We Noticed: (Insanely) Competitive IRONMAN Texas Field, Matt Hauser Steps Up to T100 and more

The first full-distance IRONMAN event in North America takes place at The Woodlands, Texas, and will once again feature an incredible field. The IRONMAN Texas North American Championship will offer US$175,000 along with six pro qualifying slots per gender for Kona, so it’s hardly a wonder that the start list includes over 100 pros. What seems to make this one a bit different, though, is the quality of the fields. The women’s race features three of the biggest names in IRONMAN racing along with a bunch of women we’d normally consider favourites for the win, while the men’s field includes last year’s Nice Norwegian podium, along with a who’s who of the sport’s biggest names.

Matthews 4-Peat?

While it seems crazy to expect anyone other than Kat Matthews to win the women’s race (she’s won the last three three Texas races, is the only woman to have won the IRONMAN Pro Series and arrives in The Woodlands having won IRONMAN New Zealand and 70.3 Geelong), the Brit will be facing last year’s Kona champ Solveig Løvseth and American Taylor Knibb, who has also won her first two races of 2026 – T100 Gold Coast and 70.3 Oceanside. Last year Matthews handily beat Knibb in Texas, and five weeks later would beat Løvseth in Hamburg (second to the Norwegian’s third with the both finishing behind Germany’s Laura Philipp). Add to that Matthews’ impressive performances in her first two IRONMAN Pro Series races and she’s definitely the pre-race favourite heading into Texas. There’s nothing like a motivated Taylor Knibb, though, and based on her 2025 season, it would appear that the American is very motivated to get things figured out on the full-distance front in 2026. A strong finish (which, when you’re at Knibb’s level, pretty much means a win) will be important to Knibb in order to arrive in Kona with the confidence to get all the way to the line this year, so she has a bit more riding on a big day than the other two, one would imagine.

Here’s the other thing – there are lots of IRONMAN champs in the field who will be more than happy to cruise on ahead should any (or all) of the “big three” falter – Kiwi Hannah Berry, Austria’s Lisa Perterer, Sweden’s Sara Svensk, Spain’s Marta Sanchez and Americans Jackie Hering and Danielle Lewis would normally be prohibitive podium favourites. You can also add to the mix Aussie Grace Thek, who is making her long-awaited full-distance debut.

IRONMAN World Champ Smorgasbord

Only one of the winners of the last five IRONMAN World Championship races won’t be competing in Texas – 2023 Nice champion Sam Laidlow. In the field you’ve got 2022 St. George champ (officially the 2021 world championship) Kristian Blummenfelt, 2022 Kona champ Gustav Iden, 2024 Kona winner Patrick Lange and last year’s Nice champion Casper Stornes. As if that’s not enough firepower to add to the excitement, there’s Marten Van Riel (fourth in Nice last year), Jonas Schomburg (sixth in Nice) and two-time defending IRONMAN 70.3 world champion Jelle Geens, who is making his full-distance debut.

But there’s more! Magnus Ditlev (runner-up in Kona in 2024) appears as number 14 on the start list and he’l be racking his bike next to American Sam Long, with Canadian Lionel Sanders a couple of spots over. There’s 2024 Kona runner-up Rudy Von Berg, fellow American and four-time Texas champ Matt Hanson (who is fresh off a podium finish at IRONMAN New Zealand), Spain’s Antonio Lopez and Dane Kristian Høgenhaug. This men’s field feels so much like a world championship that a three-time IRONMAN champ like France’s Leon Chevalier sits way down on the “mention” category, as do Americans Ben Kanute and Jason West. Ditto for Aussie Cameron Wurf and another multiple IRONMAN champ, Kiwi Mike Phillips.

There are 82 men registered at this point, making this a considerably larger field than we’ll see in Kona, so get ready for some fireworks – I’ll be in Texas to cover all the action.

Matt Hauser Makes T100 Debut in Singapore

The T100 race in Singapore promises to feature an interesting mix of, well, T100 specialists and World Triathlon Championship Series (WTCS) stars, including last year’s T100 Triathlon World Tour champion Hayden Wilde, who appears to be hedging his bets on both Olympic qualifying and big-money middle-distance racing this year. Wilde will face off against last year’s WTCS champion, Matt Hauser, who had originally planned to make his distance debut last year at IRONMAN 70.3 Wollongong, only to have his race end when he snapped a bolt on his handlebars a few kilometres into the bike.

Hauser, who finished seventh at the Paris Games before going on a tear at WTCS races last year, Wilde (silver medalist) and reigning Olympic champ Alex Yee are all going to be doing some sort of distance efforts at the end of this month – Hauser and Wilde will be taking each other on in Singapore on April 25, while Yee will be pacing countryman Emile Cairess (who did the same for him in Valencia last year) at the London Marathon the next day.

There are enough Olympic-distance specialists in the field to make the race in Singapore feel like a bit of a draft-legal reunion – Frances’s Léo Bergere was third in Paris and bounced between WTCS and T100 racing last year, and his countryman Pierre Le Corre finished fourth in Paris and has made the move to long-distance racing (he finished second at Challenge Sir Bani Yas and IRONMAN New Zealand already this year). You can also add Olympic silver medalist from Rio, Henri Schoeman to that list along with Jonas Schomburg, who finished 24th in Paris and will be bouncing back from IRONMAN Texas to compete in Singapore a week later. Another name from the Paris Games is Samuel Dickinson, who supported Yee in the individual race before dropping out to conserve energy for the mixed relay, where he was part of the bronze-medal winning team. Rounding out the Olympic get-together is Aussie Jake Birtwhistle, who competed at the Tokyo Games and finished 16th.

Here’s the start list for the T100 race in Singapore:

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