Five weeks after her first Kona, Julie Derron is heading back to a race she loves and a title fight she believes she can win.

The Swiss star defends her Dubai T100 crown on Saturday as the series leader and the new number one in the PTO world rankings.

Derron had just moved ahead of Taylor Knibb in the PTO’s women’s rankings when TRI247 spoke to her. It was news to her. “Oh, I didn’t realise,” she said.

She has a more immediate target in Dubai. After finishing third in the inaugural T100 series in 2024 and second last year, the Paris Olympic silver medallist has two races left to go one better.

Back in China a week after Kona

Derron has already had a sensational season, finishing second at the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship in Nice before taking third on her Kona debut. A week after Hawaii she was back in China, where getting back into a routine with her training group helped her switch her attention to Dubai.

“I’m really excited to race and I’m also curious to see where my shape is at,” she told TRI247. “I don’t think I’ve lost too much.”

Derron said she had deliberately given herself more downtime between races this year after two busy seasons. She can feel the difference now that November has come around.

“Other years I think you get to this point of the season and it’s like November and it’s a bit of a drag because the seasons are so long,” she said. “But this year I’m still really excited and fired up for the races to come and I think that’s a good place to be.”

Three points between Derron and Taylor-Brown

Derron has three wins and nine podiums from 11 T100 starts since joining the series after Paris 2024. She was second to Knibb in Dubai on her first visit, then beat Kate Waugh there last November.

Saturday takes her to a new course at Al Mamzar, where the men and women will now race on the same morning.

Derron won in Vancouver after finishing second to Georgia Taylor-Brown in Pamplona. She has 64 points, two more than fellow Swiss athlete Imogen Simmonds and three more than Taylor-Brown. Both Derron and Taylor-Brown have raced twice, so their full Dubai scores will count before the final in Qatar. If Taylor-Brown wins, she’ll take the series lead even if Derron finishes second.

“I think Georgia and I, we’re sort of the only ones that can still significantly improve our overall score,” Derron said of the battle at the top. She also singled out Waugh, the reigning T100 world champion, as a tough rival for the race win and will give everyone full respect as she remembered how she first got her own chance in the series.

“I was a wildcard once, so I think you can never count out a wildcard.”

For Derron, the prospect of a first series title comes down to how she handles the next two starts.

Asked if she believes she can win the title, she told us: “Well, I think I can, but you never know what happens.

“I’ve learned that for me it’s important to just approach it as well prepared as I can and as relaxed as I can, and then normally the results follow.”

The Dubai T100 women’s race starts at 10:08am local time (6:08am GMT) on Saturday 14 November. The Qatar final follows on Friday 11 December.