Despite the event being held frequently on American soil, no American had won the women’s Ironman World Championship since 2022.
In Kona, Hawaii on Saturday, that streak was broken, as Taylor Knibb overcame faltering defending champion Solveig Lovseth on the final mile to pull off the rare double of winning the 140.6-mile championship to go along with her 70.3 title, earned earlier this year.
The 28-year-old Knibb took home her first championship at the longer distance a year after she had been overtaken late in similar fashion by Lovseth. After securing that title, Lovseth was less than a mile from becoming the first back-to-back champion of the event since Daniela Ryf in 2015-18.
Instead, Lovseth, who earlier in the race had to push herself to overtake Knibb and build a nearly 1-minute, 30-second advantage, collapsed to the ground after a notable wobbling.
She regained her feet twice in the coming minutes, but a third sitdown allowed several athletes to pass her before she could gather herself enough to get back to her feet and finish the race in a respectable eighth.
Knibb’s steadiness proved to be the difference, as she had succumbed to a similar fate the previous year and was determined not to do so again.
“I can’t fight. If I fight, I’m going to lose,” Knibb said of the stretch following Lovseth’s pass. “There are some awful moments out there, and there are some incredible moments.”
Knibb’s 8:36:29 finish was good enough for a comfortable win and gave her the distinction of becoming just the third woman to win the world title and the Ironman 70.3 in the same year.
Her splits included 52:55 in the 2.4-mile swim, 4:40:07 in the 112-mile bike ride and 2:57:46 in the 26.2-mile run.
Knibb helped make history of another sort by winning the event. Matthew Marquardt, another American, finished third in the men’s event with a time of 7:49:59, giving the U.S. a spot on each podium at Kona in the same year for the first time since 1999. This was the first time since 2019 that both the men’s and women’s competitions were held at Kona on the same day.
–Field Level Media
