Charles-Barclay, who had committed to T100 earlier in the year and then mid-season opted to defend her IRONMAN World Championship. It’s been a lot of back and forth.

That’s not the case with World Triathlon’s Championship Series. (Their biggest problem has been event cancellation or modification, but that’s a story for another time.) The biggest names in Olympic-distance racing race each time WTCS comes together. Alex Yee, Leo Bergere, and Hayden Wilde are all in prime position to potentially take the WTCS world title later this month for men, whereas Cassandre Beaugrand, Beth Potter, and Lisa Tertsch have the inside edge for women. The narrative exists.

That’s also helped by World Triathlon’s content distribution platform. TriathlonLive provides best-in-class streaming, whether live or on-demand, for $40 annually. It’s a steal compared to Outside TV’s $90 a year service, which has proven buggy whenever high demand events are live. (To be fair, you can only get Outside TV’s premium tier with a full Outside+ membership, which comes with other benefits. You can also watch events live for free, but on-demand requires a membership.) It makes it easy for World Triathlon to create stories, and tell them cohesively, in their race formats.

So Why the Agreement?

As mentioned at the start: this is World Triathlon deciding that they’re not going to cede long-distance triathlon to IRONMAN. As WTCS stars have cycled out of Olympic distance racing and into longer events, they’ve chased the money and prestige of IRONMAN branded events. A few names from recent history: Jan Frodeno, Daniela Ryf, Gustav Iden, Lisa Norden, Kristian Blummenfelt — all former WTCS athletes who have found great success at IRONMAN racing.

Now, with the agreement between World Triathlon and T100, it appears that pipeline will instead flow more directly from Continental Cups to World Cups to WTCS and then, when the time comes, onward to T100 racing. The beneficiaries of that appear, to my eye, the athletes currently in development cycles. In theory this addresses some of the issues PTO/T100 have had with athlete start lists and getting contracted racers to their events, as the federations have more sway over nominating athletes to T100 starts.

It will also likely reduce overall operating costs for T100 branded events. Many of these races in 2024 have been stand-alone races, which creates a higher financial burden on the organization — effectively, you’re trying to play IRONMAN’s game, and when you try to play their game, you lose. Instead the release announcing the agreement talks about the potential to use existing WTCS or World Cup venues to produce T100 events. It’s a far smarter way to operate; consider, for instance, the outstanding atmosphere at the original PTO Tour event in Ibiza that coincided with Age Group Worlds. Speaking of: it would not shock me if, in the future, the Long Distance World Championship is awarded solely at the T100 Grand Final event, in an attempt to also create more buzz, more attendees, around that race.

Lastly, this should also solve for the PTO’s greatest ambition, which has been on media and broadcasting rights. There’s now a ready-made platform to distribute content over to an audience that is hungry for more triathlon race coverage. And, well, it works. Factor with World Triathlon’s existing list of more than 25 different traditional broadcast partners and it should significantly increase T100’s media footprint.

There are still plenty of questions. Namely — will this actually last the full twelve years? Or is it a pipe dream? Will we see the elimination of series contracts as a result of deepening relationships with governing bodies? Or does this potentially change endemic sponsor behavior, and where they choose to focus their dollars and athlete contracts? Or will athletes in this newer framework be more tied to federation-based sponsorship and contracts?

One thing, though, is for certain: it feels like the divide between IRONMAN and World Triathlon could be as wide as it has been since 2004. And the last time that happened, IRONMAN grew into the company we know it as today.

Photo: World Triathlon

The post World Triathlon, T100 Tie-Up Brings Us Full Circle first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

This year marks my tenth year as co-directing the Hogsback Half Marathon, a road race held in the rural, quiet northwestern corner of Connecticut. Of the four productions that Kelly and I have put on together over the last decade, it is the one that we’ve poured most of our energy into. That’s in part due to the sheer logistics of a half marathon versus the distances of the other races, but it’s also because it was the one we did together first. (She’s been doing it well before me.)

Hogsback is the race we first produced a few weeks after my son, Owen, died. It was a race we produced when our daughter, Ivy, was four weeks old. When we moved to New Hampshire six years ago, it was always the race we were going to keep. And we’ve seen a lot over that time period: shrinking from 550 registrants to a low of 270 or so in our rebound from COVID, inflation impacting our ability to make charitable donations post-event, and different demands from athletes.

