Three Up, Three Down from 70.3 Geelong

Triathlon Forum
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Originally published at: Three Up, Three Down from 70.3 Geelong - Slowtwitch News

IRONMAN 70.3 Geelong has come and gone, and with it in the rear view, the 2025 IRONMAN Pro Series is officially underway. Some familiar faces put statements of intent out there and earned critical early-season points with their performances, whereas others struggled. Here is who (and what) that is trending up and down coming out of the first race.

Up: Jelle Geens

The IRONMAN 70.3 World Champion picked up 2025 right where he left off 2024, winning in Geelong by running away from the field at the halfway mark. Despite valiant efforts from Jake Birtwhistle, Tayler Reid, and Kenji Nener to stay with Geens early on the run, they could not match his speed from 8 kilometers onward. Geens won by 45 seconds over Birtwhistle, clocking a 3:33:24 race time. We’re not far from 3:30 being the new winning time for these events. Heck, a 3:39 finish (Jarrod Osborne) wasn’t good enough for a paycheck.

Geens has signed a T100 contract, so it’s unlikely we’ll see him at much else until we get closer to 70.3 Worlds, as he looks to become the first male repeat champion since Gustav Iden in 2019 and 2021 (or first back-to-back year champion since Sebastian Kienle in 2012 and 2013). As he told our Kevin Mackinnon post-race, he’s hopeful to front-load his season so he can stay focused on Marbella, a course he considers to suit him.

Down: Elongated Cockpits

As athletes have searched for evermore reach to meet the shifting philosophy on bike fit, we’ve seen some interesting set-ups on cockpits. 3D printing has unlocked the ability to create new shims, bolt plates, and more, all in the pursuit of hitting perfect positions.

The problem, of course, is that the way these puzzle pieces fit together is that it has the potential to increase failure points. We seemingly saw that with Matt Hauser this weekend. His race ended with a snapped bolt in his cockpit just a few kilometers into the ride. Here’s a decent look at how Hauser’s cockpit is set-up.

It’s a decent example as to why IRONMAN has made some rules modifications on cockpit length. It might be time to start looking at how we’re pedestaling pads, too.

Up: Natalie Van Coevorden

It’s easy to put a race winner in this spot. But Van Coevorden is trending in the right direction after a challenging 2024 season. Her best finish on the WTCS circuit last season was a 22nd in Hamburg. She had two fourth place finishes as she transitioned to 70.3 racing at the end of the year. It was a far cry from the promise she showed at the distance in her first few attempts, including losing the lead at Melbourne 70.3 in 2023 in the last kilometer.

This, then, is a more disciplined, more seasoned Van Coevorden. Racing at the front for nearly the entirety of the day, Van Coevorden allowed Hannah Berry to take the lead early onto the run. But patience paid off. Van Coevorden made her move at nearly the same place that Geens did in the men’s race, taking over the lead with just over 12 kilometers left to run, and never looked back to earn her first 70.3 win. It sounds like Van Coevorden’s next start will be at the non-Pro Series Port Macquarie race.

Down: Cam Wurf

Wurf’s “do all the Pro Series races” schedule kicked off with a 20th place performance, including a 1:18 run that was 10 minutes slower than most of the top finishers. Yes, he had a mechanical issue on the bike, riding a single-speed all day due to his shifters going out. Still, there are three potential ways to look at this:

  • He looked off the pace from the second he started running, so he’s overtired and probably shouldn’t race to give himself more margin for instances where things go wrong;
  • He was conserving energy for this weekend’s IRONMAN distance event in South Africa;
  • A mix of the above.

I’m inclined to think that it was both. Wurf, despite the bike issues, still made a push on the bike, riding just over two hours and around two minutes behind the leaders, before sliding backwards on the run. Age groupers occasionally do these “B” races as self proclaimed catered workouts. Still, for Wurf to run the full schedule, he’s got to get himself into a Marbella slot. And that’s going to take some serious effort.

Up: Hannah Berry

Berry has classically started her year with the Tauranga Half in January, and then either this race or IRONMAN New Zealand as her second event. Like last year, she won Tauranga. But she improved from fifth in Geelong last year to second this year, with the bulk of her time improvement coming on the bike. It’s her fastest ride in Geelong by a full three minutes, and then she still ran 1:23. That has the makings of someone prepared to make a push this year.

