Originally published at: Magnus Ditlev Goes All In On His World Championship Hunt - Slowtwitch News
He finished third at the IRONMAN World Championship in Nice in 2023. Last year he took second in Kona. You can guess what motivates Magnus Ditlev these days – he would very much like to take the top spot on the podium at the worlds this year. That goal has driven his training and race plans for 2025. As would be expected from a man with a degree in chemical engineering, meticulous planning and preparation underly the drive to a world championship.
It’s not as though Ditlev hasn’t enjoyed lots of success in his short professional career. Since turning pro in 2019, the 27-year-old has won the other “major” on the full-distance front, Challenge Roth, three times. In 2023 and 2024 he also set world-best times of 7:24:40 and 7:23:24 at the speed-fest in Bavaria. (Yes, Kristian Blummenfelt went 7:21:11 at IRONMAN Cozumel in 2021, but that course featured a down-current swim, so it’s not generally recognized as the world-best time for the distance.) Ditlev also managed to finish fourth in the T100 standings last year, after winning T100 Miami to start the season.
For Ditlev, though, winning the IRONMAN World Championship is the ultimate dream, so in 2025 he’s refocused his training and also adjusted his race schedule to maximize his potential for the race in Nice this September.
“I think the next step in my career would be to to win the IRONMAN World Championship,” Ditlev said in an interview at the tail end of a two-week training camp at Club La Santa in Lanzarote. “It has always been my biggest motivation and, in my head, the biggest thing you can achieve in long course triathlon is to win the IRONMAN World Championship, so I would really love to give a huge focus and a big shot at winning that. I was third in Nice and second in Kona, so I think I’m on the right trajectory, but, even with those two races, I feel like I didn’t really show up like I have done in Roth. I have kind of lacked little a bit the edge, or the kind of fire. The last percentages that you want to have in a world championship. I think that this probably was because there has been so many big races throughout the season before.”
With that in mind, Ditlev will be taking a pass on the race in Roth this year, and he’s also passed up on a (presumably lucrative) T100 contract.
“I have had to make some priorities and some tough decisions,” Ditlev said. “It will be weird to watch it (Challenge Roth) on television when I’m not there, but I feel that it’s the right decision for me to to do if I want to perform at my best at the world championship. Also, with the T100 – not racing that series.”
“I really strive of being very well prepared and focusing on a few tasks and then trying to execute them,” Ditlev continued. “That’s the reason why I’ve chosen to to narrow down on the racing and do do the IRONMAN Pro Series. But I am probably not going to chase it too much if something goes wrong in a 70.3 or something.”
Ditlev will be starting his 2025 season at IRONMAN South Africa at the end of the month.
Swim Emphasis
Ditlev was in Lanzarote for a couple of weeks, which was shorter than he usually would spend at a training camp. The reason? In addition to his long-standing coach, Jens Petersen Bach, he’s recently started working with a new swim coach who is also based in Copenhagen, Stefan Hansen.
“We have prioritized staying at home a little bit more this winter this winter to really give the swim a big focus,” Ditlev said. The two worked together in Lanzarote, looking to alleviate the gap the Dane has faced at his three world championship races.
“I still think I’ve done a really good job at learning how to swim and even being able to hit front packs sometimes,” he said. “The past two editions of Roth, I was able to swim with the main group. When I do that, it sets me up for a race where I can dictate much more than when I’m not with the front group. I’ve done three IRONMAN World Championships now and haven’t managed to hit the front group. That really puts me on the back foot every time. I can bridge the gap to the to the main group, not easily, but I can do it. But then I have already expended quite a lot of energy when I get there, and then I have to drop them, and Sam (Laidlow) is probably up the road. So I think, yeah, my biggest wish going into this season was some new perspective on the swim training. I had a really good swim coach before, but he wasn’t based in the area of Denmark where I live. So now we found Stefan and he’s very close to where I live. And he sees close to all my swims.”
Not Just the Swim
Ditlev has been a huge part of the last two world championship races, pushing Laidlow to arguably his greatest performance in Nice two years ago, and then setting the stage for Patrick Lange’s incredible course-record-setting day in Kona last October. Those races have provided even more motivation for Ditlev.
“You always say that in IRONMAN people peak when they’re like 35 or something, and that probably also assumes that they started pretty young,” Ditlev said. “I haven’t trained like a professional for more than six years, so I think there’s a huge potential, of course, in the swim … but also on the bike, I see a big difference in the power I can push in a 20-minute all out test to an IRONMAN. Of course there is a difference between that, but I’m still very much better at the shorter duration, much better than what I am at holding in terms of power for four hours, for instance, on the bike. It is the same with running. It’s getting better, but I still think there is some room for improvement in just the robustness of my run. I was pretty injured before I got my current coach. Luckily, I haven’t been injured for five years now and I think that’s kind of why you are seeing my progression on the run getting better and better, but I don’t think we have seen the limit yet.”
Magnus Ditlev has lots of time to improve on his swim, and, scarily enough, his ability to push huge watts on the bike. Already renowned as one of the sport’s premier cyclists, that can’t be good news for the competition. Nor can the Dane’s methodical approach to being at his best in Nice this September.
Magnus Ditlev’s Scott Plasma 6
We got the chance to take some photos of the bike Ditlev has been training on here in Lanzarote. The frame is the one that Scott delivered to the Dane before his record-setting day in Roth last summer. He has a different frame the he rode in Kona last October and will be riding on in South Africa later this month.
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