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Daniela Ryf announces early retirement

10-time Ironman world champ forced to retire earlier than planned due to injury

Photo by: Kevin Mackinnon

We knew that this would be her last year of racing, but sadly Daniela Ryf has had to call it a career. After dealing with a back injury for most of the year, her doctor’s have finally isolated the issue, but she’s not going to be able to recover in time to compete any more this year.

“The diagnosis is an inflammation at the end of the spinal cord (conus medullaris),” Ryf wrote on her Instagram account earlier today. “I’ve been treating it with the hope of being able to race again towards the end of the year. We’ve tried everything to recover, but the treatment hasn’t been as effective as we had hoped. It’s time to respect the signs my body has been giving me. I have regained solid fitness, but the injury prevents me from training the volume and intensity I need to, to get back to the top level.”

At her peak Ryf was pretty much unstoppable in terms of long-distance racing. After finishing second in her debut Kona appearance in 2014 (that year Mirinda Carfrae overcame a 14-minute deficit on the run to take the women’s title), she won in Kona in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018. She won her first 70.3 world title in 2014, then again in 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2019.

Count them … one, two, three, four, five Ironman World Championships for Daniela Ryf after she wins the Ironman World Championship St. George in 2022.

The stats when Ryf was at her best were incredible. In 2014 she “lost” just one race – that runner-up finish to Carfrae in her Kona debut. In 2015 she won every race she entered. In 2016 she pulled out of the Ironman European Championship in Frankfurt because of the freezing temperatures, then won in Roth a week later. That year she had an uncharacteristically “bad” day when she took fourth at the Ironman 70.3 World Championship. In 2017 she took third in an early season race where she was dealing with some injury issues, and third again at an end-of-season event in Bahrain. 2018 was another unbeaten year. And in 2019 there was just one blemish to an otherwise perfect season – another uncharacteristic “bad” day where she finished 13th in Kona.

Things weren’t quite as consistent after the pandemic – but Ryf still posted results that would be the envy of the rest of the world. While she won all but two of her races in 2021, she struggled at the Collins Cup and at the 70.3 worlds. She dominated the Ironman World Championship in St. George, Utah in 2022, seemingly signalling that she was ready to assert her long-distance dominance once again, but struggled later that year again in Kona, finishing eighth. All great results, but Ryf found herself the victim of that previous success – she had been so dominant that her not winning became a big story.

Daniela Ryf opens up about her sexuality, announces she’s no longer working with long-time coach Brett Sutton

In early 2021 Ryf announced that she was no longer working with long-time coach Brett Sutton (see story above), but would return to the controversial Australian coach last year. While she didn’t get that elusive Kona win, Ryf’s performance at Challenge Roth certainly solidified her status at the top of the sport – she shattered the world-best time set in Roth by Chrissie Wellington, finishing the race in 8:08:21.

This year has been a struggle due to the back injury – Ryf finished eighth at Ironman South Africa and fifth at T100 Miami.

Triathlon fans had hoped to see Ryf make one last run at another Ironman championship title – her excellent bike handling skills and strength seemingly would have made her a favourite for the race in Nice. She ends her career, though, as one of the most decorated Ironman athletes of all time.

 

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