Originally published at: Six Freezing Cold Takes for the 2025 IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship - Slowtwitch News
It’s time to wrap up the 2025 IRONMAN Pro Series and award the last IM World titles of the year — it’s 70.3 World Championship weekend. There are over 6,000 athletes in town for this year’s event, which will be headlined by the men’s and women’s professional fields as they vie for the championship, critical Pro Series points, and the respective prize money.
That also means that it’s time for my patented Freezing Cold Takes article. After a somewhat decent showing with predictions in Nice, I was locked in on Kona predictions. Of course, it took some extreme late race drama for those predictions to come true, with both Lucy Charles-Barclay and Taylor Knibb melting down during the marathon while leading the race, with world champion Solveig Løvseth, Kat Matthews, and Laura Philipp capitalizing. But still, my Magic 8-Ball seemed to at least have some idea as to what was going to take place.
With it being the end of the year, and many athletes either injured or locked into their respective positions in the IRONMAN Pro Series (and the significant cash performance there brings), we’ve seen plenty of athletes pull the ripcord and pull out. As of this writing, Jackie Hering, Jeanne Lehair, Lena Meissner, Lisa Perterer, Laura Philipp, Anne Reischmann, Chelsea Sodaro, and Lotte Wilms have all withdrawn on the women’s side. For the men, confirmed out are Sam Appleton, Daniel Bækkegård, Sam Long, Justin Metzler, Tyler Mislawchuk, Morgan Pearson, Lionel Sanders, and Marten Van Riel.
There’s two other wild cards out there. First is the recovery time from Kona for all of the women’s contenders. Whether you had meltdowns like Charles-Barclay and Knibb, or pushed to the limit like Løvseth and Matthews, the question of whether someone is fresh enough post-Kona on a punishing bike course to compete is going to linger. The second is also the weather, or more precisely, the wind and its impact on the water. As evidenced in our gallery, there’s plenty of chop on the water when the wind starts moving. The forecast is for wind directions to change between Saturday and Sunday, with northeasterly winds swapping to northwesterly ones between races.
And with that, here’s what I think we’ll see this weekend.
Taylor Knibb Is Inevitable
Let’s start with Saturday’s women’s race, and the class of typical favorites emerge: Knibb, Charles-Barclay, Matthews, with Paula Findlay and Jessica Learmonth (likely the next two strongest cyclists in the field) as your most likely names to spoil that favorites party.
Knibb, however, has to be the prohibitive favorite, even with the question marks coming out of her dramatic drop from the lead to DNF in the final miles of Kona. And the biggest question will be whether she can put together the type of performance that we borderline expect from Knibb at middle distance races. On paper, this is the type of course that should absolutely play to her strengths; much like at St. George, where the early climbs helped catapult her to the front of the race, the bike course starts kicking upwards early.
Knibb will cede time in the water. But I would expect that she’ll put the hammer down on the bike. And though the run course features more total elevation than last year’s race in Taupō, there isn’t the signature climb that helped Matthews nearly chase Knibb down. Barring something like a bike mechanical or a lack of recovery from Kona, I expect Knibb to take her fourth consecutive 70.3 world title, followed by Matthews (again) and Findlay.
But What About Charles-Barclay?
Of the two high-profile DNFs from Kona, it is Charles-Barclay who raises the most alarm bells with me. It simply comes down to her injury history and recovery times; Charles-Barclay has had numerous stress fractures, along with a calf and Achilles injury, that have flared off and on over the past four seasons. She’s also tough as nails, having dealt with a stress fracture and that calf/Achilles issue for the entirety of her marathon run during her Kona triumph in 2023.
For her to have been forced to step off course in Kona would have required, well, something dramatic. Which, by all accounts, it did; her husband, Reece, was in the Natural Energy Lab and helped ensure she pulled the plug and hopped into a waiting support vehicle. Although there is nothing that indicates that Charles-Barclay is heading into this race injured, even something like heat exhaustion takes time to recover from.
And past history suggests it takes longer for Charles-Barclay to recover than other athletes. The one time that she has raced 70.3 Worlds after Kona was three years ago, and she finished off the podium there. Her track record of racing shorter after a full distance race is spotty; after qualifying for Nice last year, she DNF’d T100 London and then did not start the IRONMAN World Championships with injury. Furthermore, to date, Charles-Barclay has put together her heaviest racing slate since 2019 together; she wound up in fifth at that 70.3 Worlds.
I don’t think Charles-Barclay will pull the plug on Marbella, but I also don’t envision her contending for the win. I’ll put the over/under on her finishing position at 3.5.
Dark Horse: Tanja Neubert
The 70.3 World Championship has typically turned into the coming out party for the next generation of former WTCS athletes who then turn these middle distance events on their head. In recent times, we’ve seen it with Daniela Ryf, Kristian Blummenfelt, Gustav Iden, and Knibb, to say the least. And I think Neubert just may be the next one on that list.