Still, despite all that, there are glimmers of hope beneath the surface that could show the racing community is truly rebounding post-COVID.

The Economic Realities and Runner Acceptance of Them

Everything, and I mean everything, is more expensive when it comes to race production.

Let’s start with the bare bones basics. You need race directors. Kelly and I do not take a penny from the race; we get reimbursed for any expenses we personally pay related to the race but otherwise, as race directors we get paid the handsome sum of $0. We also do not have to pay any fees for permitting from either our race host location, or from the state of Connecticut for using state roads on our race route. We do, however, pay $500 for traffic control.

But you also need bibs and timing. And that’s not free. Based upon our total number of registered athletes, this cost $11.51 per runner. Depending on when you registered for the race, that represents anywhere from 12.5% to 28% of your total entry fee paid. But we have also never had issues with results from the company we use. It’s a fee we gladly pay.

Then there’s port-o-johns. You need those. (We probably could have used Dan to help command the lines at the end, but that’s another story.) We ordered five rentals this year, along with one existing one at our race location. It shakes out to roughly one port-o-john per 40 runners, based on those who actually showed up on race day. The cost of those rentals is up roughly 20% over pre-COVID times. We also procured some additional toilet paper at BJ’s pre-race, just in case.

Lastly, under the necessary column, are aid station items. We provide water and electrolyte drink mix (Gatorade this year) across six aid stations, and then gels (Gu) at two of those aid stations. You also have trash bags and paper cups for these. Lastly, each runner is given a bottle of water at the finish line, which they can refill as needed with either water or electrolyte mix provided at the end. Water alone is up about 30% for both refills at aid stations (six gallon jugs) and for the individual bottles at the finish line. Gatorade powder is 20% more than last year, whereas gels stayed mostly the same.

When you combine all of those figures together, it works out to almost $25 per runner for your absolute basics. Then there’s the nice-to-haves that help make a race feel more like an event: t-shirts that are included in the registration fee; shirts and items for our volunteers; medals; post-race food; awards for both overall and age group champions; a rental van to help transport everything to and from the race site; gas to power that van; and more.

So it’s clear: costs have gone up. Which means prices to runners go up, too. And I suppose the good news out of this is that runners are understanding of this economic reality, particularly for races that serve to donate all monies collected above expenses to a charitable partner. Despite higher pricing, runner registration and turnout on race day were highest since COVID. The donation to our charity partner was also the largest since 2021 at more than $5,000. It certainly feels less dire than it did even twelve months ago.

Challenges That Still Exist

It’s still not a perfectly rosy picture out there. For example, if Kelly and I actually charged the race even minimum wage for the number of hours we put into the event, the entirety of that profit would have been wiped out. We’d need to roughly double the number of runners registered if we took money in order to then provide a similar donation level, assuming economies of scale.

Race calendars also remain oversaturated, spreading a running population thin across dozens of events that might be taking place on the same weekend. Just within the state of Connecticut, there were more than 40 running events taking place on the week before, the same weekend, or the week after our half marathon. It’s too many events for too few total runners, which simply results in event cannibalization. I would expect to see some of those events evaporate due to low participation volume — which ultimately is brutal for the communities those events take place in, but is ultimately what will need to happen for a sustainable race calendar to exist.

And ultimately cost remains the ultimate question. We raised our prices for the third year in a row, with a maximum price after registration platform fees of almost $90 for a half marathon. Will runners still support a smaller event if that dollar amount sneaks out north of $100? That feels like a price point third rail. Then again, so did $200 for a pair of running shoes, and nearly every pair of carbon-plated racers is above that price point (and seem to be selling well).

There are ways as runners to reduce that cost, of course. Earlier registration grants access to lower price points. More runners registering earlier also generally brings costs down due to lead times for key items. Despite that, though, runner behavior tends towards registering later and later. This year, almost a quarter of the race-day field registered in the final 25 days before the race, with 70% of that paying the highest price to register for the race. It’s likely a response to race cancellations during COVID. Thankfully, we’re pretty well versed in this, and can plan for it — but it does add some additional stress as a race director.

Ultimately, though, we’re glad to have another successful event behind us. And now the planning for 2025 begins.

Photos: Kelly Burns Gallagher / Hogsback Half Marathon

The post Could Small Running Races be Making a Comeback? first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

The inaugural season of the IRONMAN Pro Series is about to come to a close. For women professionals, there are just two points scoring opportunities remaining on the calendar: 70.3 Western Australia on December 1st, followed by the 70.3 World Championships in Taupo, New Zealand on December 14th.

