Hot on the heels of our recent article highlighting the top five triathlon performances by female athletes in 2025, now it is the turn of the men as the TRI247 team picks their best swim, bike, run efforts of last season.
As already noted, when we announced the women’s rankings, we fully understand that the subjective nature of professional sport means there will be many and varied opinions when it comes to the difficult task of selecting the five best men’s race performances.
Not that such difficulties have prevented the TRI247 team from attempting it.
As with the women’s field, our criteria were simple. Ignore the distances and judge the performances on three key factors alone – their importance to the sport, the level of ‘wow’ factor, and the significance of the race in terms of what was on the line for the athlete.
We know not everyone will agree… But isn’t that the very beauty of sport?
5 – Matt Hauser: World Triathlon Championship Series Final
Date: Sunday, October 19, 2025
Reason for inclusion: The complete performance from a dominant athlete.
Matt Hauser produced a composed and powerful display to win the men’s WTCS Grand Final in Wollongong to claim a deserved first world title after completely dominating this season.
The big Aussie delighted the home crowds as he took the race by the scruff of its neck on the swim, then led a cohesive seven-man group on the bike before moving to the front early on the run and surging clear.
He knew that after three wins earlier in the season, a top-three finish would be enough for the title, but he didn’t settle for the podium, kicking away around halfway to become the first person to win a WTCS title with a perfect four-from-four score.
Hauser even had time to high-five his way over the finish line as the emotions started to flow in front of his home Aussie crowd.
“It was hectic from the start. It was really choppy, which suited my strength, and I went out from the gun,” he said. “I had a bit of work to do on the bike, but a gap [from the front group to the chasers] opened up beautifully, and we got working through that third and fourth lap, and it just started rising – it was just awesome seeing the boys all working together.
“And on the run, I really tried to stay composed in the first half, as I knew I’d had some cramping issues in Karlovy Vary, so I knew I needed to keep it smart. And then I could push it at the backend when I saw the gaps starting to drop from Vasco and the guys.”
4 – Sam Laidlow: Challenge Roth
Date: Sunday, July 6, 2025
Reason for inclusion: Sam’s successful return to competition after months of injury issues.
France’s Sam Laidlow, the IRONMAN World Champion in 2023, made a quite astonishing comeback with a brilliant and emotional victory at Challenge Roth.
Just making the start line was a huge step forward for the British-born athlete after an incredibly frustrating time since his spectacular blow-up at the IRONMAN World Championship in Kona last October.
Injuries and illness had limited his training time and meant this was his first race since that fateful day on the Big Island – a situation which no doubt contributed to a new gameplan which was very different to his previous big wins, where he would blitz the bike leg.
At Roth, he was in a big front group in the swim but was then happy to bide his time on the bike before closing to within just under a minute of the trailblazing Jonas Schomburg (GER) by T2.
Even then, Laidlow remained patient on the run, and it wasn’t until just before the 30km point that he moved past Schomburg and into the lead – and he never looked back, to claim one of the most widely welcomed victories of the season.
“I’ve missed this whole first half of the season, and I really hit such a low place that it’s really changed my vision because now not only do I just appreciate being healthy… I’m fully soaking in these experiences because I don’t know how many I’m gonna get,” he said.
“I was gonna drop out of this race. I’d literally sent a message to my dad, my manager and everyone saying that I wasn’t gonna do it, and they convinced me to do it. Boy, were they right?
“It was very, very hard for me. I had to dig very, very deep mentally. I really wanted it, but it was really, really horrible. But when you come into the stadium and see all the crowds and hear the cheers, it definitely makes you forget the pain.”
3 – Alex Yee: Valencia Marathon
Date: Sunday, December 7, 2025
Reason for inclusion: Yee breaks new ground with stunning results in a new discipline
Alex Yee may not be looking to take up marathon running full-time just yet, but the incredibly talented athlete proved in 2025 that should he ever decide to choose that path, he will do so as one of the elite competitors.
There was much discussion as to whether his marathon exploits could or even should be included in this list of top five performances, but as a triathlete and an Olympic gold medallist to boot, there was no way we were going to leave him out.