Down: IRONMAN’s Live Broadcast

There are forgivable technical difficulties in live broadcasting. Cameras will occasionally cut out due to transmission issues. A timing box may not be working, so you can’t give split data that you would like. A poor cut from the broadcast booth down to your on-the-ground reporter leads to a “hot mic” moment. These happen in world-class broadcasts.

What does not happen in world class broadcasts is a complete shutdown. Yet that’s what we had midway through the coverage this week. That simply can’t happen. Period. Full stop. We are long past the days where we anxiously refreshed text updates, trackers, and a single finish line camera to figure out how races went. This is particularly true when there’s a competitive broadcast product in T100, and they’ve just announced yet another round of funding.

IRONMAN, whether it likes it or not, is a media company that also produces events. As such, these details impact the perceived value of the individual events themselves — if a live feed can be this massively disrupted, why not some part of race operations? It is certainly not the type of kickoff to their year that they needed. And they need to get it sorted quickly, with IRONMAN South Africa and another opportunity to get it right this weekend.

Photos: Quinn Rooney / Getty Images for IRONMAN

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Suggest a fourth, which you rehearse and then don’t list:
Wurf was sh***ed after riding an 87" gear, finally losing <2 minutes in the last third and so his run wasn’t there (or a mix of that and your #2).

I agree that getting a Marbella slot (NB by 30th June) will be a tall order for Wurf given how competitive every single IM Pro Series race is going to be. Maybe Eagleman (21 days after Aix) with most of the ‘top set’ already Q offers a hope.

Cockpit (edit: top elements) maker/seller:

ProTriNews with the detail fitting that on his Specialised @ 6:00 in.

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With respect, I disagree. Ironman is an event company that also produces (shitty) media. Just look at their source of revenue. The pros and media and all that is a nice promotion for their events, but not what the company does.

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Cockpits:

We are going to see new bikes finally adopting the progressive stack and reach that has been advocated for on this message board for a couple of years now. If you look at the new Ridley that is just being released, it has a reach that is roughly 5 cm on average longer than all other bikes on the market And this will eliminate the need for extension kits and custom risers. The custom risers being used by the likes of Foley are safe. Increased frame stack will also reduce the height of the spacers. The frames need to catch up. Good work by Ridley in this area. It may be important to not fault the riders regarding the solutions they’re using to be more comfortable and more powerful, but rather nudge the frame makers to meet the demand of these better positions on the bike.

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I’m not going to begrudge an athlete for attempting to go after the fastest position they can with the tools they have available.

But when failures happen on some of these components, in part because we probably got out ahead of our skis (as an industry) on what was feasible with existing equipment, we might need to put the toothpaste back in the tube until everything catches up. In no small part because, well, too much of this stuff is also available at retail, and this forum can and will lose its mind in the event that a similar failure occurs to an age-group athlete.

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With regards to Wurf, once he knew his gearing was stuck pre-race, he himself said it would just be a training day out. So I wouldn’t be making too much fuss over his result.

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I don’t think AeroGains make the reach adapter that seems to have broken. Only the arm cups and BTA mounts. There was a serious amount of stack without a mid way cross bridge plus 2x reach adapters bolted on top of said stacks… crazy set up.

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With regard to the broadcast, I’m going to (predictably) say they switched off the wrong channel (visual) and left the sound on, whereas had they switched off the sound and left the visuals, the broadcast would’ve been improved not ruined. Not that it would’ve been good.

The only commentary worth following was in the YouTube chat and of course (provided sparsely) in this forum.

I have to call out Rinny Carfrae and Greg Welch for not talking about triathlon during commentary, with the exception of the Ironman Pro Series. Their responsibility to the viewers is to do a good job between the ads and they agreed, as requested by Ironman, to do a shitty job. I don’t know if Welch would be any good at other commentating venues where he’d have more freedom, but Carfrae could be great for sure.

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Where were these two actually based ie broadcasting from? Not Geelong. I presume Queensland.
When it all went t*ts up it took f’ing ages for either to acknowledge verbally.
Have some empathy for your listeners/watchers (would be).
Also surprised they haven’t got boots on the ground passing them ‘stuff’ by text/audio. Why didn’t we hear about (and see) Stimpson’s patient tyre fail mend at the T1 exit. And same same Hauser’s cantilever bars fail plus zip tie lunacy?
How can you misread and mis-say “Adams”?

