Ups and Downs from IRONMAN South Africa
The 2025 IRONMAN Pro Series has had its first full distance race of the year — and, of course, has remodeled the current Pro Series standings in its image. IRONMAN South Africa brought plenty of excitement. At the end of the day, Magnus Ditlev and Anne Reischmann took victories, along with the $28,000 USD and maximum 5,000 Pro Series points. Here’s who had good — and not-so-good — days in South Africa.
Up: Your Champions
Perhaps the old adage “bike for show, run for dough” needs to be updated to “swim for show, bike and run for dough.” Both Ditlev and Reischmann put on brilliant displays once on land, with both of them putting in the fastest rides of the day. In Ditlev’s case, his 2:40 marathon was more than enough to hold off Marten Van Riel and his 2:38 run. Reischmann was the only woman to run under three hours, earning a three minute margin over Marta Sanchez.
In all, both took wins, the prize money (and likely some sponsor bonuses alongside it), now lead the IRONMAN Pro Series, and qualified for the IRONMAN World Championships. Not a bad day at the office.
Down: Cody Beals
If Beals had any luck, he would have no luck at all. Beals has struggled since his 2022 campaign — where he raced six IM events in a year and earned two victories, two podiums, and was fourth in his non-podium finishes — between injury, illness, and just bad luck over the last few years. On Sunday, Beals was racing with a mild calf issue that, very early in the run, decided to become something more than that under six kilometers in. Beals, to his credit, pulled the ripcord; it’s more professional for him to DNF and start somewhere else than to try to race through it.
Perhaps the silver lining is this — he DNF’d his first race of the year in 2019, too. And then went on to take two wins and two seconds in his next four races.
Up: Top 5 and IM World Championship Qualifiers
Because IRONMAN South Africa is a regional championship, there were 5 slots for both men and women on the line for Nice and Kona, respectively. That means the following athletes all qualified with their results from this weekend:
Men’s Qualifiers:
| Place | Name (Country) | Swim | Bike | Run | Finish | Earnings |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Magnus Ditlev (DEN) | 52:52 | 4:07:22 | 2:40:3 | 7:44:5 | $28,000 |
| 2 | Marten Van Riel (BEL) | 50:17 | 4:16:31 | 2:38:4 | 7:49:2 | $17,500 |
| 3 | Jonas Schomburg (DEU) | 50:27 | 4:16:50 | 2:41:4 | 7:52:1 | $11,000 |
| 4 | Jonas Hoffman (DEU) | 52:53 | 4:29:08 | 2:39:4 | 8:06:0 | $8,500 |
| 5 | Jamie Riddle (ZAF) | 50:25 | 4:26:31 | 2:46:0 | 8:09:3 | $6,500 |
Women’s Top 5:
| Place | Name (Country) | Swim | Bike | Run | Finish | Earnings |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Anne Reischmann (DEU) | 1:05:2 | 4:43:31 | 2:59:15 | 8:51:4 | $28,000 |
| 2 | Marta Sanchez (ESP) | 57:28 | 4:51:23 | 3:01:54 | 8:54:5 | $17,500 |
| 3 | Katrine Græsbøll Christensen (DEN) | 1:07:4 | 4:45:45 | 3:01:09 | 8:58:4 | $11,000 |
| 4 | Laura Jansen (DEU) | 1:03:5 | 4:55:20 | 3:10:22 | 9:14:1 | $8,500 |
| 5 | Maja Stage Nielsen (DEN) | 1:02:2 | 4:48:21 | 3:09:58 | 9:15:0 | $6,500 |
On the women’s side, with Reischmann and Sanchez having already earned Kona qualification, slots went to Jana Uderstadt and Charlène Clavel.
Of the list of qualifiers, perhaps the most intriguing of the names is T100 Champion Van Riel. He had attempted to earn his Nice slot last fall at IRONMAN Cozumel, but a collision with a spectator on the bike derailed those plans. Any sub 2:40 marathon will put you in the hunt at one of these events, and Van Riel looked the most comfortable out of any athlete on foot.
Honorable mention to Sanchez. The defending champion took a full twenty minutes off her finish time from last year, but was unable to match Reischmann’s relentless charge late in the bike and then on the run. Still, it bodes well for an athlete who might love to race more than anybody; Sanchez toed the line 13 times in 2024.
Down: IM Live Coverage
Look. I don’t want to be talking about it all year. The biggest compliment I can give the broadcast this time around is that it didn’t glitch out like Geelong did. But it feels like there is either a lack of on-the-ground information being tossed back to the hosts, or there’s a willful ignorance of that information. Either way, it’s now the second race where your commentary team is saying one thing, while the data and images in front of us are saying another. It’s not fair to the people working on the broadcast; it’s not fair to the athletes racing and their sponsors and partners who pay bonuses for showing up at these big events; it’s not fair to your audience.
I am hoping that much of this comes down to not having infrastructure in place at the new Pro Series stops, and we’ll see an improved product this weekend in Oceanside.
Quick counterpoint, though: the IRONMAN Social team did an excellent job with their reels and captions. Where information wasn’t on broadcast, it was very clear here. (See the next two points in this article.)
Up: Paul Wijtenburg
You will rightly be asking “who the f*** is Paul Wijtenburg?” Well, let’s allow Chloe Lane to tell that story.
