She may be the defending champion but Taylor Knibb says that has little bearing on Saturday’s IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship in Finland.

The American comes into the race boosted by booking her Olympics spot for next year with her fifth place at the recent Paris Test Event.

She could yet make the Games in another discipline too, with the road cycling time trial an aim for the woman who this season signed for Trek-Segafredo, a US based UCI WorldTour team.

‘You really can’t compare’

Last year saw her dominate the 70.3 Worlds with a breathtaking performance as she won by over five minutes, effectively settling it on the bike portion of the race – by the time she dismounted her Trek Speed Concept she was almost seven minutes clear.

There was no Daniela Ryf last year but the five-time 70.3 Worlds winner is back this week, fresh from her astonishing triumph at Challenge Roth – and Knibb acknowledged that could lead to the race evolving very differently.

She said: “I think that each race is different, each course is different, each year is different.

“Last year, this race was in October, this year it’s in August, so you really can’t compare.

“I also know that last year the dynamics when I got off the bike and it was a different position than what will happen this year.”

Learning curve

Knibb’s two middle-distance races this season have yielded two more victories – at 70.3 Boulder and the PTO US Open – but ominously for her rivals, she insists she’s still improving at the distance, albeit at a slightly slower rate than 10 months ago.

She added: “I take each race on its own and you move forward.

“I think that was the fun part of me starting out doing 70.3s, because the first few you can improve rapidly each time because I still had a lot of low-hanging fruit in terms of mistakes that I’ve made and that I still need to remedy.

“So I think now I might be getting into the zone where I’m not improving as rapidly, but I’m still learning.

I still feel like regardless of what happens this weekend, I still have a lot that I want to improve on and work on.

“I think I raced my first 70.3 a little over two years ago [IRONMAN 70.3 Boulder in early August 2021] so I need a little bit more time.”