Ups and Downs From the First Big Race Weekend of 2025
You would be forgiven if you missed some of the racing action from this past weekend. It was an absolute fire hose of professional triathlon, with IRONMAN, T100, Challenge, and Supertri E all hosting pro races between Saturday and Sunday. As is now custom, we’re Monday (OK, Tuesday) morning quarterbacking what we saw out of the races, and figuring out who is trending in the right direction.
Up: Canadians in America
California has been very kind to Paula Findlay and Lionel Sanders over the years. Findlay’s victory at Oceanside marks her seventh podium earned within the state. Perhaps more critically, it was how Findlay won that bodes well for her season. Findlay had to chase down Jackie Hering on the run in order to pull out the win. She told IRONMAN after the race that she “had to really fight hard on the back end of the run. That was probably one of my best (IRONMAN) 70.3 runs. That was the silver lining of not having such a good bike ride is that I had a little more on the run.”
Sanders, meanwhile, earned his fourth career Oceanside victory. In seven career starts at this race, he’s never finished off the podium. Call him the GOAT of Oceanside. And, well, he did it his own way, admitting after the race that he had left himself an “old school swim deficit” to chase down. To run two minutes faster than Gustav Iden, after nearly claiming bike prime honors (that went to Justin Riele), is definitely a step in the right direction for the Slowtwitch Forums favorite professional.
Honorable mention: Tamara Jewett blasting through the field on the run to take fourth. Oh, Canada, indeed.
Down: Cam Wurf and His Luck
The phrase “if he had any luck, he’d have no luck at all” seems to be applicable to Cam Wurf at the moment. Wurf wound up with a single-speed bike back at Geelong, then skipped out on South Africa to focus on this race. On the plus side, Wurf wound up having shifting on his Pinarello. On the negative side, well, someone forgot to tighten the handlebars.
Wurf would later borrow tools to make the fix, only to then earn a speeding violation on Oceanside’s downhill limited zone and be disqualified.
Perhaps the third start of the season will be the charm, as Wurf will hit IRONMAN Texas later this month.
Up: The Short Course Specialists
Let’s first start off with the Supertri (now capitalized!) E World races, where Cassandre Beaugrand added her third world title in the past twelve months to her name with a commanding performance. Perhaps the better question is what she won’t win when she starts next. It’s a level of dominance that we have not seen since Daniela Ryf‘s nearly perfect run of 14 races between 2014 and 2015 (only derailed by Mirinda Carfrae and her Run for the Ages in 2014 to claim Kona glory). Fellow Frenchman Maxime Hueber-Moosbrugger outduelled Chase McQueen in the final 500 meters to take a thrilling, come-from-behind win.
Meanwhile, over in Singapore, the World Triathlon Championship Series was more than well represented on the podium, with Kate Waugh and Hayden Wilde taking dominating victories. Waugh, in particular, impressed, pulling away from the likes of Lucy Charles-Barclay on the bike and then seizing the lead early on the run and never looking back in stifling conditions. In the men’s race, Wilde handily defeated Léo Bergère and a still-recovering from IRONMAN South Africa Marten Van Riel.
And an honorable mention to Seth Rider, who took fourth in his IRONMAN Pro Series debut (to back up a bronze at his debut 70.3 last fall in Italy), edging out Ben Kanute for the extra $1,000 in prize money. 70.3 and T100 racing is just getting unbelievably fast, perhaps even moreso than what we’ve seen at the full distance.
Stuck in Neutral: The Dynamic Norwegian Duo
Ah, what to do with Kristian Blummenfelt and the aforementioned Iden? With both committed to the IRONMAN Pro Series this year, you would expect both men to be in contention for damn near everything they race. And that was trending in the positive direction early in the bike, as Blummenfelt rocketed towards the front of the race on the bike, with Riele and Iden in hot pursuit. But Blummenfelt suffered a puncture before a quarter of the way through the ride, with sealant failing to do its job on the tubeless tire, and lost oodles of time in the process.
Iden, to his credit, kept on the pace. But he eventually would wind up sliding behind the likes of Sanders and Rudy Von Berg to finish third. To be fair, it’s his best result in an IRONMAN-branded 70.3 distance race since his triumph at the 2021 IRONMAN 70.3 World Championships. But it still feels off to call a third place at any race a success for Iden, given the heights he reached between 2019 and 2022. Blummenfelt, after receiving neutral support, blitzed the run course, running a scorching 1:07:19.
There’s positives here. But it’d be nice to see either one of them win sooner than later, given we haven’t seen either one of them take top honors at an IRONMAN produced race since 2022.
Down: Your Last Two Kona Champions
Perhaps I am being a bit unfair to Lucy Charles-Barclay, given her podium in Singapore. Still, it is somewhat shocking to see her being ridden away from in such a manner as Waugh and Jessica Learmonth did. It’s the slowest Charles-Barclay has ridden in a PTO/T100 event, period. Now, yes, some of that is condition dependent. But that’s far off from her standard, and will be an interesting trend to watch as the season develops.
As for Patrick Lange…*whispers* did he forget how to race 70.3? For the second year in a row, Lange had what can only be described as a dismal race in Oceanside. He finished one place worse this year, down in 17th, and has now gone nearly two full years since a podium at this distance. Hell, it has been six full years since his last IRONMAN 70.3 win. This just does not appear to be his forte these days. It’ll be interesting to see if he repeats his success at IRONMAN Texas, and if this was just a tune-up for that effort.
