2023 Long-distance triathlete of the year
The choice isn't as obvious as it might seem
Photo by:
Kevin Mackinnon
In a year with separate Ironman World Championships along with three big-money Professional Triathlon Organisation (PTO) events, there were a number of events in which we saw some of the world’s best long-distance athletes compete against each other in 2023. That made for some interesting thoughts on who should be considered the “triathlete of the year” for long-distance racing.
Before we get to our final pick, we’ll run through some of the contenders:
Kristian Blummenfelt
In 2023 he balanced his quest for another Olympic gold medal with competing in the PTO Tour and it’s large prize purses, but despite that seeming impossible challenge Kristian Blummenfelt managed to take his first PTO win along with two other long-distance podium finishes (second in Ibiza and third in Milwaukee). The Norwegian star amassed the most money of any male pro because of all that PTO success, all while putting up some competitive results in draft-legal racing, setting himself up for another big day in Paris.
Anne Haug
In terms of prize money, Haug was tops this year, amassing $335,788 thanks to a big win at the PTO European Open in Ibiza along with a number of runner-up finishes including Challenge Roth, the PTO Asian Open and the Ironman World Championship in Kona. In terms of consistency, no one can touch Haug’s record in 2023 – she won her first three races of the year, then took second in the next three. While you might argue she wasn’t facing incredibly competitive fields at Ironman 70.3 Lanzarote or Challenge Gran Canaria (her first two wins), the rest of her schedule included arguably the most competitive women’s distance races of the year – Ibiza, Roth, the PTO Asian Open and Kona.
Yes, it would have been very easy to argue that Haug should be our triathlete of the year …
Why are we seeing run records being shattered at the Ironman World Championship?
Daniela Ryf
In June Swiss star Daniela Ryf achieved the only thing that had eluded her during her stellar career that includes five Ironman and 70.3 world championships – the world-best full-distance time.
In 2016 Ryf had surprised herself when she finished Challenge Roth less than four minutes behind Chrissie Wellington’s 8:18:13 time set in Roth in 2011. A year later Ryf again took the win in Roth, but was well off the record with her 8:40 finish.
This year Ryf arrived in Roth not even as the prohibitive favourite as she took on a field that included Haug, but also defending Kona champ Chelsea Sodaro (USA) and Laura Philipp (GER), who had won every full-distance race she’d ever competed in except Kona. While it wasn’t a gun to tape victory, it was close enough – Ryf was second out of the water in 50:15 (three seconds behind Fenella Langridge), then blasted through a 4:22:56 bike ride, the day’s fastest, and ended with the third fastest run split of the day (2:51:55) to annihilate Wellington’s record with her 8:08:21 finish.
Ryf’s year stalled after that, though. She got COVID in August, which took the winds out of her sails for the two Ironman world championship events – she was ninth in Lahti at the 70.3 worlds and fifth in Kona.
Sam Laidlow
The first Ironman World Championship to take place in Nice also served up the first French Ironman world champion – a fitting way for Sam Laidlow to follow up on his runner-up finish in Kona the year before. Laidlow’s dominant performance came at the end of an otherwise uninspiring season that featured a couple of wins at smaller Challenge events (Gran Canaria and London), a pair of DNFs at Ironman Lanzarote and the PTO Asian Open and an eighth-place finish at Challenge Roth.
Sam Laidlow nails Nice with huge Ironman World Championship win
Taylor Knibb
Like Blummenfelt, Taylor Knibb will be focussed on a return to the Olympics this year, but still managed some impressive long-distance racing including a successful defence of her 70.3 world title and an impressive win at the PTO US Open in Milwaukee. She then made her Ironman debut in Kona, taking fourth. Her day on the Big Island featured some challenges, including losing her water bottles with much-needed nutrition and a penalty that she basically called on herself as she pointed out to officials that she’d lost the bottles, but that only endeared the popular US star to us even more as we look forward to seeing her step up to the distance even more in the future.
Kona Coverage: Taylor Knibb’s “comedy of errors” makes for an impressive Ironman debut
Magnus Ditlev
A new course record at Challenge Roth (7:24:40), which could easily be argued is a world-best time since Blummenfelt’s 7:21:12 in Cozumel featured a down-current swim, surely puts Denmark’s Magnus Ditlev into the conversation for long-distance triathlete of the year. The Dane also finished on the podium at the PTO European Open and at the world championship in Nice.
Long-distance triathlete of the year
Lucy Charles-Barclay
As good as all the above athletes were in 2023, there was one long-distance triathlete who eclipsed them all thanks, for the most part, to one stellar day of racing in Kona. After four consecutive runner-up finishes on the Big Island, Charles-Barclay put together the race of her life, leading from the gun on her way to a new course record of 8:24:31.
While her season wasn’t nearly as consistent as, say, Haug’s (Charles-Barclay took third in Ibiza, second at 70.3 Kraichgau before losing much of the season to injury and coming back with a fifth at the PTO Asian Open), Charles-Barclay came up big on a day that featured all of the sport’s top long-distance competitors. In winning the most competitive women’s race of 2023 in such a dominant fashion, Charles-Barclay put her stamp on 2023, finally taking that one extra step up the podium that had eluded her for so long.
Kona Coverage: 5 Times “lucky” for Lucy Charles-Barclay at the Ironman World Championship