Neubert’s here from a single 70.3 result: a second place in Bahrain last year, where she ran under 1:15 for a half marathon. All of her WTCS starts this year have seen run times that would project to under a 1:18 half marathon here. But critically, on her way to a third place finish in Weihai, Neubert had the fastest ride of the day to make up a 30 second deficit out of the water, before being outrun by the likes of Beth Potter and Lisa Tertsch. Those are the kinds of times that usually land you amongst the leaders.
This has the makings of an Iden inaugural title performance. In 2018, Iden finished second at 70.3 Bahrain to qualify. He then famously used a rode bike with clip-ons to ride away from the field at 70.3 Worlds in Nice the following year on an equally difficult ride. The rest, as we say, is history. I think Neubert will surprise a lot of people come Saturday.
The Men: Pick Your Favorite Norwegian
It is very difficult to pick against a motivated Kristian Blummenfelt. And, as we wrote earlier this week, Blummenfelt is very motivated to regain the title “world champion.” Factor in that, of the Norwegian men that swept the podium in Nice in September, Blummenfelt has the best record at 70.3 over the last 24 months, and you’d say that on paper, Blummenfelt is Norway’s best chance at claiming another IRONMAN championship.
But it’s hard to ignore that this looks an awful lot like the course we saw for 70.3 Worlds in 2019 in Nice. And that would seemingly advantage the two guys who had very strong rides in Nice this year, and the one who won that world title in Nice six years ago. Iden and IRONMAN world champion Casper Stornes are going to be right there, too. Stornes, especially, seems dangerous given that he’s run under 2:30 for an IRONMAN marathon coming off an extremely difficult bike course.
It just has all the makings of a Norwegian fireworks party, and the three of these guys just throwing haymakers at one another again. I can’t wait.
Those Likely to Spoil the Fun: Geens, Bogen, Ditlev
Let’s lead off with the T100 gentlemen. Geens has put together a very good campaign following his 70.3 world title last year. Starting off the year with a 70.3 victory, he’s otherwise solely been in the T100 mix and consistently earning podium finishes. He has one T100 win, all the way back in June in Vancouver. Otherwise, he’s mostly been playing second fiddle to Hayden Wilde, who is not here. It’s a string of really good performances.
I say mostly, though, as Bogen was the man who beat him to the line out in San Francisco. It’s Bogen’s shining star performance in a sea of relatively disappointing ones, as it’s the only time he’s sniffed the podium this year. That said, the T100 course in San Francisco aligns a bit with the one we find ourselves here in Marbella: a harder than average swim paired with a very difficult bike course. A strong performance here would be a good cap to the season.
Then there’s Ditlev. The man bet big on him being able to perform in the IRONMAN Pro Series this year, and it’s been a string of disappointments for the big Dane. After a win in South Africa, it’s been tough sledding for Ditlev: 12th in St George, 8th in Frankfurt, and not finishing in Nice. You have to go all the way back to the season opening Miami T100 race last year to find a middle distance win for Ditlev. But it’s tough to discount someone who routinely shows up on harder courses, and who finished third at 70.3 Worlds in 2022.
Of them, I suspect it’ll be Bogen who tries to create the most fireworks on the bike; also means he’s my selection for “most likely to meltdown.” Ditlev is probably a part of the possible Blummenfelt group, but I don’t think he has the run to close out a Norwegian squad. As for Geens? I think he’s going to be chasing on the run. He’s as dangerous at that discipline as Matthews is for the women. I have him fourth here, but could easily break through to a podium.
Rudy Von Berg is the Great American Hope
Let’s see: hard swim, hard bike, easier run. These things play into Von Berg’s hands. (Stop me if you’ve heard this before.) And he typically shows up for the biggest races; his “underperformance” in Nice this year for 13th place is his worst big event showing in three years. There’s something to be said for being able to extract the maximum on a given day, and Von Berg’s consistently shown that ability.
There are doubts, of course. This is Von Berg’s first 70.3 world championship race in six years. He finished third there, behind Iden and Alistair Brownlee, but beating out the likes of Blummenfelt for the podium. His last victory at this distance came all the way back in 2021. Heck, he went through 2023 and 2024 without a podium at this or the T100 distance.
But, lest we all forget, Von Berg narrowly missed out on a 70.3 win to start out 2025 at Oceanside. He lost out to Lionel Sanders by 41 seconds, and it took a 1:11 run split from Sanders to put Von Berg away. But it was at that race where Von Berg beat many of the contenders here this weekend: Iden, Blummenfelt, Stornes, as well as fellow Americans Seth Rider and Ben Kanute. I suspect that will be your top 3 Americans, in order, come Sunday late morning. I do have all three taking home a paycheck, but Von Berg in my opinion represents the strongest chance to become the first American man to be called 70.3 World Champion since Andy Potts.
