5 Bold Predictions in Advance of the IM Pro Series Kickoff

We’re less than three days away from the 2025 IRONMAN Pro Series starting, with IRONMAN 70.3 Geelong the first in this year’s 18 event series. The next 9 months will be sure to have plenty of action as athletes vie for their share of the $1.7 million bonus pool. And there’s lots of new faces joining the series, looking to replace defending champions Kat Matthews and Gregory Barnaby.

With that all in mind, here are five predictions for this year’s Series. (Feel free to send these to Freezing Cold Takes when I am wrong on every single one of them.)

Cam Wurf Will Fail In His Attempt to Race All Pro Series Events

Wurf made waves recently by announcing a race schedule that included every single Pro Series event.

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If there were any athlete on the planet that could pull this type of schedule off, it’d be Wurf. The former Pro Tour rider is used to elongated seasons. He’s done IRONMAN races on consecutive weeks. He ran a 2:36 marathon in New York City just a week after finishing 7th at the IRONMAN World Championships. In other words: Wurf is a beast, and this schedule is somehow plausible in this context.

That all said, though: there’s simply too many variables, and too much travel, for this schedule to actually come to fruition. It may not actually even get started, as Wurf appears to be in California and riding a gravel-build Dogma X as we approach race weekend in Geelong.

Nobody Will Hit the Pro Series Perfect Score

The IRONMAN Pro Series points system heavily weights performance at iron-distance races. Double the points are on offer at IRONMAN events versus 70.3s: 5,000 points to the winner of a full distance race, 2,500 for 70.3 wins. Points decrease for every second behind the winner you finish, hence the “Every Second Matters” branding around the events. There’s also an increase in points available at the IRONMAN and IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship races: 6,000 points if you win in Nice or Kona, and 3,000 if you take this year’s 70.3 title in Marbella. Add it all up and a perfect score is 21,500.

Although women’s defending champion Matthews came agonizingly close to two world titles last year with two seconds, I don’t see anybody sweeping both crowns this year. I also don’t think, just given the depths of both men’s and women’s fields, that anybody can hit perfection at every event. The Pro Series rewards consistency, particularly at the two championship races. Remember, men’s champion Barnaby only won a single race all year in 2024, but it was his sixth in Kona and ninth at 70.3 Worlds that gave him the Series title.

Matthews Will Repeat as Champion

Matthews is simply consistent. She’s always in contention. Even when she’s hurt, like she was at T100 Miami, she’s putting on a gritty performance. From April to September last year she finished no worse than third in six different starts across three different distances. She is, like Thanos, inevitable.

With her reducing her racing schedule somewhat in order to stay focused on the Pro Series this year, I think she will nab that elusive IRONMAN world title. I also think it will likely be the full distance one in Kona. Between that and her otherwise consistent series of results, Matthews will become the first two-time Pro Series champion.

Magnus Ditlev Will Take the Men’s Title

Ditlev is the biggest name “swapping series,” so to speak, moving from a T100 contract last year over to the Pro Series. You could argue that he was traded for Barnaby, who earned a T100 contract for the year.

Because the Pro Series heavily weights performance at the respective world championship races, Ditlev’s strong record at these races since 2022 gives him an edge on a field that should also include Rudy von Berg, Patrick Lange, Kristian Blummenfelt, and Gustav Iden. Ditlev’s also arguably the most consistent 70.3 performer out of that pack, which lends well to the non-full distance races on his schedule. We will find out early — Ditlev will take on the likes of Leon Chevalier, Matt Hanson, Bradley Weiss and more at the first full-distance race of the year at IRONMAN South Africa next weekend.

Lionel Sanders Will Win a Pro Series Full Distance Race This Year

It’s been nearly four months since we’ve written about Lionel at all, so it’s time to get our quota of words in on our Forum’s favorite Canadian (all apologies to Paula Findlay).

Sanders took home two victories in the Pro Series last year, but both came at early season 70.3s. He won in Oceanside and in Mont-Tremblant. He also had a good showing at IRONMAN Lake Placid, earning third place and almost 4,400 points. Sanders also won IRONMAN Canada — although that was not part of the Pro Series last year. His dismal showing in Kona and a DNS in Taupō meant that he could only finish 18th in the Pro Series standings at the end of the season — well outside the top 10 critical positions that earn the largest share of the bonus pool.

It’s time that Lionel gets a victory at one of the premier full distance events. Although he isn’t racing either of the first two events on the calendar, we expect to see him take a win early in the year.

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