As a reminder, scoring works as follows: IRONMAN victories are worth 5,000 points. 70.3 victories are worth 2,500 points. The recent IRONMAN World Championships in Nice awarded 6,000 points to champion Laura Philipp, and the winner in Taupo will receive 3,000 points. That makes for a maximum 5,500 points available — or less than Philipp or second place Kat Matthews earned in Nice. Points decrease for every second after first place you finish. And only five results may count towards your Pro Series points total, with a maximum of three IRONMAN finishes allowed.

So, crunching the numbers and seeing who has already maximized their possible number of finishes, here are the athletes we believe who are in contention for the Series crown — and the cool $200,000 bonus that comes with it.

The Two Favorites

Kat Matthews: Matthews trails long-time series points leader Jackie Hering by a mere 257 points, but the kicker is that Matthews only has four points scoring finishes to her name to close the gap. Her two IRONMAN wins this season, along with her podium finish at Nice, make her the overwhelming favorite for the series win. Any points scoring finish at either Western Australia or 70.3 Worlds gives her the edge, unless Hering can pull a rabbit out of her hat at 70.3 Worlds. And even that might not be enough.

Jackie Hering: It seems unfair to put the Series leader second in this. But given that she already has her five points scoring finishes to her name, there isn’t the same kind of upside potential for her points total that Matthews has. In fact, Hering could win both remaining races and still only improve her Series total points score by 741 points. That’s simply how consistent she has been all year. It’s hard to say that a top 10 finish at an IRONMAN World Championship could be her undoing for the series crown. Yet it’s her lowest points tally from an IRONMAN all year.

Still, having the lead still counts for something. It means Matthews still has to score. And if Nice taught us anything, it’s that even getting to the finish can prove to be an insurmountable task — just ask Anne Haug.

The Dark Horses

Lotte Wilms: Wilms is one of two athletes who have only scored at three races so far in 2024, meaning that she could win both remaining races and score all 5,500 points. If she were to do so, it’d push her up to a grand total of 18,788 points and likely guarantee a podium spot in the series. She’d need some help from Hering and especially Matthews for that point total to hold up for victory. It’s also asking a lot from Wilms, who last won at this distance in May 2023 at Challenge St. Polten, and hasn’t won an IM branded 70.3 event since Sunshine Coast two years ago.

Hannah Berry: Berry is the last athlete within 5,500 points of Hering, and she also happens to be the other athlete who has only scored at three events in 2024. She, like Wilms, would need plenty of help from the two athletes at the top of the points standings, along with taking the wins in Western Australia and Taupo. But unlike Wilms, Berry has more recent wins at 70.3 distance events — one this year, as well as taking the win at 70.3 Taupo last December. In fact, she’s a multi-time winner and podium finisher in Taupo — potentially giving her momentum heading into this year’s World Championships. We’ve seen this work with course familiarity before in venues like St. George — don’t count Berry out of it.

The Prize Money on Offer

Although we are looking just at who might be the winner of the series will be, let’s not forget — the bonus pool pays out to the top 50 athletes. But the big money sits in the top 10, with $650,000 divided up amongst those 10 athletes.

1st: $200,000
2nd: $130,000
3rd: $85,000
4th: $70,000
5th: $50,000
6th: $40,000
7th: $30,000
8th: $20,000
9th: $15,000
10th: $10,000
11th-50th: $5,000 each
Total: $850,000

Photos: Jackie Hering – Patrick McDermott / Getty Images for IRONMAN
Kat Matthews – Alex Koerier / Getty Images for IRONMAN
Hannah Berry – Albert Perez / Getty Images for IRONMAN

The post Women’s Contenders for IM Pro Series Crown Post-Nice first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

Let’s start with the base numbers for a moment. 1,451 women registered for the 2024 IRONMAN World Championships in Nice, representing 65 different countries, regions or territories. And while yes, that represents a nearly 30% drop in the figure between the 2023 Worlds (held in Kona), there are a couple of mitigating factors in play.

