5 Takeaways from the 2026 T100 French Riviera

Well, Hayden Wilde certainly has no interest in anything Slowtwitch’s very own Ryan Heisler has to say. Last week Heisler boldly predicted that the Kiwi wouldn’t win the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship (Heisler managed to also be wrong about the 2025 women’s winner, Lucy Charles-Barclay, too), only to have to eat crow when Wilde won in Nice. Heisler has been too busy with new product releases all week to say anything about Wilde’s potential at this year’s T100 French Riviera, which is a good thing because, surprise of all surprises (since he’s won almost every T100 race he’s ever entered – more on that below), Wilde once again stole the show and appears to be well on his way to another T100 world title.

So, before we get into some of our takeaways from today’s racing on the French Riviera, we’ll share the results from today’s racing.

OK, now onto some thoughts from the day:

Olympics Might Still Be the Goal, But …

Hayden Wilde has made it abundantly clear that he’s all in for the LA Games, which makes sense after winning bronze in Tokyo and silver in Paris, but, boy, is he ever good at this T100 thing. (And a bit longer, too, as per last weekend’s race in Nice.)

Just to recap his T100 race career, he won all but one of the T100 events he entered last year, and that “non-win” involved riding an extra lap of the bike course in Dubai and still placing eighth. The only other time he hasn’t won was in San Francisco (he finished third) earlier this year when he was still dealing with what would eventually be diagnosed as lung inflammation. It would appear to be inevitable that Wilde will take a second T100 world title this year – right now he leads the series with 96 points, with Jake Birtwhistle in second with 59 and Lasse Nygaard Priester sitting at 49 points. If Wilde can win the T100 race in Saudi Arabia in November, he’ll head into the final with a perfect score of 105 points (he’ll drop the San Francisco score) to go along with his Final point total, making it really tough for anyone to stop him from taking another world title.

When we asked Wilde whether he will be back to defend his 70.3 world title next year, he wasn’t sure because he’ll be focussed on Olympic qualification. It will also be interesting to see how much T100 racing he sticks with (one would guess as much as he can!) during his Olympic run. While it will be a shame not to get to see him racing so much over the longer distances, at 29, there’s lots of time for Wilde to go long once he’s done in LA, which he has made it clear is the plan.

At T100s, Swimming is Really Important

Remember when Sam Long almost got lapped out of the race and then somehow ran his way to second at T100 Miami in 2024? Then when he went from last to second again at T100 Singapore? It’s really hard to imagine that anyone could pull off a performance like that again. At today’s race, there were 15 men within 17 seconds of each other out of the water. The first 18 were within 37 seconds of the leader, Sam Dickinson. The only left in the lurch was Will Draper, who hit T1 just under four minutes back.

With that many people so close together, if you’re trailing by over three minutes after the swim it’s not like you can come out of the water and steadily work up through the field. Coming off the bike, there were 16 men within 2:40 of each other, with Draper among the final three sitting over nine minutes back as they started the run.

Yes, we’ve been talking about all this for a while, but today’s race really illustrates just how high the level has reached – if you can’t swim within roughly 30 seconds of the fastest man in the field, it’s going to be very difficult to be competitive for the podium at a T100 race in the future.

More “Christmas Lights”

Last week in Nice Hayden Wilde was very vocal about all the Race Ranger red lights he saw during the early stages of the bike.

“It looked like Christmas up there with all the red lights,” he told us in our post-race interview, then reiterated again at the post-race press conference.

Today it was Jelle Geens’ turn to be vocal – after a physical swim, he wasn’t impressed with the first two laps of the bike.

“There were lots of red lights and if you followed the rules all of a sudden you were at the back,” he said in his post-race interview. “At one point I just decided to go to the front, and when Rico went everything got a bit cleaner.”

As with last week, there weren’t any drafting penalties handed out on the bike today.

Despite the challenges on the bike, Geens would end up finishing second, out-sprinting Kyle Smith for the second spot on the podium. After spending much of the summer off with injury, the Belgian star has bounced back in style and could get himself to a decent position in the T100 standings with a few more solid performances.

A Reversed Penalty Messes With Bogen

During the final lap of the bike Rico Bogen was assessed a penalty for improper water bottle disposal, only to have it revoked shortly afterwards. In the meantime, though, the German had pressed to try and make up time, which left him with little energy for the run. He would eventually fade to 13th.

The incident seemed very reminiscent of Magnus Ditlev’s DQ for littering at IRONMAN Frankfurt last year, which was also rescinded. A frustrated Ditlev would end up eighth.

Bouncing Back: Kyle Smith

It’s been an up-and-down few years for Kiwi Kyle Smith. In 2022 and 2023 he developed a mystery illness that would eventually be attributed to mould in his Girona apartment. Last year’s season came to an abrupt end thanks to a bike crash – Smith described having “stopped straight on my shoulder – in which he broke his collarbone.

Smith hadn’t been at his best for much of last year anyway, and had mixed results before today, but was most definitely in the mix in Frejus. He was aggressive on the bike and run, and it took an incredible effort from one of the sport’s best sprinters – Jelle Geens – to get past Smith in the closing stages of the run. Smith actually ran three seconds faster than Geens, which is an incredible run for him. It will be fun to see if he can back today’s performance up with a few more top T100 finishes to round out the year.

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