Laidlow Sets New World Best at Challenge Roth 2026
The race played out to expectations as Sam Laidlow was able to pull clear to a sizeable lead off the bike over rival Kristian Blummenfelt, then held tough on the run to hold off the Norwegian and break the course record, along with Blummenfelt’s 7:21:12 from IRONMAN Cozumel (12 seconds quicker than he went at IRONMAN Texas earlier this year), to set a new world-best time.
All week long we’d been hearing about a race strategy that would see Laidlow, last year’s runner-up Jonas Schomburg and full-distance rookie Rico Bogen try to ride clear of Blummenfelt and force the Norwegian to have to try to chase them down on the run here in Roth. The big question all week was how much time the trio would need – for most the consensus was roughly six or seven minutes.
Blummenfelt even alluded to the strategy earlier this week, so he was likely not surprised to see the trio start to put things into motion right from the swim. The non-wetsuit swim made things even better for the speedsters, and Bogen would lead the way out of the water in 46:56 after Laidlow had done much of the work driving the pace, with Schomburg, Menno Koolhaas and Finn Große-Freese. Blummenfelt led the chase pack but was a shade under three minutes behind. Some of the other notable men lost even more time – Kristian Hogenhaug was 4:03 behind, Patrick Lange was right behind him, and three-time champion and course record holder here in Roth, Magnus Ditlev, was 4:07 back as he headed to T1.
We wrote about the new Canyon Speedmax that both Laidlow and Bogen were riding today earlier this week.
The pre-race prognostications became a reality as Laidlow, Bogen and Schomburg steadily started to pull clear of Blummenfelt and Ditlev.l Schomburg would lose the pair with roughly 50 km of riding to go as the German and the Frenchman put the hammer down and really started to open a gap on the rest of the field. By the end of the bike Schomburg had lost a whopping seven minutes to the pair, who split under 3:55 (Bogen would set a new bike course record of 3:54:45 while Laidlow rode 3:54:58), while Ditlev and Blummenfelt were a shade under 13 minutes behind as they started the run thanks to 4:02 and 4:04 bike splits.
Bogen was doing remarkably well in his first full-distance race, but hanging with the 2023 IRONMAN world champion became too much, and Laidlow started to ease clear just short of the 16 km point of the marathon. Blummenfelt was gaining a bit of time, but not nearly enough to put any sort of pressure on Laidlow, who continued to power on towards a record setting day. Through the half-marathon point the lead was almost two minutes on Bogen, just under 10 minutes to Schomburg, with Blummenfelt still just under 11 minutes behind and Ditlev at just over 13 minutes. Blummenfelt would eventually power past Schomburg and a fading Bogen to get to within just over five minutes, but even though Laidlow slowed and “only” ran a 2:36:53 marathon, Blummenfelt’s 2:29:33 run split wasn’t nearly enough to threaten Laidlow’s win. Bogen would hang tough to round out the podium and set the fastest debut full-distance time (7:27:23), while Koolhaas would run 2:30:33 to get past Schomburg for fourth.
We’ll have more for you from here in Roth.
| Pos. | Name | Country | Swim | Bike | Run | Overall Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sam Laidlow | FRA | 00:46:57 | 03:54:58 | 02:36:53 | 07:21:04 |
| 2 | Kristian Blummenfelt | NOR | 00:49:54 | 04:04:10 | 02:29:33 | 07:26:24 |
| 3 | Rico Bogen | GER | 00:46:56 | 03:54:45 | 02:43:48 | 07:27:53 |
| 4 | Menno Koolhaas | NED | 00:47:00 | 04:09:46 | 02:30:33 | 07:30:00 |
| 5 | Jonas Schomburg | GER | 00:46:59 | 04:01:53 | 02:41:01 | 07:32:17 |
| 6 | Magnus Ditlev | DEN | 00:51:03 | 04:02:41 | 02:37:33 | 07:34:21 |
| 7 | Frederic Funk | GER | 00:49:56 | 04:07:10 | 02:38:20 | 07:38:14 |
| 8 | Kristian Høgenhaug | DEN | 00:50:59 | 04:05:30 | 02:39:57 | 07:39:32 |
| 9 | Patrick Lange | GER | 00:51:01 | 04:15:14 | 02:32:25 | 07:41:27 |
| 10 | Tristan Olij | NED | 00:51:13 | 04:11:18 | 02:37:25 | 07:43:15 |
I’ll add a few more nearly ‘bests’ besides the overarching ‘best recorded time for a full’.
Bogen’s bike puts him in #4 behind Wurf and Hoegenhaug (both Texas) and Kallin (Vitoria).
Laidlow creeps into the best 5 ‘on land’ list with 6:31:51 (behind KB, Stornes and MvR (all 2026 Texas).
Worth remembering that the Roth bike may be a few hundred metres short but has a climb of (depends on measuring regime) 1500-1650m (5000+ feet). Who knows how many seconds are lost following amateurs up the Solaraberg, at their speed.
GOAT’s kink in the armour is the bike , and should have a better swim as former ITU guy. If laidlow would have only done ITU maybe some GOAT talk for him
Hot take, is that Cadex bike not working for KB?
Was it working in texas ?
Cadex/Giant better be working overtime to get a new frame out if KB isn’t happy
Not completely sure it’s the bike but he does keep changing his position. And they are typically pretty drastic changes. Wish he would just stick to a position.
I love how excited Felix is at the finish line, but I really think he should give the athletes a second to breathe or at least let them take 2 steps before he comes to embrace them and give them a medal.
Agree. And a couple minutes before getting handed that big ass beer would be nice too, haha. LCB did the best pretend pour ever. Maybe she just missed her head, but i think it was on purpose? Definitely the best finishline ever though.
He had 4th fastest bike split, even gustav out biked him. So maybe it is the bike. Did he ever top 3 on a bike in a good field?
I know Cadex probably has a ton of data that this frame is “fast” but it may not he fast for KB
On the plus side, I now have my dream job for when I retire: guy who hands triathletes giant beers at the finish line
10 guys ran under 2:40. Ten. The run was maybe 0.35 mi short
I appreciate this race is the other side of the world from the US and totally different continent and time of day etc but it still surprises me how little ST interest there is. In the men’s race we have just seen the worlds fastest ever long distance race and there is a handful of comments! On the other hand Lionel Sanders tells us for the umpteenth time in a VLOG how he now knows how to train and the forum goes into melt down. I just don’t get it.
This forum is very North American biased. Mainly because it’s based in NA. Like it or not.
It was a really good race. I wish KB wouldn’t trust so much in his run. They really proved him wrong. He struggles a bit with this tactic.
It’s a cool position to set your opponent up with the self fulfilling prophecy of needing to over bike to out run you, so they fade or blow up on the run. But KB has also basically trained their legs to hammer the bike and then hold on for dear life. As we saw in Nice (Milwaukee too), it’s KB that lacks the legs to push harder on the bike and get the job done.
Good job Laidlow. KB dared you to send it and you did just that and broke records in the process.
That said, the battles weren’t exactly that. I wish we had a couple featured athletes like we’ll see in Kona.
I can say after this race, Sam is probably begging Bogen to Kona qualify.