Kona special edition: Oct. 12, 2025

This is your from-the-ground special edition, so we don't wait five days to talk about what happened yesterday (!). We'll be back with regular newsletters this week.

- Kelly

After Chelsea Sodaro dropped out vomiting, and after the group lost 14 minutes on the bike to Lucy Charles-Barclay and Taylor Knibb. After Lucy and Taylor went back and forth on the run, shoulder-to-shoulder. After Lucy was forced to stop by her husband, when she was stumbling around in that kind of state that looks like her brain is cooking, that she isn't going to remember later. After Taylor seemed to have it all locked up and was going to win her first Ironman world championship, when she was just a few miles to go, we headed from where we were watching to the finish line.

By the time we were able to navigate through this year's challenging access and security issues (a topic for another day) and finally make our way into the media area, in that time, Taylor had done from sure thing to suddenly wobbling.

On the big screen at the finish, she was walking and trying to cool off. She stumbled around, and then started to run again. The crowd that was gathered to watch her win was screaming, clutching their chests, people literally putting their hands to their face. Thousands of people were rooting for her — not against anyone, simply because she'd been leading and pushing so hard for so long. When her legs gave out and she also collapsed and sat there on the ground and there was no getting back up, the collective groan went out.

In the end, it was Solveig Løvseth — on her own for so much of the day — who ran her own race in thick humid conditions to a stunned world title. 

But I'll tell you, standing there, I was watching Kat Matthews run her down, watching how much time she was gaining so quickly, throwing everything she had at it, and I thought, on this crazy of a day, Kat might just do it. It might really come down to a sprint through the chute.

(Spoiler: It didn't, but 35 seconds is the third closest finish ever, and the other two were: Julie Moss' crawl, and Dave & Mark's battle. So. Put it in the history books.) 

(Photo: Donald Miralle / IRONMAN)

Taylor doesn't remember much of anything really about collapsing or wobbling. She talked about it on the Feisty x Hoka post-race panel we did this morning. She's focusing on staying out of the heat now, on letting her body recover. You have to really give it some time.

Apparently, Lucy doesn't remember anything really after heading into the Energy Lab. 

From the sidelines, or from any kind of non-world champion viewpoint, it's hard to fathom that they could be so messed up and still be running so well in between. I have seen people heat-cook their brains; it's usually not a pretty thing. Most of us would stop well before that. Lucy is not one of those people.

This opinion is no one's opinion but my own, but I think Lucy & Taylor cooked each other. They would probably tell you no, they just overheated, screwed up little cooling and nutrition strategies here and there, and it adds up, and once your core temperature is too high there's really nothing you can do except slow down or you start to fry from the inside.

But I think they pushed each other to that brink.

I'm going to go ahead and say it: The race plays out differently when it's only the pro women, when there are no men or anything else interfering or even just changing who and what you can see up the road. This race played out more like the 'go for broke, you have to risk it all to win it' strategies we've seen in the men's championship races in recent years. Here on the ground, it feels like we've all just been ignoring this fact, ignoring the obvious all week, pretending that the women haven't been saying this exact thing for the last three years, pretending that this isn't the case. But it is. The race will be different with the pro men and age-group men on course.

As someone texted me: I look forward next year to missing all this dramatic action unfold in the final kilometers as we watch the men's podium ceremony.

A few things to know about your new Ironman World Champion

Earlier this week Solveig tried to teach me how to pronounce her name. (You do not say the "g" the way we would pronounce a "g" in American.) She told me I was close with my attempt, even though I really wasn't, but I can definitely confirm they were not saying it right on the broadcast.

I don't think she'll mind much though. She's markedly relaxed. When we talked earlier in the week she had spent the night before searching around her rental condo complex in the dark, with the flashlight on her phone, for a set of spare wheels that had been accidentally delivered to some confused Hawaiian.

She was as shocked as anyone. It's a weird situation. To be out on course thinking "third is pretty good." Then "OK, second is great." And then you barely have time to process that you're in the lead now before you're crossing the line.

But also she wasn't shocked. It might only be her third Ironman, but her first in Hamburg I think we all underplayed the fact that she set a fastest debut with a broken off aerobar. And then in Lake Placid, people said they expected her to go faster and she didn't have real competition — but she broke Sarah True's course record on a course that's been around for a long time, and Sarah True got 4th here in Kona. So, it was no joke.

