All your points are bang on. I think there are many areas in triathlon that have been improving via trial and error and experimentation. In track it was largely resolved by the mid 1970’s so we have only seen minimal improvenments mainly via depth of fiend and tweak to training approaches. Largely the athletes are no better today in track than ages ago (Butch Reynolds moved the 400m world record three times in a year to 1988, and since then it has moved from 43.29 in 1988 to 43.03 in 2016 and has not changed since 2016). In triathlon just like track the athletes are not better. There may be more good athletes (depth of field increased), but the top people are roughly similar like in other sports. We’re just seeing gains from all the other variables mainly from equipment and some just coming from more fast guys and girls going head to head and pushing each other.
I think we’re actually seeing a better field at the top - athletes are starting triathlon as their main sport and also doing IM distance right out of the gate. Whereas before athletes would take a roundabout way of getting to IM distance, and if they started in Triathlon, it would be at he Olympic distance.
Laidlow started out as a long course Triathlete.
From this, I’d wager that there’s still further to go on the women’s side - the top 2 athletes (Matthews, Phillip) started tri as adults. Can you imagine how good Matthews would be if she started at 14? Knibb’s really the only one of the top tier who started young and she spent all that time chasing the Olympics.
I think the issue with 2024 was that they had construction sites and I guess getting licence in time would have too much of an issue. No idea what the excuse is for 2025 tho.
Just saw another addition to this list:
Finn Grosse-Freese wins Ironman Copenhagen in a record 7h27m - running 2h32m.
Probably just me, but never heard of this apparently very fast German… well he won IM Klagenfurt earlier this year
Forgive me for a cynical take, but 2:32 for Große-Freese is too much of an outlier to be be a good run after a hard training block (which he hasn’t had - why race this (and hard) with Nice in 4 weeks btw?). I assume the course is well less than 42km/26 miles.
He raced Roth and Kärnten-Klagenfurt in June and July with typical mid 2:40s runs. Think Copenhagen was pleasant (sub-20C) temperature though throughout.
Happy (and amazed) to be Strava-proved wrong. In which case he will be up there with Schomburg challenging Lange for top FD German.
Kudos to all those who raced Copenhagen then. A literally first class run by FGF:
Run that in Nice in 27 days’ time without too much of a deficit in T2 and he’ll be right up there.
If only he could’ve raced like this in the IM Pro Series he’d be well up the Series ‘batting order’. I guess he was disheartened by Texas and decided to avoid any more regular season Series races.
I see that Mathias Pedersen also went sub 7:30 in CPH today
On the male side I can also conclude that as per today the top position of sub 7:30s is dominated by:
3 Danes & 3 Germans
Nice!
Bayreuth seems to be a good ground for fast triathletes 
The secret sauce is Geesman: evidence of both Matthews and Lange (2023&2024).
I guess that the run route this year was different then: 41.7km in 2:32:44 for FG-F.
(Official result has his run time at 2:32:43.)
While we’re here the bike course was 176km.
Still an excellent run at 2:35 for a marathon: first class.
And it looked like the swim was 5 or 6 minutes shorter than last year too…Perhaps manufacturing a fast course for the masses…
When will we see the first “Age Grouper” on this list?
They are already sub 8, whether having a pro life but racing as AG is legit towards this is another topic though
the question is do you really believe somebody runs a 63 for 400 41 km into an ironman ?
Well that is NOT the question. I asserted that the run had to be <42km, and it was. 2:35 is still a step up in standard and Grosse-Freese will surely go into Nice aiming/knowing he has the potential for a top 10.
FGF had long time leader in his sights at last, and had only a mile to make the catch. Does seem extraordinarily exuberant, but I guess this 400m may have been after easing off and micro-recover before blasting past and dropping (in case Petersen had been running within himself). idk obv. Strava doesn’t lie, unless intermittent tree cover.
well if you believe in garmin accuracy that is a question…
to add peterson run one of the slowest splits of the top finisher from from 40 ish to 41.7 ish k
i would say this is likely not the goal the goal was to make a name for himeslf in austria, roth and denmark