Having battled through the pain barrier on his historic debut at the distance in the London Marathon last April, he then went on to record the second-fastest time ever for a British athlete when clocking a 2:06:38 in December’s Valencia event.
The Olympic triathlon gold medallist had hailed his London experience as ‘one of the best’ of his life as he finished 14th in the men’s elite race with a time of 2:11:08.
Admitting he had “a lot more dark moments” than he did during his Paris Games triumph, he revealed he was in “a lot of pain” and even picked up an injury which would rule him out of action for a lengthy spell mid-season.
However, he was clearly not done with the marathon distance, and his performance in Spain saw him finish seventh with a time that was only 87 seconds behind that of Mo Farah’s 2:05:11 achieved at the Chicago Marathon in 2018.
Expect him to be back on the Olympic qualifying trail for triathlon as he starts preparations for another gold medal tilt at LA2028.
“The Valencia marathon blew away any expectations I had of myself,” he said. “I had learnt so much from London, which was such a special experience, but I felt that with better preparation, I had a chance to do something special.
“From start to finish, the atmosphere was amazing and kept my legs and mind pushing through to one of the best performances of my life.”
2 – Casper Stornes: IRONMAN World Championship
Date: Sunday, September 14, 2025
Reason for inclusion: Shock debut victory on the biggest of all stages.
Casper Stornes led home a historic Norwegian one-two-three at the men’s IRONMAN World Championship in Nice – seeing off competition from former winners and training partners Gustav Iden and Kristian Blummenfelt in a sensational race on the French Riviera.
The same trio had claimed an iconic podium clean sweep in short-course racing at WTS Bermuda in 2018 when Stornes was again on the top step. And they repeated the feat at IRONMAN 70.3 Bahrain later that year.
But Stornes, for whom this was his first IRONMAN World Championship, had been relatively in the shadows of his better-known compatriots in the years since and was the least fancied of the three to take this year’s title.
The key to his remarkable victory was becoming the first man to ever register a sub-2:30 marathon at the IMWC – his 2:29:25 helping him stop the clock in 7:51:36, two-and-a-half minutes ahead of Iden, with a similar margin back to Blummenfelt in third after he suffered with cramp late on the run.
“It’s unreal. I’ve been playing this moment over in my mind for many weeks and months,” he said. “It’s just so amazing to actually do it. It’s a dream come true. I saw my family at the finish line, and I started crying. It’s really good to perform when your sponsors, family, and friends are on the course. It was special.
“I knew I had a chance to win, but I also knew I had some really hard competitors to beat. I am just over the moon. They (Iden and Blummenfelt) have pushed me to the line for so many years. They are the best mates that I can share the podium with, and I’m so happy.”
1 – Hayden Wilde: T100 World Triathlon Tour (London)
Date: Saturday, August 9, 2025
Reason for inclusion: Incredible comeback win after horrific, career-threatening injuries.
There can really only be one winner in this category, with Kiwi Hayden Wilde’s incredible return to competition after suffering terrible injuries in a bike crash being described at the time by commentators as ‘superhuman’.
Wilde completed one of the greatest sporting comebacks of all time as he won the T100 race in London less than 100 days after riding into a parked truck while out in Japan last May – an incident which left him with a punctured lung, six broken ribs, and a smashed-up scapula on his left shoulder.
Three months of intensive rehabilitation followed until he bravely stepped up for his comeback race just 98 days later. Never once wavering, he produced a quite incredible performance on his race return.
He was less than a minute back in the swim in what must have been his most challenging discipline, given he had only started swimming with two arms again a matter of weeks before, looked strong on the bike and then unleashed a brilliant run to take the lead and power to a famous win.
Mika Noodt (GER) was 1:07 back in second, and Jelle Geens (BEL) was third, but with all due respect to the other athletes, this was all about Wilde.
He would, of course, end the season with a dominant six T100 wins from his seven races and lift the world title in Qatar to complete a truly ‘superhuman’ storyline.
Wilde said after London: “I wasn’t afraid of the race at all. I’m used to racing these guys. I know what the level is. I knew what my level was going into it.
“You have a big injury, you have three months off, and you do have some negative thoughts in your mind. That was the first swim bike I’ve had since Singapore. Three months without doing that, you’re always a bit cautious.”
