Age Groupers in Marbella: Switzerland’s Coco Bello Looks for a Magical Day in Spain

November 4, 2025

Corina “Coco” Bello. Photos: Kevin Mackinnon

The IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship is this weekend in Marbella, Spain, with the women racing on Saturday and the men following up on Sunday. The week is still young, so there are many athletes who have yet to touch down in Spain, but many have already arrived and are getting some training miles in to familiarize themselves with the race course.

One of those athletes is Switzerland’s Corina “Coco” Bello, a 29-year-old anesthisiologist who is still relatively new to the sport with just two years of racing under her belt. Despite only recently diving into triathlon, Marbella will be Bello’s second time racing at the 70.3 worlds, with the first coming last year in New Zealand.

Finding Triathlon

Bello says she never played any sports when she was growing up in Switzerland. She wasn’t an endurance enthusiast in her youth, she didn’t play any stick-and-ball sports. In fact, the only quasi-athletic thing she did was more of a pastime, and not very serious.

“I danced hip-hop as a child once a week,” she says with a laugh. With only some popping and locking in her past, she took up running during med school, but only to keep fit, not for any real goal or plan. When she started her residency (which she officially completed only a week before travelling to Marbella), she “swore” that she wouldn’t do endurance sports again. When her friends got into cycling, though, she couldn’t help herself.

“They asked me if I’d come with them on a bike ride,” she says. In some parts of the world, a casual bike ride with friends could be pretty light and easy. In Switzerland, with its mountainous landscape, Bello’s fun ride with her buddies featured about 1,500 metres of elevation gain in around 30 miles of cycling.

“That’s the first time I ever fell asleep on a sofa in someone else’s home, because I was just dead,” Bello says. “But I loved it.”

She kept on cycling with that group, and when they all signed up for a triathlon, she decided to do the same.

“I was like, ‘I’m not going to just stand on the sideline,” she says. “That’s just no fun.”

Bello says she could swim, but she had never trained for any kind of racing. Similarly, she had ridden and run a bunch, but never competed. Even so, she dove into the race and fell in love with the sport. After that, her life became a juggling act as she worked to fit training into her busy residency schedule. She found a way to make it all work, she says, and soon she set her sights on not just racing a 70.3, but trying to qualify for the world champs.

“I hired a coach because I saw the teaser video for [the Taupo world championships],” she says. “When I saw it, I was like, ‘I want to go there. I just need to qualify.'”

At the time, she was living in Australia for a research job, so she entered 70.3 Geelong.

“I signed up for it a week before,” Bello says. “It was really fun. I struggled a lot on the run, I have to admit, because I had zero planning regarding nutrition or fuelling.”

Bello didn’t qualify for the world championship in Geelong (she says finished one spot shy of earning a ticket to Taupo), but it showed her that she had what it took to do well at that distance. A few months later, back home in Switzerland, she raced another 70.3, this time qualifying for worlds.

She did one more half before heading to New Zealand, this time in Italy, just to get used to racing in TT position. That was when things stopped going to plan.

“I tore my calf muscles on the run,” she says. She still finished in a strong time, qualifying for Marbella before she had even travelled in Taupo, but the race left her hobbled and unable to run. This was less than two months out from worlds, and she didn’t complete another run until she was in New Zealand on the race course.

“It was not my best run, I’d say,” she says. The race was a tough one to finish, but she says it was still “amazing” to race in Taupo on the world stage. Now, she is back at the 70.3 worlds and looking to have a bit of a better result than last year’s.

“I hope to survive the swim, as always,” she laughs. “Then have fun on the bike and nail the run this time, not like last year.”

Bello says she would love to have a strong showing in Marbella, but her top priority is to enjoy the experience.

“I think I’m always the one having the most fun on the course,” she says. With a mindset like that, any other positives from race day are just a bonus.