Grading the 2026 IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship
The first big championship weekend of the 2026 triathlon season has come and gone. What we got from them were two spectacular races from the women’s and men’s professional fields, with worthy champions in Taylor Knibb and Hayden Wilde, respectively. Those races have also effectively shaken up the Pro Series standings, with Solveig Løvseth bounding up the leaderboard on the women’s side (and should effectively lock in the win in the Series with a decent showing in Kona) and Kristian Blummenfelt on top of the men’s table but with Casper Stornes, Marten Van Riel, Jonas Schomburg, and Gustav Iden all within striking distance and all four of them only on four finishes to date to Blummenfelt’s five, limiting Blummenfelt’s chances for improvement come Kona.
At any rate, it’s time to issue some grades from the weekend.
Taylor Knibb and Hayden Wilde: A+
Winning a world championship should pretty obviously earn an A in my book, but both Knibb and Wilde put forth performances that were near masterclasses in execution.
Let’s start with Knibb, who now only trails Daniela Ryf for the most 70.3 titles of all time. Texting with Eric, we both wrote the win off the second Knibb hit the front of the bike course and annihilated the Col de Vence climb, ascending nearly three minutes faster than then next fastest rider. Her gap to second place Marjolaine Pierré sat at nearly five full minutes after the bike, and had over eight minutes to other pre-race favorites like Kat Matthews and Løvseth. Perhaps more worrying for the field heading into next month’s IRONMAN World Championships, Knibb had the fifth fastest run on the day and looked in control for just about every stride (including yelling at someone riding a bike nearby to go away so she wouldn’t get a pacing penalty).
It’s starting to feel like she might be able to crack the Kona nut this year.
And then there’s Wilde. In my pre-race prediction article, I’d written Wilde off. Well, somebody went and proved me very, very wrong. The men’s race was much more explosive, with multiple moves amongst the front group by the likes of Wilde, Rico Bogen, Iden, Stornes, and Lasse Nygaard Priester. Eleven men entered T2 within 70 seconds of one another. It made transition a bit frantic, with Wilde accidentally dropping his watch and booting it away from him. He opted to run without it, which I actually think played to his favor. Wilde hit the front of the run early, but after initially building a gap, whether intentionally or not he allowed Priester to catch up, then asking the German how fast they were running.
Data can sometimes force an athlete into doing things that wind up strategically backfiring. Speaking for myself, if I’m wearing a watch and I see that I’m not running the pace that I think I “should” be, it creates either a bit of a doom spiral and I perform worse, or I try to speed up and perhaps pay for that increased effort in the moment. I think Wilde choosing to run with Priester for that first lap proved beneficial, allowing Wilde to hold off the enormous surge that Blummenfelt put in on the run.
It was a brilliant performance by Wilde, and cements his status as the top male middle distance athlete worldwide.
IRONMAN Coverage: B+
Being able to watch these races on a non-proprietary streaming platform is such an improvement over our past collective experience. The move to YouTube has meant easy live watching, instant replays, and being able to easily pick out moments in coverage. (For someone who typically transcribes athlete quotes directly from the broadcast, you have no idea how much of an improvement this is).
But just having the race on a reliable platform is one thing. Then enhancing the broadcast product in its entirety is another. And, to their credit, IRONMAN stepped up to the plate. Perhaps most critically, IRONMAN’s investment in overhauling the commentary team to bring Craig Alexander, Mirinda Carfrae, Ryf, and Will McCloy to the table has vastly improved the listening experience. Both Alexander and Carfrae in particular have been revelations in their commentary work, being insightful and entertaining. McCloy is also perfectly suited in that play-by-play role, giving clear definitions as to who should be doing what in the broadcast.
There are two things that keep this from being an A. First, there remains the gap of losing sight of certain athletes and only knowing what happened to the them at the next timing split; if it doesn’t happen on camera, you may not know about it for a while. And we probably didn’t get enough shots on the bike course that really made Nice feel as special as it could be. But I’m getting nitpicky. This is a broadcast that could entertain people who are just casually into triathlon, not just the superfans of the sport. That’s a mighty big turnaround from failing grades at certain past Pro Series events.
The Norwegians: B
It’s perhaps unfair to collectively give Blummenfelt, Iden, Løvseth, and Stornes a B here, given that the worst finish position out of the four of them was Stornes in sixth. But that’s the mighty standard that these four have created for themselves, with a combined seven IRONMAN branded world titles between them.
No, it’s not the results that winds up with a collective B here, but rather a factor of who was realistically ever in contention for the win. Løvseth was never really at the front of the race and had to use a second-fastest run of the day to lift herself to fourth. Iden and Stornes both started the run nearest to the lead, but Stornes wasn’t much of a factor. Iden, meanwhile, tried to hang with Blummenfelt who had set a blistering pace to try to close his 2:35 deficit to Wilde. But he, too, found that pace too spicy.
That left Blummenfelt to try to do all of the heroics. And, boy, did he try. He was almost a full minute down with 5 kilometers left to run, and got the gap down to 18 seconds by the end. He ran a 65 minute half marathon. That’s an obscene pace. And it’ll leave Blummenfelt hungry for a lot more come October, given it’s now his fifth IM branded world championship start without taking a victory. But that ran pace surely should give the likes of Sam Laidlow pause.
Kat Matthews: C+
Matthews is, again, a victim of her own success. Her 11th place finish is her worst result at a world championship event that she’s finished since 2019, when she finished 16th. Matthews has five second place finishes at world championship races in the last five seasons. So, naturally, anything outside of the top 5, regardless of cause, has to be taken as a disappointment.
But this was a bit different. Matthews said post-race that her Achilles, which has previously proven troublesome, had flared up and she’d decided to pull the ripcord on pushing the pace with an eye on targeting Kona. That tells me two things. First, things are probably not that dire, as she’d be able to give a full race effort before needing proper recovery. And second, that shows a degree of maturity and understanding of the situation, with a degree of focus on one of these two races that we haven’t seen before. My guess is that she’ll be dangerous in Kona.
Americans Not Named Taylor Knibb: D+
There were exactly two Americans who earned paychecks in Nice, and they both earned silver medals in the mixed relay at the Paris Olympics in 2024 — Knibb and Seth Rider. Rider took the fastest men’s swim of the day, and stayed in contact with the front of the field during the explosive moves on the bike. He was let down a bit by his run, with just the 27th fastest showing of the day, but it meant he matched his paycheck from last year’s 70.3 Worlds.
Everybody else went home empty handed — a far cry from the 2019 race in Nice, where Rudy Von Berg landed on the podium and five Americans brought home paydays. Now, yes, some of the big American names, like Von Berg and Sam Long, weren’t here, focused on a big dance in October instead. Still, when your next best positioned athletes missing the 15 deep paychecks are 23rd in the men’s race (Morgan Pearson) and 19th in the women’s race (Kirsten Kasper), that’s not a good day at the office.
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