Vincent Luis is Primed for Marbella with His Specialized Shiv TT

November 7, 2025

Vincent Luis finishes fourth at Challenge Roth. Photo: Kevin Mackinnon

France’s Vincent Luis has had a stellar career in professional triathlon. He went to three Olympics (winning mixed relay bronze in Tokyo), won back-to-back World Triathlon Championship Series crowns in 2019 and 2020, and has won a number of other big races along the way. He had raced middle-distance events before this year, but 2025 was his first season fully moving away from short-course and focusing solely on T100 events and longer.

After a strong full-distance debut time of 7:38:54 at Challenge Roth in July, Luis was forced to take 10 weeks off from racing after injuring his calf on the marathon in Germany. He made his return to racing at T100 Spain in September (where he placed 12th), and he is now gearing up to race in Marbella — his first time at the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship.

Recovering from Roth

As Luis told Slowtwitch earlier this week in Spain, he showed up to Roth with “a bit of tightness” in his calf. He went ahead and raced as planned, which ended up leading to more than just a tight muscle.

“After 5 kilometres in the marathon, I had a really sharp pain,” Luis says. Despite the pain, he kept running, ultimately posting a 2:43:18 marathon split — quite an impressive time for someone with a torn calf muscle.

“The next day it was really swollen, really tender,” he says. “I went for an MRI and I actually had two tears. One in my soleus and one in my actual calf.”

Luis was forced to take a full eight weeks off of running, giving him just a couple to train ahead of his comeback at the T100 in Spain. He did a run-walk combo there for the 11-mile run, which was quite a long haul after next-to-no-training for two months.

“My longest run before [that race] was actually the day before,” he says. “I ran four times 15 minutes with a one-minute walk.”

He still managed to cross the line in 12th out of 19 men and, ever since then, he has been building back his running and fitness in preparation for Marbella.

Ready for Marbella

He says he is “feeling good” and is excited to race on Sunday, especially after competing in multiple T100 events this year. He has nothing against the series or events themselves, but with only 20 pro men in each race, he says there isn’t much separation as they exit the water.

“That’s 20 really strong guys and and we’ve noticed at the end of the swims there is not really any split or anything, which annoyed me a little bit, I have to be honest,” he says with a laugh. (Luis was routinely in the lead pack in the swim at WTCS races throughout his career.)

“I think we’re 60 or 70 guys on the start line [in Marbella], so hopefully it will break a little bit,” he says. As for the ride, Luis says he is eager to compete in a race with a 12-metre drafting rule compared to the T100’s 20-metre range.

“I feel good — I’ve had good sessions lately,” he says. “The bike course looks amazing. A punchy course. A lot of elevation [and] I’m on the light-ish side of the athletes, so that should be good for me.”

Marbella’s bike course is stunning, but it is far from easy. Photo: Kevin Mackinnon

Finally, for the run, the big question is whether he thinks his calf can hold up for a hard half-marathon.

“I was really, really careful on my recovery and my rehab and everything,” Luis says. He points out that he suffered the same injury a few years ago, so he followed the same rehab plan this time around.

“I didn’t want it to build too much volume, so I think my weeks were maybe 65, 75 kilometres of running,
which is really low for me,” he says. “I’m usually like a three digits guy in running volume, but I really wanted to run fast to get back into running like three-minute kilometres and things like that, because that’s the pace these guys are running now for 70.3.”

Luis qualified for the worlds at 70.3 Bahrain last year, where he ran a 1:06:52 half-marathon to take the win. He says it helped him in his recovery to know he is capable of hitting that speed, and now it’s just a matter of “having the momentum” and “finding [his] flow” again.

“And, yeah, I definitely found it I would say in the past two weeks, really,” he says. “I did maybe four run sessions and I really felt like, ‘OK, I can run a half-marathon again at 3:15 per-kilometre pace. Like, I’m not scared of it.”

If he truly can do that, Luis will have a great chance to do something special on Sunday. He’ll have to battle pretty hard to beat the likes of Kristian Blummenfelt, Jelle Geens or Casper Stornes, but with confidence in his abilities going into the biggest race of his year, there’s no reason he can’t surprise the field and end up high on the leaderboard.