First, there’s this year’s qualification cycle. There were only two races in North America in calendar year 2024 that qualified women for Nice — that’d be IRONMAN Texas and IRONMAN Lake Placid. Otherwise, if you were based in the U.S. or Canada and wanted to go Worlds slot hunting, you needed to travel relatively extensively internationally before another international trip for worlds. And then those races in late 2023 that were also available were in conflict with last year’s Kona dates. It made it more difficult to pull women from IRONMAN’s most populous participatory region. Still, just under a third of the field came from the United States. (The combined European region had the most athletes, with 47% of the field.)

And second is the Nice course. In talking with many athletes, the bike course in particular was a daunting challenge. For some, the descents were a more consistent talking point than the climbs. It was not dissimilar from some talk we heard about the 2021 IM Worlds held in May 2022 in St. George. If you can’t train riding downhill, it’s hard to prep for that challenge.

But even when you factor those items in — it’s nearly 1500 women registering for the IRONMAN World Championships. And by any measure, that is a success. It’s precisely why IRONMAN moved to the two-day format beginning in 2022. And it’s also why there’s no going back to a single day format. The spotlight is too bright, and women continue to star under those bright lights.

This year’s professional race in Nice was one of the best I’ve seen in my career covering triathlon. No caveats. From the surprise of a wetsuit legal swim, to the end of Anne Haug’s podium streak in the first 200 meters outside of T1, to the “could she pull this off?” of seeing Marjolaine Pierre on the front of the bike for a long-time, to the stride for stride run through transition for Laura Philipp and Kat Matthews on through the first lap — there was everything you could ask for. Drama. Tears. Joy. A well deserved first championship for Philipp. Live coverage that had few glitches.

And that’s just talking the professional race!

Let’s also give flowers to the various age group champions, representing nine different nations:

F18-24: Yixuan Chen (China) 11:09:00
F25-29: Caterina Mariani (Switzerland) 10:18:25
F30-34: Lea Riccoboni (France) 9:54:07
F35-39: Joanna Soltysiak-Vrebac (Poland) 9:56:33
F40-44: Jana Richtrova (Czech Republic) 10:25:21
F45-49: Laura Jalasto (Finland) 10:21:26
F50-54: Janette Dommer (Denmark) 10:45:06
F55-59: Loubna Freih (Switzerland) 11:32:17
F60-64: Christine Glah (USA) 12:25:05
F65-69: Judy McNary (USA) 13:14:30
F70-74: Missy Lestrange (USA) 15:13:39

Lestrange was also the oldest competitor in this year’s IMWC, at age 72, and is her 19th IRONMAN age group win.

Nice, too, is a worthy venue for a world championship race. The swim throws a wildcard into the mix (will it or won’t it be wetsuit legal) that you never see in Kona. The bike course brings such a different challenge, demanding all-around excellence along with the iconic images on the descents. And the run lap system, more common for European venues, makes for a better spectator and viewing experience.

It’s not perfect. Our industry and athletes alike would prefer for a single venue World Championships. But when given the choice between a single day race, and all the baggage that comes with it (lack of focus on the women’s professional race; the disproportional impact of age group athletes on that pro race; the late start for age group women and subsequent conditions faced on course), and continuing to split into two days into two venues, I know which one I’d take.

Photos: Jan Hetfleisch / Getty Images for IRONMAN (top, middle); Pablo Blazquez Dominguez / Getty Images for IRONMAN (bottom)

The post Women, Nice Shine for IM World Championships first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

The stage is set for fireworks come Saturday, as the women’s IRONMAN World Championships heads to Nice, France. It is a star-studded field, led by defending world champion Lucy Charles-Barclay. The needs of the Nice course are different than those of Kona, which could mix up the podium order. Some of our editorial team has come together and determined what it might take to win on Sunday, as well as our respective picks for the podium.

Jordan Rapp (2011 ITU Long Distance World Champion, Slowtwitch CTO) – On What it Will Take to Win

Unlike in Kona, Nice doesn’t quite offer the same sort of guarantees around weather. Yes, Kona varies. But you know that it will be hot and humid. The strengths of the wind are really the big variable. The current weather forecast in Nice is about as close to perfect as imaginable, with a low of 61F (16C) and a high of 73 (23C). But there is rain in the forecast for Monday, which would meaningfully change the race if it shows up a day early, as the Nice bike course is fairly technical – Gustav Iden had his breakout 70.3 WC win there on a road bike. Rain would definitely shift the race in favor of the better bike handlers.

