These are the top women to keep your eye on as athletes head to Kona, Hawaii for the triathlon event of the year and the IRONMAN World Championships.
Year after year we talk about this being the best field ever assembled for the IRONMAN World Championships. Year after year the standard rises and it becomes harder to pick the winners, the podium, the top five or even top 10. Kona is also different. It’s a pressure cooker and a race that develops like no other. The best of the best, going for the win, boom or bust. Larger starting numbers, race dynamics, then add in the heat, humidity, the wind. Madame Pele certainly throws everything at the athlete, and treat her with utmost respect, you must. It all combines to make this event a mouth watering and explosive spectacle.
This year, 2019, is no different with stacked fields in both the men and women’s races. So many athletes deserve to make this top 10 list, but we’ve picked five women (not specifically in winning order), that are ones to watch, out of so many more athletes that are just as good and likely to be in the mix come race day. Actually, we picked a few more than five women, as it’s just so hard!
Daniela RyfDaniela Ryf has been the best female in the world for several years, setting the standard and raising the bar. The ‘Angry Bird’ is going for her fifth consecutive Ironman World Championship title, and her third consecutive year of going for the double, having won the Ironman 70.3 World Championships in Nice in September. Last year in Kona, she rode one of the fastest splits (including the men) from Hawi back to T2. This year she’s shown she’s as strong if not stronger, beating all the men up the Alpe d’Huez climb. She’s the one to beat with the target on her back. She will be an incredibly toughcompetitor, but she is beatable. The top women have to know and believe that. If there’s a chink in her armour, they’ll be lining up to pounce.
Lucy Charles-BarclayLucy Charles-Barclay is one of these athletes waiting for the chance to take the scalp of Ryf. She’s been second to Ryf at the Ironman World Championships in 2017 and 2018. It’s a case of how much time can she put into the rest of the field in the swim? After the World 70.3 Championships in Nice, where she only had just over a minute on the chasers, be prepared to see LCB take it up another level and take it out hard. She’ll want to put as much of a gap as possible between her and the rest of the field. In Nice it was a large chase pack that was able to catch her early on the bike, which then puts LCB in unfamiliar territory as she’s so used to racing solo at the front. But if she gets away, her bike and now run are ever improving and will be up for giving Ryf a run for her money. She’s also still so young, at only 26 years of age.
Anne HaugAnne Haug finished third on debut in 2018 in Kona and was also third at the Ironman 70.3 Championships in 2018 in South Africa (behind Ryf and Charles-Barclay).The German pocket rocket is one of the fastest runners in the sport, but has struggled with injury for most of 2019. She only raced at Ironman Copenhagen a few months ago to validate her Kona slot. There she took the win in impressive style with a time (8h 31m 21s) that put her behind only Chrissie Wellington, Daniela Ryf and Mel Hauschildt as athletes who have gone faster over the full distance. This was off only a few weeks of run training as well. She decided not to race at the Ironman 70.3 World Championships this year in order to focus on getting her fitness and run training back up ready to challenge in Kona. Copenhagen was Haug’s third full distance and she’s been improving in the swim and bike in each race. If she continues in that vein, it’ll put her in the mix coming off the bike, with a 2h 55m 20s marathon in Hawaii in 2018, she’ll be one of the women very capable of reeling a few athletes in and potentially hitting that top spot.