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I have served as a spotter at events before. You’re in a WhatsApp group and you text in information as you have it, ideally as quickly as you can. But, having been in that bucket, it’s not uncommon for spotters to ahem forget about their phone for a little bit and not get info relayed in a timely fashion.

More often than not those spotters also tend to stick around in and around transition versus going out onto the full bike loop. Outside of having someone on the back of a moto (when most of these folks don’t have the equipment to go on the back of a moto), you’re left to hoping that nothing breaks for the longest segment of the broadcast.

Also: speaking generally – commentary is frequently done remotely. I believe the IM primary studio is in Boulder. But you’re seeing a lot of remote broadcasts for other sports now, too – even traditional NHL/NBA/MLB teams are being left at home to call the action from the same feed you have. The biggest problem with that, for those sports, is the lack of ambient noise that comes through that makes the broadcast come alive. Triathlon doesn’t really have that problem.

Mirinda has a lot of potential on broadcast. She’s a really good addition to that team.

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Agree on Carfrae: she is a breath of youthful fresh air.
I do recommend some time studying trirating’s “seedings” though, to help with data-based expectations. I flick to that ‘live’ to gain an idea of the relative past performance run speeds which then allow insight to the tactics being played out on the bike. Will also inform who are likely to be the lead swimmers.

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I think prepping is a key part of being a commentator, on any sport. You can’t go on air and being clueless about some of the competitors, even more if they’re at the front or get “air time”.
She can be great, especially considering how low the other set the bar at, but it is absolutely mad to me that a bunch of sport lovers like us know athletes and details 10 times more than someone that lives and breathes the sport as a professional for as many years as they had. I do think that quite a few of us on this forum would do a better job than the likes of Greg Welch for free.
Thank god for the YT chat, me and kajet had a great time with man of the people Hayden!

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Looks like he’s using the Sync Aerobar 2 setup. I’d wager a guess that something was installed incorrectly. I have the same setup on my bike and the instructions are very detailed and complete. Probably the combination of multiple reach extenders, no stack bridge (Sync recommends one with >60mm stack), and possibly aftermarket bolts that weren’t long enough?

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Have a quick listen to PTN (link in post above) at exactly 6:00 (with Lange reaction) for the ‘actual’ {Hauser bar set up].
Lange also said the run was maybe 600m short.

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Not sure if he is accurate in thay comment though. Just looked at geens and birts strava they both had over 21k showing as the run. 21.34 and 21.26.

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I did the race and both myself and my partner had the length as spot on
The course hasn’t change for years so it’s legit

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How stable does your feel with a high stack? I guess with the correct bolts, and stack bridge it would be OK?

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I only have 40mm of stack, which includes the base bar adapters. With the stack bridge it’s solid and ain’t going anywhere.

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Got out ahead of our skis is kind of blaming the athlete, especially considering that multiple aero testing and bike fit experts have been pretty adamant that reach needs to go out and stack needs to go up to suit the fits that are working best right now. Did he make a mistake not having a firmly tested stack bridge and so on? Absolutely! But the bike industry, sadly, is not one that evolves in this way without a VERY significant push and when your livelihood depends on going fast like Hauser’s, you do what you can to get more speed… I totally agree he made a mistake in executing poorly and made it unsafe. But… heck, I still can’t find more than a few road bikes, one of which is the new road Ridley, that have the reach I want to go with a slammed forward seat and still allow my long arms to rest comfortably. Frame geo seems to keep going taller and just hovering too short on reach. Gravel seems to have regressed road bike reach in my opinion, too. So on the road, if you want your saddle forward in the best spot with a short crank, you either go super long stem or your fit is kind of cramped with most bikes. It’s exactly the same in tri bikes now, too, except the available solutions can be pretty sketchy like this.

Thank goodness Nick and others have attempted to be that push for updating tri geometry. I’ve said it elsewhere: it’s not a new fit standard in terms of biomechanics, it’s a new aero standard that requires moving bits around to achieve the same biomechanics in faster positions.

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I am saying that we as an industry failed by putting athletes like Hauser in the unenviable position of trying to MacGyver something together to work for his optimized position, given the ruleset as it exists today.

And that, in the interim until that exists, we’re at some point probably going to see this regulated.