110 elite triathletes compete for Ironman World Championship and Pro Series title in Kona

Saturday morning, 110 professional male and female triathletes will take on the grueling 140.6-mile swim, bike and run Ironman course with two titles at stake: the World Championship and the Pro Series title.

The men’s pro race will start at 6:20 a.m. at Kailua Pier, followed 10 minutes later by the women’s pros.

Who will win?

Defending World Champion Solveig Løvseth of Norway heads up the elite women’s field, while German Patrick Lange, a three-time World Champion, is a sentimental favorite on the men’s side. the 40-year-old said this is his last Kona Ironman.

On Thursday during a press conference of 12 of the elite athletes, Lange said he has two hearts beating in his chest right now.

“Definitely the fighter who still has the fire and the desire to win here one more time,” he said. “I think it’s a historical opportunity, that it’s there for me to only pick it up.”

His other heart, Lange said, is here embracing the race and enjoying it one last time, giving a “big mahalo” to the community and island.

The winners of the men’s and women’s race each will take home the $750,000 winning purse.

And for the first time in Kona, the Oman Ironman Pro Series champion for men and women will be crowned. The winners earn a $200,000 bonus, the lion’s share of the $1.7 million year-end bonus prize pool for the year-long, performance-based world series.

Scott DeRue, CEO of the Ironman Group, said to have men and women racing together again in Kona for the first time since 2019 is special.

“Over 100 of the very best professionals in the sport from (many) countries, all sharing one dream, one belief that anything is possible,” DeRue said Thursday. “That spirit of Ironman is incredibly special.”

For everything you need to know about the race and its logistics, click here.

Pro women’s race

In the women’s race, 27-year-old Løvseth will be defending her title after crossing the finish line in in 2025 in 8 hours, 28 minutes and 27 seconds in her first race in Kona.

That was just 35 seconds faster than Kat Matthews of the United Kingdom, who set a women’s run course record in Kona of 2:47:23. It was the second time she finished runner-up in the World Championship.

Løvseth also is second on the leaderboard for the Pro Series title with 14,999 points, behind 39-year-old Laura Philipp of Germany, who is in first place with 17,179 points. But the series is based on five races, and Løvseth actually has the advantage because she only has four races counted so far.

Kona awards 6,000 points to the winner of each professional race. Every subsequent finisher loses one point for each second they finish behind the winner.

Philipp already has five results so her Kona score would replace the 2,241 points she earned at Ironman 70.3 Aix-en-Provence, leaving her with 14,938 points. That gives Løvseth a 61-point lead entering Kona. So she just needs to finish within exactly 1 minute of Phillip to win the series title.

In talking about her plans for capturing the Pro Series title, Løvseth said she can’t control where Philipp is in the race.

But if she could? “I would, of course, just land her to be not more than 60 seconds in front of me at any time. That would have been ideal.”

Overall, Løvseth said she will try to do her best in the race “that will of course also lead to my best chances of winning the Pro Series. But of course, I really hope both me and Laura have really good races on Saturday.”

Philipp said the battle for the Pro Series title is exciting and motivating: “I will definitely keep it in the back of my mind during the race.”

Løvseth said she didn’t think she would be crowned the World Champion last year, but has really enjoyed holding the title. This year, she said she is unsure she will be able to hold on to it.

In recalling last year’s race, Løvseth said she didn’t really have a plan. After the swim, her goal was to stay in the cycling group with Philipp and Matthews: “I was thinking, ‘Just don’t get dropped from this group.'”

Løvseth ultimately broke away from that group, positioning her behind the frontrunners, Lucy Charles-Barclay of the United Kingdom — who set the women’s swim course record in Kona at 48:14 in 2018 — and Taylor Knibb of the United States.

Charles-Barclay, the winner of the 2023 World Championship, dropped out a little more than halfway into the run course.

The 28-year-old Knibb was in position to win her first World Championship until she collapsed on the run course with about two miles to go, allowing Løvseth to pass.

Going into Saturday, Løvseth said she again doesn’t have a plan: “You just need to sort of adapt to how the race falls out anyway.”

Matthews, 35, said she “absolutely” doesn’t believe she will see any of the same dynamics this year compared to last year.

“Maybe some similarities, but I think it’s going to be different. And that’s what keeps it so interesting,” she said.

Charles-Barclay and Knibb bounced back after failing to cross the finish line in Kona. Charles-Barclay won the 2025 Precision Fuel & Hydration Ironman 70.3 World Championship in Marbella, Spain, less than a month after her Kona disappointment, with Knibb finishing just behind her in second.

Knibb went on to claim the 2026 Ironman 70.3 World Championship title in Nice, France, in September.

On Thursday, Knibb said she still has a lot to learn about the Ironman Kona race.

“I feel like every single race is testing things, figuring things out,” she said. “It’s a long day. So there’s a lot that can go wrong, but also a lot that can go right.”

Charles-Barclay said she is feeling strong going into this year’s race despite having competed in only three races this year.

She was quick to point out they were three full Ironman races. The 33-year-old started the year with surgery to remove a 12-centimeter thickened plantaris tendon from her right leg. She went on to compete and finish Ironman Lanzarote in May in 9:15:39.

Charles-Barclay said she feels a lot fresher this year, recalling that in Kona in 2025, she was getting more tired before the race even started.

“I feel like I really enjoyed those final key (training) sessions, kicking them off and seeing good numbers and feeling good,” she said. “I think maybe being a bit fresher is hopefully going to pay off this year.”

Ironman World Championship rookie Julie Derron, 29, of Switzerland also is a contender, hot off her second-place finish at the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in Nice, France, last month. She said she feels like she knows Kona because she’s been following the race for years.

“I expect it to be hard, hot, sweaty,” Derron said. “I’m just really humbled to be sitting here with these champion athletes, and I just hope to have the best day I can out there on Saturday.”

Pro men’s race

The men’s Ironman World Champion Casper Stornes of Norway is unable to defend his title this year after crashing on his bike in training earlier this year.

However, two other Norwegian superstars are at the top of the men’s pack for Saturday’s race: Gustav Iden, 30, who captured the title in Kona in 2022 with a course-record time of 7:40:24; and Kristian Blummenfelt, who won the 2021 Ironman World Championship in St. George in 7:49:16.

Iden holds the Kona course record in the run at 2:36:15, set in 2022.

Blummenfelt, 32, also currently leads the Ironman Pro Series for the men in points, but like the women, another triathlete holds the advantage once the counting-score adjustments are made. The advantage is held by Belgian Marten Van Riel, who has a 3:14 lead over Jonas Schomburg, a 4:08 lead over Blummenfelt and a 10 minute lead over Iden.

Van Riel, who is making his Kona debut, also is among the favorites to win the men’s race. He won Ironman Lake Placid in July with course records for both the run and the overall time.

Lange will be going for his fourth World Championship, after winning in 2017, 2018 and 2024. He was the first person to break the 8-hour barrier in Kona when he finished in 7:52:39 in 2018.

Another favorite is France’s Sam Laidlow, 27, who finished second in Kona in 2022 with a time of 7:42:24. He owns the bike course record in Kona at 3:57:22, set in 2024.

Lange was the only pro male athlete at the press conference who has competed in Kona with women. For everyone else, it will be their first time sharing the field after the races were split up due to the COVID-19 global pandemic.

On Thursday after the press conference, he said he always thought splitting up the men and women was a bad idea.

“I think as a community, we belong together,” he said.

Coming back together this year, Lange said it’s been a different energy and everyone seems happy to be racing together again.