The cooler temperatures also makes the race much more wide open. The ability to tolerate Kona’s weather has always been a prerequisite to winning there, which was always one of the stronger arguments for moving the race around. The forecasted temperatures in Nice should make for a very fast, very competitive race, though it can also come back to bite athletes who get lulled into a false sense of security around fueling and hydrating. No matter the conditions, 8+ hours of racing is a long time and mistakes in the early going often don’t show up until late in the marathon. Especially if the rain shows up early and athletes are less confident about fueling whenever they want to because they are focused on bike handling, you should still expect to see some of the classic explosions that accompany any race where athletes are pushing their limits for such a long time. If the rain holds off, don’t expect the weather to be a factor. If the rain shows up early, expect some drama on that bike course.

The cooler temperatures also mean a wetsuit swim is a possibility, which along with the cooler temperatures could keep the race that much tighter early on. Nice’s bike course will serve to break up the field in ways that the Kona course simply cannot. Bike handling matters in Nice in ways that it simply doesn’t in Kona, except when the winds are truly howling. Relative power – w/kg – will matter more here than it does in Kona. While the Kona bike course is hillier than some might expect with approximately 1500m/4800ft of climbing, virtually all of it comes during the long, straight grind up to Hawi. The Nice course is substantially hillier – with about 2500m/8000ft of climbing – but the delta between the two actually understates just how different they are. VeloViewer offers the best interface for viewing bike courses, and I think it’s worth taking a look at their interactive map to get a real sense of how tricky this bike course can be, especially if it’s wet. The Nice course is also very new – the one-loop course was first introduced in 2023 – so nobody has much experience on this course, especially in a race-day setting. Athletes who raced here at IM France this summer, like Charles-Barclay, should have a major advantage in terms of knowing the course and how it feels to actually race on it.

I’d also expect some of the wind-tunnel-optimized positions may incur a bit of regret against positions slightly more optimized for comfort, especially when descending. I think athletes would do well to opt for wider tires, where the added grip of a larger contact patch will mean that much more confidence. Likewise bikes with long front-center geometry that keeps weight distribution manageable when descending might also give a subtle advantage. The bike course tends to be more decisive in the women’s race than in the men’s, and I’d expect that to be especially true in Nice.

I expect we’ll see a well-under-2:50 marathon here. Maybe several. That type of speed can erase some pretty massive deficits. The run course is essentially the inverse of the bike course, flat as a pancake. You can always count on explosions in an Ironman marathon, but I think that it’s way more likely to see a “let it rip” gamble on the run actually pay off here. I think the weather makes it more likely that a record-setting run might take the win here from someone who is able to simply stay “close enough” on the bike, especially with a wetsuit swim making the first leg that much less of a factor, especially in terms of overall fatigue.

I predict that the fastest run of the day will take the win. The bike will determine the overall podium. But the run will be what sets the specific order.

David Pinsonnealt (Slowtwitch IM Pro Series Lead Writer)

It would have been reasonable to pencil in Charles-Barclay to repeat as IRONMAN World Champion, prior to her DNF at T100 London. She cruised to victory at IRONMAN Nice in June but had the third fastest bike split in a non-Pro Series field. If I knew Lucy was fully healthy, I would put her in my top-3. I do not, however, think you can be anything less than 100% to prevail this year. For that reason, I am going to go with Anne Haug, Kat Matthews, and Laura Philipp, in that order.

Haug was on another level at Challenge Roth, beating Philipp by more than 10 minutes. Matthews has been a model of consistency this season and has a pair of head to head decisions over Philipp at T100 races. It was good to see Chelsea Sodaro finish 8th at T100 London. She beat Els Visser by 17 minutes at IRONMAN New Zealand in March and has gone through some struggles since then. India Lee was the surprise winner in the heat at T100 Miami and then won the Challenge Championship. She has since been 8th and 9th in T100 races. Sodaro or Lee on the podium would not shock me. I just do not feel confident picking either of them over Haug-Matthews-Philipp.

