Has the Dominance of Hayden Wilde Ruined T100 Racing?

Over the weekend, New Zealand’s Hayden Wilde put on a clinic at T100 Singapore. The reigning T100 world champion, Wilde swam with the leaders, rode away from the pack with the day’s fastest bike split and closed things out with the second-fastest run to cross the line in 3:21:58, more than six minutes ahead of second place. He beat over 60 percent of the finishers at the race by over 10 minutes.

This might occur at 70.3s, IRONMANs or other events with bigger fields, but the T100 caps pro start lists at 20 athletes, meaning that anyone toeing the line at these races has a good resume. Even so, Wilde destroyed every other man who raced in Singapore, making many of their still-solid times look like age group results in comparison to his.

After the race, many triathlon fans in the Slowtwitch Forum and beyond asked a pair of questions. Firstly, is Wilde unbeatable over the T100’s 100-kilometre (62-mile) format? Secondly, if he is, in fact, unbeatable, does that make the men’s T100 races drama-free TV that isn’t even worth watching? Let’s take a look at Wilde’s racing history to find out.

Wilde’s T100 Wins

Wilde has dominated the T100 series since he entered it in 2025. He made his debut in Singapore last April, winning that race in 3:18:11 and finishing two and a half minutes ahead of second place.

A month later, he suffered what could have been a career-ending injury after a bike crash in training. Despite breaking multiple bones, puncturing a lung and requiring surgery, he made it back to race fitness by August, when he returned to the T100 circuit in London. There, he had to make up to close to a minute after the swim (at that point, his swimming stroke was still hindered by his injuries), but he really had no troubles after that, flying along the course with the second-fastest bike and run splits to take the win by about a minute.

Less than a month later, Wilde won T100 French Riviera, which ended up being his closest battle of the season. He beat Belgium’s Jelle Geens by just 22 seconds to take the win in France. At T100 Spain, he beat Geens again, this time by close to two and a half minutes. T100 Wollongong was his second-tightest battle, as he only beat Germany’s Mika Noodt by 35 seconds.

In November, Wilde took his only loss of the T100 season, but it was a genuine fluke. Racing in Dubai, he missed the turn off at the end of the bike course while in the lead, ultimately riding another full lap. After hitting the run course, he recorded the fastest split, so in all likelihood he would have won the race. The extra lap, however, led to him finishing eighth. Finally, at the T100 World Championship Final in Qatar, he won the race by just over one minute.

Wilde has been the man for everyone else to chase for a full season and more, and he has been unbeatable over that stretch in the T100 format. He had those closer calls in France and Wollongong, but even those weren’t all that close. In France, Geens made up a lot of ground in the closing couple of miles, but Wilde had built up a lead of about a minute over the first half of the run that was too much for Geens to overcome with only an 11-mile final leg.

In Wollongong, Wilde got off the bike with Noodt and immediately opened up a gap that continued to grow for most of the run. The closest Noodt came to winning the race was in T2, but it was clear once they started running that the best he would do that day was second place.

Every one of Wilde’s wins last year felt comfortable and in control. Although he was never pushed right to the line, it seemed as though he would have been able to respond to any attacks from athletes coming up behind him trying to make a pass.

What’s amazing is that it looked like Wilde was dominating when he was winning by one to two minutes, but what he did in Singapore on Saturday took things to a whole new level. In his six wins on the T100 circuit last year, Wilde’s cumulative winning margin was eight minutes and 18 seconds. In Singapore, he beat second-place Samuel Dickinson of the UK by six minutes and 21 seconds.

The gap between him and second place from that one race was within two minutes of his entire winning margin from all of last season. That’s has to be a scary stat for his competitors to see.

How To Beat Wilde

Wilde’s only loss in the T100 may have an asterisk next to it, but he has legitimately been beaten in other races in his middle-distance career. Geens bested him at the 70.3 world championship in 2024. In March, Norway’s Kristian Blummenfelt won 70.3 Geelong ahead of Geens while Wilde placed third. This is quite a small sample size of losses, but it is proof that Wilde is not perfect. He can be beaten, but it takes a monster effort.

At the 2024 70.3 worlds, Wilde led off the bike and put time into Geens in the first eight miles of the run. He had a 56-second lead over the Belgian at the eight-mile mark, but then he started to fade. Over the next three miles, Geens clawed his way back into the race, and he made the pass on Wilde just before the 11-mile mark. He charged forward for the last two miles to take the win thanks to a 1:07:34 half-marathon. Wilde finished in second more than a minute back.

In Geelong this year, it was a similar story. Wilde took to the run course with a sizeable lead, with 45 seconds separating him and Geens and a 1:37 gap to Blummenfelt. The Norwegian ran like a man possessed in that race, catching Wilde after just six miles and carrying on to post a 1:06:39 run split for the win. It took Geens a bit longer to catch Wilde, but he eventually did around the 10-mile mark. Wilde would hold on for third, finishing a minute and a half behind Blummenfelt and 28 seconds behind Geens.

So, what does it take to beat Wilde? Firstly, you might have to be named Kristian Blummenfelt or Jelle Geens. Secondly, it could simply be that Wilde is better at riding 50 miles rather than 56 and running 11 miles instead of a half-marathon. If the 70.3 world champs had been a T100 race, Wilde may have held on for the win, as Geens didn’t pass him until around the 11-mile mark.

When it comes to beating Wilde before passing 11 miles on the run, it looks like the only way to do it is to be like Blummenfelt and run out of your mind. Sure, Blummenfelt caught Wilde after only six miles of running in Geelong, and yes, he made up a 97-second deficit on the bike. As Blummenfelt has shown, however, he is a very special case, and although the T100 attracts some of the fastest triathletes in the world, few (if any) of them can match Blummenfelt on any given day.

The questions remain. Can Wilde be beaten? Yes, but maybe only in 70.3s or longer. Will someone beat him in a T100 race this season? Unless he has a crash or a monumental collapse on the run course
— or maybe if Blummenfelt shows up for a race, which is unlikely — probably not. He is too strong, and on the few occasions anyone manages to make up any ground behind him, they run out of real estate on the shorter 11-mile run courses.

Why Watch T100 Races?

Is there any reason to watch the T100 this season if Wilde winning is a foregone conclusion? In short, yes. The women’s races are much more competitive than the men’s. In 2024, American Taylor Knibb ran the show much like Wilde has been lately, but last year, her rivals figured out how to beat her.

There were five different women’s winners at the nine T100 races last season. Granted, Knibb didn’t race all of them, but her winning wasn’t a sure thing when she did show up. Knibb did win the first women’s race of the season in Gold Coast, Australia, but the subsequent events this season should be more competitive, making for exciting racing and a great viewing experience.

As for the men’s races, they could still be worth watching. Wilde may have been way ahead of everyone else in Singapore, but the battle for the podium was still quite fun to watch, with multiple men moving in and out of the top three and top five for much of the race. Wilde will probably win any T100 race he enters this year, but the fight for second and third place is still very much up for grabs, and that will be very entertaining.

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