Preview Thread - 70.30 World Championship Nice, France

Women's pro race: Saturday Sept 12, 6:30AM CEST / 12:30AM ET Men's pro race: Sunday Sept 13, 6:30AM CEST / 12:30AM ET Watch: Ironman YouTube Track: Ironman Tracker App

The Course

Swim starts at Plage des Ponchettes. The bike portion includes 1,244 m (4,101 ft) of climbing, then a flat run along the Promenade des Anglais. Nice last hosted in 2019, when Gustav Iden and Daniela Ryf won.

TriRating's seedings expect a winning time around 4:18 for the women and 3:50 for the men, roughly 14 and 11 minutes slower than the 2019 race here.

The elevation change creates some choices for the athletes. Jamie Riddle is racing a 6.8 kg aero road bike rather than a TT bike. Blummenfelt was seen testing a new Giant Trinity a month earlier. It will be interesting to see what the riders use.

What's at stake

3,000 Ironman Pro Series points, and both Pro Series titles are decided across this weekend and Kona.

Kona is October 10 (four weeks out). Normally, there's a 5 week break between these races. We've already seen a few withdrawals for those who wanted to focus on Kona entirely.

Women's Race: Who To Watch

Taylor Knibb is attempting three world championships in two sports inside of a month. This includes a fourth 70.3 title here, the UCI Road Worlds individual time trial in Montreal, and Kona on Oct 10. She won 70.3 Worlds in 2022, 2023 and 2024. This season she's won T100 Gold Coast and 70.3 Oceanside (course record by five minutes), was second at Ironman Texas, and mixed a World Cup win in Edmonton with 11th at WTCS Alghero and 7th at WTCS London.

TriRating had her at 37% on Aug 18, with defending champion Lucy Charles-Barclay second at 29% before Charles-Barclay withdrew to focus on Kona. She's the first defending 70.3 champion to skip Worlds since 2011. Her reasoning: "I don't want to reach a hard moment in Kona and wonder whether I left part of my best performance in Nice."

Also racing:

• Julie Derron (SUI): 24% in the model, third-highest, and the one name the magazine previews mostly skipped. She ended Knibb's winning streak at T100 San Francisco last year.
• Laura Philipp: won the 2024 Ironman World Championship on these roads, known for aggressive descending. Leads the Pro Series and won the final regular-season stop at Zell am See after an illness-disrupted spring. Has said outright that Kona is her goal for the year.
• Solveig Lovseth: reigning Ironman world champion, won Ironman Texas this year, sitting about 37 adjusted points behind Philipp in the series.
• Kat Matthews: 2025 Pro Series champion, currently trailing after Texas.

Not racing: Charles-Barclay (Kona), Georgia Taylor-Brown (4th last year), Grace Thek (Kona), Vittoria Lopes.

Men's Race: Who To Watch

Jelle Geens is going for a third straight title, but it's probably only his second-most-important race of the autumn. He's won the last two 70.3 Worlds, but his whole 2026 has been pointed at a full-distance Kona debut. He raced Ironman Texas in the spring and said in February that Kona was the goal. He also lost his most recent start, to Lasse Nygaard Priester at Zell am See.

TriRating's top three on Aug 18: Wilde 28%, Geens 26%, Blummenfelt 24%. They all seem to have pretty even odds going in.

• Hayden Wilde: The tentative favorite, and was unbeatable until Rico Bogen got to him at T100 San Francisco in June. There have been reports of an extended illness since. We'll see where his form is for this race.
• Lasse Nygaard Priester: Five podiums from five starts this year, with wins at 70.3 Sweden and Zell am See. Priester said before Zell am See that he'd be happy if it came down to a run battle.
• Kristian Blummenfelt: 2022 champion, won Ironman Texas this season. Never count him out.
• Rico Bogen: 2023 champion, back-to-back T100 San Francisco titles.
• Marten Van Riel: 2024 T100 world champion, best-placed in the series of the Zell am See front-runners.
• Casper Stornes: Reigning Ironman world champion, won a shortened Ironman Frankfurt in June.
• Gustav Iden: Won on this course in 2019, and again in 2021.

Not racing: Sam Laidlow (racing Challenge Samarkand instead), Sam Long, Lionel Sanders, Ben Kanute, Harry Palmer.

Open questions

• Who has the most to gain from Charles-Barclay's absence?
• Wilde, Geens, and Blummenfelt are all fairly even odds. Who stands to benefit the most from the additional elevation changes on the bike?
• TT bike or aero road bike. If Riddle has a good day, do you think it may cause some trends to emerge?
• Does the flat run reward whoever climbed most conservatively, or does it hand it to the pure runners regardless?
• Which of these people are actually peaking here, and which are training through it with Oct 10 in mind?

For the rest of us

Has anyone ever ridden a climb similar to this one? Have you tried it on a tri-bike? It's hard to understand what that would do to you, especially given that you have to run a marathon afterwards.