Kristin Jenny (Slowtwitch Interviews and Features)

1. Laura Philipp
2. Lucy Charles-Barclay
3. Kat Matthews
A close fourth and fifth: Anne Haug and Els Visser.

I picked Laura Philipp as the overall winner for the 2024 IMWC Nice because she is clearly so hungry for and dedicated to going all in for this win. After her penalty in Kona in 2022 and then coming in third in Kona in 2023, I can sense that Philipp is ready to see herself on the top step. She’s spent most of her year training in the mountains and testing her bike setup just for the conditions of the Nice bike course and she appears healthy and mentally sharp heading into race day. I think Lucy Charles-Barclay is another strong contender here – she stormed away with the win at IM Nice earlier this year, beating second by 17 minutes. I think Philipp’s mountain-specific training may give her an edge over Charles-Barclay, although I imagine the two will end up riding fairly close together depending on how much of a gap Charles-Barclay has coming out of the swim. Fellow Brit Kat Matthews is my third place choice – I envision her staying near the top 5-7 women on the bike but never leading it, and then picking off women one by one on this flat, speedy marathon course. 

Lastly, I think you can’t count out Anne Haug and Els Visser. Haug’s had an up-and-down year with health challenges, but has still found tremendous success in races like IM Lanzarote, which she won handily. I’m just not sure if she’s been able to put in the kind of volume and intensity that the other ladies have – but she’s fairly private, so who knows, maybe she has after all. Els is my dark horse top five choice. She’s a solid enough swimmer to not concede too much time to the uber-swimmers, and she’s a monster on the bike when she finds her momentum. She’s been training in mountains for most of the year, too, and has been doing lots of bike volume on mountain passes in St. Moritz. She can also put together a great run on the right day, but would need a super-charged bike to fend off the likes of super-speedy runners such as Matthews.

Ryan Heisler, Slowtwitch Editor-in-Chief

This is, in my opinion, a much more difficult podium to predict, as the challenges of the Nice course are simply so different than what you find in Kona. First, as Jordan mentioned, is the weather: there’s not much wind to speak of, with clouds expected to roll in during the afternoon and mild temperatures. It’s going to be conducive to a very fast day of racing which will not punish athletes in the same way that, say, the Natural Energy Lab does every year.

But the bike will be a difference maker. That means any of your top-riders — Lucy Charles-Barclay, Laura Philipp, Kat Matthews, India Lee — I would expect to see an extremely large gap out of these leaders back to the running elite, led by Anne Haug. Charles-Barclay’s Achilles will remain a question mark going on the run, as it’s been feast or famine for her this year. But I think she’s up to the challenge.

Ultimately I see Charles-Barclay defending her crown, barely holding off Philipp for the win. Haug will put together a blistering run that will see her mow down everyone except the leading two to claim that last podium slot, extending her seven year run of podium finishes at IRONMAN World Championship races.

Photos: Pablo Blazquez Dominguez / Getty Images for IRONMAN

The post Slowtwitch Predicts the Women’s IM World Championship Podium first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

This past weekend’s IRONMAN event in Vitoria-Gastiez should have been a massive celebration for Antonio Benito Lopez and Kat Matthews, who delivered outstanding race performances on their way to victory — with Benito Lopez winning on home soil, on an epic weekend for Spanish sports.

Instead, the story turned to defending IRONMAN World Champion Sam Laidlow, who, while attempting to validate his World Championship race slot, was disqualified from the race for failing to serve a drafting penalty. Laidlow attempted to protest his disqualification, which saw him finish the full distance of the race and file an official protest. The race jury convened, and denied his protest. The disqualification stood. By most readings of IRONMAN’s own rulebook, this was not a “competitive finish” of the race.

Well, at least until this morning, where IRONMAN announced that Laidlow’s race would still count for validation.

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We’re going to unpack this one — on the validation process, Laidlow’s schedule that left him in a precarious position in the first place, and then this pretzel twisting of IRONMAN’s own rulebook that leads us to question what the rules even mean anymore.

The Validation Rule

IRONMAN World Champions, like Laidlow, earn a five-year automatic exemption into the IRONMAN World Championship. Podium finishers auto qualify into the following year’s World Championship. The defending IRONMAN 70.3 World Champion also auto qualifies into the full distance event.

All of these exemption entries have a specific clause that their entry is predicated on “validat(ing) their entry by completing a Validation Race.” A validation race is defined as “racing competitively (as determined by IRONMAN in IRONMAN’s sole discretion) and finishing at least one (1) Qualifying IRONMAN (excluding the 2023 IRONMAN World Championship) OR two (2) Qualifying IRONMAN 70.3 (excluding the 2023 IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship) events that offers Pro qualifying slots during the 2024 IRONMAN Qualifying Year. (Period ending August 19, 2024, for IRONMAN events and period ending June 30, 2024, for IRONMAN 70.3 events).”

