Welcome to your weekly newsletter with the best in women's sports and performance. What you need to know (and what you didn't know you wanted to know). Forward to your favorite female athlete.

$663,000

- The amount of money up for grabs at the first-ever all women's Athlos NYC track event on Thursday. It'll feature just six races (110m hurdles, 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m, and 1500m) with just six big names in each race, along with an opening performance from Megan Thee Stallion.

Three big stories to know this week in women's sports

1. 1,200 women conquer their first Ironman World Championship outside the U.S. 🇫🇷

On a tough (!) course with 8,000ft of elevation and some absolutely wild descents, Laura Philipp won her first Ironman World Championship title in dominating fashion 👑

The women's race moved this year to Nice, France for the first time — with a challenging unknown course. After defending champ Lucy Charles-Barclay withdrew the day before from a muscle strain and food poisoning, the race took its toll on the field (from mechanicals to crashes to injuries to clashes in the water).

But in the end, it was a thrilling back-and-forth battle between two previous podium finishers 🔥 of the kind rarely seen at these ultra-distance races: Britain's Kat Matthews & German's Laura Philipp. They traded leads on the 112-mile bike and then headed out neck-and-neck for the marathon.

Ultimately last year's third place finisher, Philipp, who only started swimming when she was in her 20s, was just too fast for the rest of the women 🏃‍♀️

She crossed the line in 8:45 🥇 — swimming the 2.4 miles in 53 miles, covering the 112 mile tough bike in 5:02, and closing out with a 2:44 marathon. She was followed by Matthews, who rallied after cramps left her walking, and a hard-fought third place from 2022 world champion, American mom Chelsea Sodaro.

For the amateur women behind them: 89.2% finished the challenging race 👏

WATCH: Philipp's victory speech & how the young French phenom Marjolaine Pierre took 4th in just her second Ironman ever

LISTEN: Our Feisty Tri team recapped the race & interviewed most of the podium in their post-race show from Nice

(Photo: Bartlomiej Zborowski/Activ’Images)

2. Grace Brown follows Olympic gold with world championship win 🚴‍♀️

The cycling world championships kicked off in Zurich this weekend with the women's time trial race.

Back in July, Australian Grace Brown was a little bit of a surprise when she won the Olympic time trial gold medal. But, now, at the world championships, she was on everyone's radar. On the rolling 30km course along Lake Zurich she ultimately topped the great Demi Vollering by 16 seconds — and became the first woman to win the Olympic-World Champs double in the same year 🥇🥇

Defending TT world champion, American Chloe Dygert, had to settle for third, nearly a minute behind Brown.

Up next: The road race

After juniors and U23 races, the women's elite road race is next on the schedule this Saturday at 6:45 a.m. ET. And it's got ALL THE BIG NAMES 💥

Who could win?

Current world champion Lotte Kopecky
Tour de France Femmes winner and gravel world champ Kasia Niewiadoma
Current mountain bike world champion Puck Pieterse
Olympic gold medalist Kristen Faulker
2023 Tour de France Femmes winner Demi Vollering
Giro d'Italia winner Elisa Longo Borghini
Mountain bike gold medalist and 2014 road world champ Pauline Ferrand Prevot
3x previous road world champ, the legend Marianne Vos

HOW TO WATCH: All the races will be streamed on FloBikes

**3. Tara Dower takes the overall record on the Appalachian Trail 🥾**

This past weekend, Tara Dower set an overall all-time fastest record for the 2,197-mile Appalachian Trail in 40 days, 18 hours, and 5 minutes. She became the first person to do it in under 41 days and the first woman to take the overall fastest known time (FKT) since 2015. She went from north to south, and ended in Georgia 😮

She also has raised over $28,000 for Girls on the Run during her FKT.

What's an FKT?

FKT stands for Fastest Known Time — and are self-organized records for various trails, segments, and routes. (Kinda like Strava segments but way more official.)

While FKTs have been around forever in ultra-distance hiking and running, they exploded in popularity during the pandemic, because it allowed competitive athletes to create their own challenges and go after records without organized races.

These days, most FKTs are limited to well-known or established routes — like the Appalachian Trail.

WATCH: Tara's Youtube channel, Tara Treks

Tip of the week

On Friday, we celebrated National Concussion Awareness Day. With nearly 30% of adults reporting having a concussion in their lifetime, it's important to know what to do in the aftermath.

There's also a growing body of research that suggests women experience worse symptoms that last longer following a concussion. However, it's not totally clear if those differences are due to biological differences (ie. do women's smaller necks lead to higher whiplash effects) or if the differences are due to disparities in treatment (ie. when female athletes first see a doctor post-concussion in the same amount of time as male athletes many of those outcome discrepancies disappear).

In order to know how you're improving after a concussion, it's important to have a baseline from before the concussion. That's why it's recommended for many athletes to undergo baseline concussion testing so they have that available for future diagnosis. While many non-concussed adults do experience at least one self-reported symptom, baseline testing also includes balance testing and cognitive assessments.

LISTEN: Brain Storm: Concussion Prevention, Susceptibility, and What We've Learned

The highlight reel

🏃‍♀️ After two fourth places at the Olympic Trials earlier this year (!) and a return to sponsored professional running, Jess McClain won her first national title at the USA 10K National Championships.
At the Mammoth Trail Fest (the last event of the Golden Trail Series before the final in Switzerland at the end of October and just one week after the other California race), Kenya’s Joyce Muthoni Njeru and Romania’s Monica Madalina Florea again went 1-2. 🏃‍♀️🏃‍♀️
Ultrarunning world record holder Camille Herron has been accused of editing and deleting sections of competitors' Wikipedia pages.
The New York City Marathon will host the World Marathon Majors age-group world championships.
🚴‍♀️ Elena Roch won the Race Around Austria, a 2,200km cycling race that she covered in 4 days and 2 hours — beating all the male competitors for the first time in the race's history.
At the XTERRA World Championship this upcoming weekend in Italy, two-time defending off-road triathlon world champ Solenne Billouin will try to defend her title.
And the Berlin Marathon (a popular world record race) this weekend will feature a batch of top Ethiopian runners, headlined by Tigist Ketema.
🏀 The WNBA playoffs have started — with the first round as best of three, and the semis and finals best of five games. And it was announced Portland will be getting a new WNBA franchise, starting in 2026.
The newest women's sports bar is looking for a home in San Francisco 🍻

Your Feisty recommendations

What to watch: Maya and the Wave — about Maya Gabeira's attempts to surf the biggest wave in the world

What to cheer on: Athlos NYC, the brand new all-women's track meet in New York on Thursday still has a handful of tickets left OR you can stream it on Youtube and DAZN starting at 7 p.m. ET

What to read: Locker Room Talk: A Woman's Struggle to Get Inside

What made us tear up a little: The post-race hugs