Well that’s it. The IRONMAN World Championship season is over! There are still of course IRONMAN and 70.3 races left for 2025, but for World Championships, and the IRONMAN Pro Series, we are done!
And what a last couple of races they were in Marbella, Spain to cap off the year. Mirroring the drama of Kona and Nice, with epic showdowns between the favourites.
In the men’s race, every IRONMAN 70.3 World Champion since 2019 was on the start list: Jelle Geens (BEL), Rico Bogen (GER), Kristian Blummenfelt (NOR) and Gustav Iden (NOR), Iden having won in 2019 and 2021.
Only three of the top ten from Taupo 2024 were racing, but there were 11 of the top 15 from the IRONMAN World Championship in Nice, including winner Casper Stornes (NOR).
There were however 39 athletes making their 70.3 World Championship debut, a reflection perhaps of a large number of short course athletes that have stepped up to the middle distance – Miguel Hidalgo (BRA), Jamie Riddle (RSA), Jonas Schomburg (GER) and Fabian Kraft (GER) to name a few.
Another athlete to watch was Italian Alessio Crociani. The Italian led out the water at the Paris Olympics and finished third in the WTCS Grand Final, only being overtaken in the later stages of the run, having been in the front pack all day, putting down the second fastest swim and bike.
How the race played out
With the IRONMAN World Championship in Nice back in September it wasn’t as likely (but still not out of the question) that race would impact Marbella, as Kona did for the women.
Ok, so what actually happened?
It was pretty clear from early in the swim that the race would have a different dynamic to the women’s race. Crociani was solo off the front, but didn’t have a huge gap, and behind him a huge group of men ran into T1, no less than 43 men separated by only 70 seconds. Thirty seconds behind that group were another few athletes so 52 men exited the swim within three minutes of each other.
On to the bike and it resulted in a long long line of 20+ athletes or more, with no one really able to break it up. With such big groups, it’s easier to talk about who was missing rather than who was there, as all the pre-race favourites were in the mix. The one that wasn’t was Gustav Iden. Though Iden had played down his odds in the pre-race press conference, which was perhaps telling as he exited the water towards the back of the field and wasn’t making ground on the bike.
The main bikers were all trying to drive the pace – Magnus Ditlev (DEN), Schomburg, Riddle, Bogen, with Mathis Margirier (FRA) having bridged up and moved straight to the front to add further bike power.
Defending champion Geens stuttered at the start of the bike. A crash as he exited T1 left him with a bent derailleur and limited gears, resulting in him having to stop again at the top of the first climb, where he was fortunately able to bend it back. Considering these two stops, Geens was still in the front pack, and looking comfortable, able to react to surges and move around the group.
It was a group of nine that arrived into T2, led by Riddle, and featuring Bogen, Blummenfelt, Geens, Margirier, Ditlev, Stornes, Schomburg and Swiss athlete Simon Westermann who was making an impressive debut having only raced two 70.3 this year, in between six WTCS races.
And Geens’ bike issues weren’t over, as he dropped his bike at the rack in T2, losing valuable seconds as the rest of the group shot out onto the run. It was Bogen, Riddle and Blummenfelt, that were out running first, with Schomburg right behind. However Geens, once he got going, was not hanging around, and set off at pace to catch back up to the leaders. As Schomburg moved into the lead, Bogen started to drop off the back.
Geens was gaining and took until 2.5km in to latch on to the front. He went straight into the lead, Blummenfelt followed, Schomburg and Riddle started to drop off and now it was just Geens versus Blummenfelt.
These two would push each other all race, not giving an inch over the course of the run. Each would try and surge at times, trying to break the other. The other not relenting and hanging in. As the kilometres sped by, behind them Stornes was making moves. In similar fashion to Nice, Stornes let the men set the pace at the start, himself running his own pace, which meant dropping off the pack. But as in Nice as the kilometres went on, Stornes started to move through the field, passing athletes, to find himself in third and closing in on the leading duo.
Nothing could split Blummenfelt and Geens, and it would go to the wire, in one of the closest finishes in IRONMAN history, Geens just edging out Blummenfelt in a sprint to the line. Geens now a two-time IRONMAN 70.3 World Champion.
Casper Stornes would finish in third, in the end just 60 seconds off the win.
My thoughts – 12m draft zone not enough
With such good swim/bikers currently (and runners) but with such large groups coming out of the swim together (and much bigger start lists) and athletes being able to ride hard, the 12m drafting zone, doesn’t really break the race up.
At 12m when a large number of athletes are together, it doesn’t allow the strong bikers to break away, as it’s too easy sitting in the line, feeling the drafting effect and also saving power.
Until IRONMAN move to at least 20m drafting zones, I feel this is the type of racing we are going to be seeing more and more, with big packs on the bike and coming into T2, turning it into a runner race.
IRONMAN Pro Series recap
The IRONMAN Pro Series is in its second year. It consists of 18 races at 17 events globally. Athletes’ top five results count towards the series with a maximum of three IRONMAN races being allowed.
IRONMAN races are 5000 points for the win, whilst 70.3 are 2500 points. For the IRONMAN World Championship it’s 6000 points for the win, and for the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship, 3000 points.
For every second after the winner had crossed the line, 1 point is deducted. At the end of the year, the top 10 ranked athletes share a $1.3m prize pool, with prize money all the way down to 50th.
There was a new series Champion for 2025 for the men, with Kristian Blummenfelt taking the series. Like Kat Matthews on the women’s side, Blummenfelt hadn’t managed to win a World Championship title in 2025, but his consistently high performances, and wins throughout the year, put him in a commanding and deserving position to take the series. Similar to the women’s, Blummenfelt was almost certain to win, going into the 70.3 World Championship, but again it wasn’t 100% confirmed, with his countryman Casper Stornes having the potential to steal the series. But as long as Blummenfelt stayed ahead of Stornes, it was going to be his.
Unlike the women’s series though, there were plenty of changes to the top ten.
- Blummenfelt (21,200 points, $200k)
- Stornes (20,414, $130k) This is more than Stornes won for the IRONMAN World Championship ($125k). Gustav Iden had been sitting in third in the series, and it was looking like the Norwegian clean sweep again. However, finishing down in 36th in Marbella, some 17 minutes behind Geens, Iden would drop down to fifth
- Kristian Hogenhaug (18,530, $85k), finished 21st which was good enough to move him into third in the series
- Nick Thompson (18,415, $70k), finished 16th which moved him up into fourth.
- Gustav Iden (18,145, $50k)
- Rudy Von Berg (17,753, $40k), finished 20th , jumping him up four places to sixth.
- Jonas Schomburg (17,173, $30k), added 4th in Marbella to his 7th in Nice, to move up six places into the top ten and seventh
- Henrik Goesch (16,954, $20k), had a 41st place finish enabling him to jump up four places into the top ten in eighth
- Leon Chevalier (16,553, $15k), didn’t race in Marbella and dropped to ninth.
- Jonas Hoffmann (16,345, $10k), also didn’t race in Marbella and drops to tenth
Those that weren’t so lucky were Matthew Marquardt (USA) and Cameron Wurf (AUS), who with not racing, meant they dropped out of the top ten to finish in 11th and 13th respectively. Jamie Riddle (ZAF) with another top ten in the World Championship races, (tenth in Nice, and now seventh in Marbella), meant he moved up three spots into 14th and a higher pay bracket ($8000).
The 2026 IRONMAN Pro Series kicks off in March at the ANZCO IRONMAN New Zealand.
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