Aussie short-course star so nearly a DNS before making big breakthrough at IRONMAN 70.3 Geelong

Natalie Van Coevorden celebrated a breakthrough win at IRONMAN 70.3 Geelong on Sunday – but admitted she could so easily have missed the race.

The Australian Olympian finished less than 30 seconds clear of New Zealand’s Hannah Berry in the opening race of the 2025 IRONMAN Pro Series, with Melbourne’s Grace Thek third.

But it was almost a win that didn’t happen for Van Coevorden after she started the day feeling unwell.

‘My body just knew what to do’

She explained: “I was messaging my coach, my mum, my boyfriend, saying should I start, should I not start, and they all said back yourself, you’ve had a really good block of training.

“I think all those years of racing, 13, 14 years of doing triathlon now really paid off today because my body just knew what to do when I needed it most.”

Van Coevorden had mainly focussed on short course but she’s gone close before at 70.3, with runner-up spots in Bahrain and Melbourne in 2022 and 2023 respectively.

Nailing the nutrition

Talking through how the race panned out, she added: “Everything played out how I wanted it to today and it couldn’t have gone any more perfectly to be honest.

“We had a pretty fast swim and had a bit of a gap, I had a plan to ride pretty hard for the first 10k so I could gap the field a little bit, we then had four girls on the bike working pretty well together and then I paced the run to perfection today, I really loved the undulation on the run course, it really kept me focused, I couldn’t ask for anything more.

“Hannah was probably sitting 10 to 20 seconds ahead for that first eight to nine k and then it finally just came down in a k that gap, I just told myself to keep running, you don’t need to do anything special and it paid off in the end and I ran the best race I could.

“At IRONMAN 70.3 Melbourne in 2022 I lost it with a k to go and I really made a focus on my nutrition today, that’s been a big switch from short course racing and I think I really played it the best I could.

“I’m pretty ecstatic to be honest, you’re not going to hold up the banner too many times in your career and holding up an IRONMAN 70.3 one so early in my switch is really special.”