Norway’s Solveig Løvseth raced at the Paris Olympics last year but this season she has gone all in on longer distance and took her tally of 70.3 victories to three when winning IRONMAN 70.3 Venice-Jesolo at the start of May.
That was an IRONMAN Pro Series event and such was her dominance, there was huge excitement ahead of her full-distance debut in Hamburg.
But she hadn’t given herself an easy first assignment, far from it. She was up against the first two women from the IRONMAN World Championship last year, Germany’s Laura Philipp and Britain’s Kat Matthews. Not to mention the defending champion Jackie Hering of America, plus plenty of others.
But when we spoke to her in the build up, she wasn’t fazed, telling us: “I hope I can find the balance between respecting the distance enough, but also being offensive and not too conservative. And I definitely think it’s extremely cool that I get the chance to do my first Ironman in such a high-quality field!”
And she was good to her word from the outset in Hamburg as she was in the front swim group of four with Philipp, Matthews and Hering – and then pushed the first two all the way on the bike as Hering dropped away.
Even having one of her aero bars come loose didn’t derail Løvseth, she simply got it repaired and bridged back up before maintaining the momentum on the run to cross the line in 8:12:28.
At the start of this season that would have been the fastest female IRONMAN time ever. It still shattered the best for a debutant and the only ‘problem’ for Løvseth was that Philipp and Matthews were breaking records of their own as they set the two quickest times in history in an IRONMAN-branded race of 8:03:13 and 8:05:13 respectively.
Following in big footsteps
It’s hard to thinking of anything comparable on the female side, certainly in recent years. And for the men it’s got to be right up there or supass fellow Norwegians Kristian Blummenfelt (7:27:25 at IRONMAN Cozumel in 2021) or Gustav Iden (7:42:57 at IRONMAN Florida the same year). And that pair both went on to become IRONMAN World Champions.
Speaking afterwards, Løvseth joked: “I didn’t know Ironmans were that eventful! I sort of had a feeling that they would be a bit boring since they’re so long.”
Talking through her race, she explained: “I really tried early on to get onto Kat’s feet and managed to do that and she was great and was pulling basically the whole swim. So I was just really happy that I managed to hang on really.
“On the bike. I was starting with Laura and Kat right away and I was thinking like, this is really cool. And then obviously my aero bars started spinning around and I think I sort of jinxed myself because I’d said beforehand that my biggest challenge with moving to long distance is that I just never feel like I have my bike sorted out properly.
“So, I guess that’s still true – for me it’s like triathlon is swim, bike, run, mechanic! So, I need to improve on that as well. I rode it upside down for like 45k and then I came to the stationary mechanic and he was great and he sorted it out really fast and then had to work a bit hard to get up to Kat and Laura again. I think they rode quite easy for a bit there actually, so that was great for me.”
Dancing in the rain
But then came the toughest moments of the race for her as Matthews drilled it in the closing stages – Løvseth would start the run just over a minute back and that would rise to five minutes as Matthews and Philipp squared up at the head of affairs.
Philipp would come out on top with a female full-distance record marathon of 2:38:27, with Matthews just a couple of minutes behind. But Løvseth regrouped and clocked a hugely impressive 2:46:40 of her own which saw her finish more than 20 minutes ahead of fourth-placed Anne Reischmann.
Løvseth explained: “Kat just really started to send it on the front late on the bike and then I was a bit done.
“I was working really hard and then I thought I just really need to save my legs a bit for the run – and honestly I didn’t really think I would be able to run with them anyway.
“So then, I just eased off a bit and actually on the run I ran quite even the whole way. It was a positive split (marginal at 1:22:34 and 1:24:06) but actually felt surprisingly good.
“And that thunderstorm on the last lap was great because then I was just trying to find something to distract myself with and that was exactly what I needed.”
It was mission accomplished – and then some – for Løvseth and booked her spot in style for a first appearance at the IRONMAN World Championship in Kona later this year when it will be exciting to see what comes next.
