Kat Matthews called her dominant victory at IRONMAN New Zealand a “really good benchmark” for what could be a momentous season ahead.
The Brit has won the IRONMAN Pro Series and its $200,000 bonus in each of the last two campaigns and the Taupō event kicked off this year’s schedule with super-strong pro fields.
But the women’s race was largely one-way traffic – or at least it was as soon as Matthews asserted on the run.
‘Positive stress’
A 2:51 marathon saw her cross the line in 8:28:55, more than 10 minutes quicker than the previous course record, with 2021 winner Hannah Berry (NZL) in second and Lotte Wilms (NED) rounding out the podium in third.
“I was nervous this morning, and I think that’s good,” said Matthews afterwards. “It’s positive stress. I just showed that I really wanted to put in the work required to have a good result. So, I’m really quite happy that I was in that mindset.
“I did find it a bit hard when I got dropped maybe a kilometre into the swim and I felt like I was just in no-man’s-land. It’s the hardest thing, I think, being on your own in the swim for about 40 minutes.”
Matthews, Berry and Wilms worked well on the bike and reached T2 together before the Brit soon scooted clear going out of transition and was never threatened from that point onwards.
‘Nice to have that under the belt’
She added: “The energy on the run course is incredible. Even two kilometres in, I’m welling up. Everyone’s so excited and so positive and so enthusiastic, I was thinking, ‘guys, calm down, please, I’ve got three hours to go.’ I felt like I couldn’t give back as much as I wanted to because everyone was screaming.
“You have to find a bit of a flow in your own head space for the majority of it until you can really embrace it all, I was carried along by so many people, I was so grateful.”
And looking ahead to the rest of the season, with a big early-season block including IRONMAN Texas, a race she’s won for the last three years, she added: “It would be so easy to rip the performance apart, but it’s the first week of March and I’ve had, I don’t know, let’s say three months of consistent build, which is decent, but to run a marathon, that’s the longest run I’ve done in months since Kona.
“So, it’s nice to have that under the belt. It’s a really good benchmark, in terms of performance over the series, 5,000 points [in the Pro Series] to start the year is already positive.”
Matthews’ win also continued her remarkable streak of delivering course‑best performances in IRONMAN Pro Series races – having broken three course bests last year.
And there was a classy touch after her win when she was back on the finish line later that evening to present medals to age-group finishers.