The validation requirement is not new; it’s been around for many years so as to ensure professional athletes include IRONMAN branded events in their schedule. Nor is the “racing competitively” clause — it was added in the early 2010s so as to ensure that not only athletes were showing up, but actually looking to perform on race day. (No eating a bag of chips on the run, for instance.)

The validation rule makes sense. Yes, it is self-serving for IRONMAN — they want professional athletes racing their races, especially those that have won World Championships. It’s a prevention mechanism so that way your World Champion does not race a full year without coming to your races, and then showing up again. But it’s not, say, a response against the PTO and T100; this rule has been in place since IRONMAN’s biggest competitor’s were Revolution3, or Challenge, or even the former ITU. Get your biggest names to a race or two throughout the year, and then see them again at the World Championships.

Laidlow’s Schedule Adds Complexity

Laidlow was offered, and accepted, a 2024 T100 contract following his IRONMAN World Championship victory. As noted in most of those contracts, PTO athletes needed to race a minimum of five events in their series throughout the year. Following his World Championship victory, Laidlow took the rest of 2023 off, not racing again until March’s T100 event in Miami, where he finished 9th. He then bopped over to the following month’s event in Singapore, where he did not finish the race.

Then there’s nothing until this past weekend.

Laidlow placed all of his IRONMAN validation requirement eggs in a single IRONMAN race, despite having ample time to have finished two 70.3s in this time frame. Or to have chosen an earlier IRONMAN event to attempt to validate. Instead, Laidlow would need all of the stars to align on race day — no penalties, no disqualifications, no mechanical issues, no nothing — in order to ensure that he met the requirements of the rules.

And it blew up spectacularly. Whether or not the drafting penalty itself was warranted is an unnecessary discussion; the drafting rules, even with RaceRanger now on course, make it clear that a.) the penalty remains a discretionary call on the official’s part and b.) judgment calls like drafting are unappealable on their face. Laidlow then missing the next penalty tent, by rule, is an automatic race disqualification. Laidlow continued the race in order to be able to file an official protest, as is his right, and completed the full distance. Post-race, the protest was denied, and Laidlow’s disqualification upheld.

That would typically mean that Laidlow is not considered a finisher, just like anyone who is beyond the time cutoffs but crosses the finish line at an IRONMAN event. That means he did not validate his slot — and with precious few opportunities, with all of them required to be a full distance race, between now and the deadline, it appeared Laidlow’s defense of his world title was in big trouble.

A Non-Finish Is Now a Finish

And now IRONMAN has announced that Laidlow’s disqualification somehow still meets its own criteria for validation.

Their statement, in part, says: “Sam Laidlow’s completion of the Ironman Vitoria-Gasteiz triathlon meets Ironman’s written 2024 policy on the Ironman World Championship validation, which stipulates that an athlete must race competitively and finish an Ironman triathlon (or two Ironman 70.3 triathlon races) within the qualifying period.  

Sam followed the onsite protest process, acted professionally throughout, and most importantly, showed respect to the process and his fellow competitors, all of which is in the spirit of the sport and reflective of Sam’s professionalism. Sam’s completion of the event matches the fulfillment of other validation eligible athletes and the spirit of the policy extended accordingly.”

Except…it does not “match the fulfillment of other validation eligible athletes.” A disqualification has not ever meant that a race is finished. It’s a non result. It is, by rule, exactly not like anything else, and opens the door to a whole series of claims regarding whether an athlete finished a race or not. Is it just completed the distance? If so, what’s the point of time cut-offs? Or drafting penalties? Or any equipment rules?

It’s also somewhat an insane decision on IRONMAN’s part when their own rulebook offered them a solution that did not require such mangling of the rest of it. Section 7 of IRONMAN’s qualification rules offers Wild Card slots: “Due to extraordinary circumstances, IRONMAN may, in its sole discretion, elect to offer special invitations to participate in the 2024 Championship Race.” This is a pretty extraordinary circumstance — your World Champion was disqualified from the race where he attempted to validate, and would otherwise be ineligible to race. He followed the spirit of racing competitively but was not otherwise eligible. This is what this part of the rules is for.

Ultimately IRONMAN got the correct end result — Sam Laidlow should be on the starting line in October. But how it managed to get there does a disservice to athletes who follow the letter of their rules, from professional to average athlete alike.

The post On Sam Laidlow’s IM World Championship Validation Debacle first appeared on Slowtwitch News.