She did some heat training, but not much. In fact she did her last big block up in Font Romeu (opting for altitude over heat) and only got into Kona two days before I did. 

She didn't mean to make a break on the bike, but took a turn off the front of the group and then looked back to see why no one was coming through and realized she had left them all behind.

I don't know if you were watching her on the run, but she kept pulling bottles out of her suit. It was like the magic bottom-less suit of water bottles.

There are the athletes who are friendly and chill and funny and you root for. She is one of them.

An assortment of other Kona things

• As best I can tell there were 1,673 women on the start list, in the results. And 1,567 finished. Which would make a 93% finish rate on a tough day. (It's a little hard to tell, though, how many of the checked in women didn't actually start.)

• Out of the 54 pro women, 44 finished. Which would be a pretty high DNF rate for female pros. Usually, they finish at high rates. For a whole host of reasons we can get into at some point.

• One of the things all the women said after the race was that they had to stay within themselves, had to run their own race. They also all said that when they realized it was a 14-minute gap from the group up to Lucy and Taylor (or ~8 minutes up to Solveig), they figured the race was done. "Well, I guess they've won." Which is funny to me, because it seems to me like what goes through your head is more like: "Well, I guess either they've won *or* they're gonna blow up." But probably everyone thought the same thing I did: Lucy never blows up.

• Because spectators and supporters aren't allowed into the Energy Lab, Lucy's coach couldn't get down there to pull her off course — which is why her husband had to sneak in by bike and stop her before she hospitalized herself.

• Lucy & Taylor have the same coach. As Taylor joked, "he had the worst day."

• I think we all are sending all of the kudos to Kat Matthews for that run. It was a new run course record in 2:47:23. But more than anything what's impressive is how much she had to keep her foot absolutely on the gas the whole time, never give up, it's never over, even when she was really quite far back. And, then, how fast she ran the last ~5K to just see if maybe she could do it. That kind of unwavering belief in yourself is hard.

• Also a huge kudos to Holly Lawrence in 6th, one year postpartum. She was the one all week I kept saying I thought people were overlooking.

• Though really the answer is people completely overlooked Hannah Berry in 4th and Jocelyn McCauley in 7th. Jocelyn's list of surgeries between the last time I saw her and now is epic.

• The biggest hit of the whole weekend, though: The first ever female finisher in the 80-84 category in Kona and, at 80, the oldest woman to ever finish the Ironman World Championship. When we talked earlier in the week, she called it (and I quote) "a neat challenge."

• Though this brain hemorrhage finisher is also wild.

• We did a post-race podcast recap with a bunch of clips from the podium athletes. 

• And a live panel and episode today with a bunch of age-group and Ironman Foundation athletes, and with Taylor Knibb (who, yes, told us in her own words what happened), Daniela Ryf, and Gwen Jorgensen.

• There have also been a lot of dolphins. Many many dolphins. Some jellyfish.

• The coffee boat has M-dot shaped rafts to float on now, so that you don't have to tread water. Back in my day!

• I didn't know that people didn't know that OnlyFans has been adding athlete content creators in an attempt to legitimatize the platform and expand the non-porn-type content. So it was not actually that weird to me that Steph Clutterbuck signed with OnlyFans, other than that I was like does she have that big a following?

• Here's the official Kona bike count.

• And some fun stats about Solveig.

• There was an all-female officiating crew for the first time. But Ironman didn't really publicize that.

• There were also lactation accommodations and sanitary products in bathrooms, but they didn't really publicize that either.

• They did, however, publicize CEO Scott gifting Anne Reischmann a baby onesie (after she announced she was pregnant but going to finish the race).

• We'll talk a whole whole bunch more later this week about how off the vibes have been all week, but let's just say I'm distinctly not the only one noticing.  

• With Ironman handing out so many fewer spots, it's noticeable in the parking and lines and hustle. The local businesses have all told me they had way (way) less business than usual; odd places and spots were just...empty.

• I will say the Ironman women's merch has distinctly stepped up its game. It is cute. I almost bought some. 

• I will also say that I usually leave these events needing to be basically talked out of signing up for another Ironman. That did not happen, in any way, this time.

• Our joke all week has been that the vibe is: *woman whispers* "Don't yell at me, but I actually kinda liked the women's only race." 

One last thing

Our most popular reel of the week by far.

Triathlonish is written by Kelly O'Mara. Ads by Ella Hnatyshyn

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