“I was fully prepared with a repair kit to fix a potential flat tire. In my bento box, I had 2 tubes, 1 CO2, an adapter, a crack pipe, and a tyre lever. When I went to transition this morning, I noticed my chain was off, didn’t think much of it at the time.
When I flatted on the course and couldn’t find my adapter in my bento box, I figured my bike must have fallen over in the wind overnight, and the adapter fell out possibly?. I immediately thought of that iconic moment when Bek Keat gave Chrissie Wellington a CO2 in Kona, so I decided to ask fellow competitors while waiting for neutral support.
Huge thanks to Paul, the legend, who stopped to help!”
Lane would later give Wijtenburg his finisher medal, who finished in 14:58:58.
Down: Transition Directions
This one happened pretty early in the day, and didn’t have massive implications on the results — but I felt like it was important to call out. Local pro athlete Jamie Riddle was part of the front swim pack, alongside Van Riel, Jonas Schomburg, and Andrew Horsfall-Turner. Exiting the swim and through transition, though, somehow Riddle had made a wrong turn after gathering his helmet. He was forced to run back around to access his bike, losing the front pack in the process.
What I can’t seem to figure out, having re-watched this part of the broadcast far too may times now, is how did he get that turned around in the first place? Now, yes, look: every athlete needs to know the course. But I would also say that there’s something unclear in how transition is marked and mapped for one of your lead pack men to get this wrong.
Photos:
Ditlev, Crowd: Richard Pearce / IRONMAN
Reischmann, Sanchez: Chris Hitchcock / IRONMAN
Tags:
Anne ReischmannIM Pro SeriesIRONMANMagnus DitlevOpinionNotable Replies
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Good report!
I made my own “highlight reel” as usual by fast forwarding through the broadcast after the fact. Was impressed by how much the bike seemed to actually matter in this race.
Don’t know what the impact of the course being 3 loops was. Those PROs who were on a “lonely ride” (or in a duo) were spending time in the gentle draft of the age groupers they were passing.
As for Chloe, I would’ve given her an entire wheel and not just CO2
this is probably the right place and time to remark that I completed a 17k run (a jog for for her) with her a couple of years ago and if you’re imagining good things about the lady’s personality and demeanor, you’re right.
Not much to say about the broadcast as I effectively only saw and heard snippets, but I was positively surprised by the insight the commentators offered between the swim and the bike. I suppose they just tire out as hours roll on because when it came to T2, Michael Lovato started his less glamorous monologues about “5 minutes being nothing in an Ironman marathon”, short course folks like (the absent) Geens being “pure runners”, etc.
Ultimately I think that’s part of the problem that IM runs into with their full distance race broadcasts – we’re talking a minimum of 9.5 hours of continuous coverage. It’s where more pre-produced content can help, as well as having more talking heads. But, those things both add cost and complexity to the proceedings.
Was this this first time IM showed distance between competitors on the timing screen? Sometimes it showed distance and others it showed time gaps. The distance felt really hard to comprehend how relevant it was. But it might be just that I never noticed that before.
I also felt the bike race course in general looked like it might have been a little stressful in a few narrow locations being condensed down to 3 laps.
I was impressed with how long MvR held on in the bike. I’d be curious to hear more about that from him.
Here’s an idea, feel free to pass it on to IM
Have the athletes record clips on their own. Give them guidelines for content but let them be creative.
IM takes these submissions and broadcasts during the 9.5 hours.
0 cost to IM. Athletes that don’t have big followings can build them.
Everyone wins.
That was the worst IM broadcast I have seen to date. They need to do something.
My first thought is great idea. Second thought is phone quality, aspect ratio, sound, etc. is going to be terrible. But I think IM could probably build a little graphic template around their submissions where needed to deal with the inevitably terribly framed submissions they get.
The other thought is, if IM does this, they should give them 20 questions to consider answering some of them. How many hours of swim, bike, run did they do on average in the lead up, what and when was their last big session, what did their taper look like, race day strategy, nutrition strategy, etc, any small injuries in training that caused them to dial it back, etc. Get each of them to pick the questions they want to answer to tell their story.
Even if they don’t show them, at a MINIMUM, they could (I think?) feed those submissions through AI and then spit out bullet points for the commentary team. Then the commentators have something interesting to talk about with credible authority.
And the athletes should be made very clear, that if you give us some decent info content, you and your sponsors are going to get broadcast time. Copy their sponsors directly into the email if you have to. Hah.
That’s a really good idea, but there is a cost to IM - at a minimum, some Intern has to watch them in advance to make sure everything appropriate and then they have to plan when and how to watch them. Maybe some formatting or editing if someone isn’t that entertaining. IMO this is a very small cost to IM (and likely worth it), but it is still more expensive / time consuming than talking heads in a studio (which I think is the real issue).
Anyway, if they’re really doing it properly, you also align it with the broadcast - follow athlete x around the course for a bit, and oh hey we have a video from them!
It would be hard to do for a race like Oceanside and 100 athletes, but you could stipulate that once per season you can submit a 2 min video about yourself. Or maybe the top x athletes, per the Pro Series rank, can do so per race.
Either way, it reminds me of the “Road to the Olympics” segments that CBC does for Canadian athletes during the Olympics to fill time. When they’re done well, they can often be better than the actual events themselves.