We Noticed: Jelle Geens Eyes Kona, Hayden Wilde Hits the Road and Kristian Blummenfelt Sets VO2 Max Record

The racing season is hardly underway, but there is still plenty to report on from the world of triathlon, with news coming from three of the most dominant men in the sport at this moment. Norway’s Kristian Blummenfelt made headlines recently after setting a new VO2 max record of 101.1, becoming the first person to break into triple digits in this test. Belgian 70.3 world champion Jelle Geens (coincidentally the last man to beat Blummenfelt) announced big goals on Wednesday, stating his plan to jump up in distance and shoot for Kona this year. Last, (but certainly not least), New Zealand’s Hayden Wilde competed at the Kiwi time trial cycling championships on Thursday, placing an impressive fourth in the men’s race.

Blummenfelt Breaks 100

VO2 max is the maximum volume (that’s where you get the V of VO2 max) of oxygen (O2) that one’s body can consume and utilize during intense exercise. A VO2 max test involves running on a treadmill or riding a stationary bike in a lab and increasing the intensity until exhaustion. The measurement includes the millilitres of oxygen consumed per kilogram of body weight per minute. An individual with a high VO2 max will typically thrive at endurance-based sports.

Blummenfelt posted a series of photos and videos on Instagram in a wrap-up from January, and one of them featured a clip of him finishing a VO2 max test on the treadmill, gasping for air while the computer monitor reads 101.1. The previous highest recorded VO2 max was 97.5, which Blummenfelt’s compatriot Oskar Svendsen (a world junior champion cyclist) notched in 2012.

Blummenfelt’s post broke the internet (the endurance world internet, at least), as everyone in triathlon, cycling, running and beyond was raving about his triple-digit result. What made the reveal even better was the fact that Blummenfelt put the 101.1 reading in the middle of the photo dump and didn’t mention it in his caption, bringing a just-another-day-at-the-office vibe to the record-breaking result.

There are skeptics who have raised doubts about Blummenfelt’s 101, including Jeroen Swart, the head of performance for the UAE Team Emirates cycling squad.

“Can someone please go to Norway and teach the physiologists how to calibrate a metabolic cart,” Swart wrote on X. “Seems we get dodgy VO2 data every second year with wildly inaccurate values and sensational stories about incredible endurance athletes. Only ever happens in Norway. Bizarre.”

While there is no way to verify that exact test, it won’t be long before Blummenfelt can silence the doubters, as he is reportedly set to get his 2026 season underway next month at IRONMAN New Zealand. A big result there won’t ratify his 101.1 record, but it will show just how fit and race-ready he is after what he has said was a disappointing 2025 (third at IRONMAN world champs, second at the 70.3 worlds and the IRONMAN Pro Series win — results only someone like Blummenfelt could consider sub-par).

Geens Goes Long

Geens took to Instagram and his YouTube channel to announce his plans to step up in distance to IRONMAN racing this season. For many athletes, it’s a big goal to go from 70.3s to the full IRONMAN, but Geens said he hopes for more: to not only qualify for Kona, but to win the world championship race.

“I know I might need a few attempts […] to really nail it,” he said in his YouTube video. “Kona is the big goal from this year onwards.”

He talked about just how daunting IRONMAN is, even as a two-time 70.3 world champion. He said he has never run a marathon and has only ridden 112 miles once before, and that wasn’t in TT position, so the idea of riding that long in the aero bars and then running 26 miles is “a bit scary.”

Geens said his season will be split into two parts. The first is all about qualifying for the IRONMAN World Championship, while the second (if all goes to plan) has a focus on nailing the 70.3 worlds-Kona double.

He will open his season at 70.3 Geelong, a race that he won last year. IRONMAN Texas is four weeks later, which he said is the perfect “trial run” for later in the season, as the 70.3 worlds will be in Nice, France, four weeks before Kona. This Geelong-Texas pairing will give him the chance to not only see how his body fares after a hard middle-distance race going into an IRONMAN, but he will also have a long travel day between the two races that will be similar to the France to Hawaii trip later in the year.

While Geens acknowledged that IRONMAN Texas will be far from easy, he hopes to qualify for Kona there. (If he misses out on qualifying, that will throw the rest of his season out of whack as he tries to book his ticket to the Big Island elsewhere.)

Geens said he knows it’s an ambitious goal to qualify for and win Kona as an IRONMAN rookie. Add on the hopes of winning a third consecutive 70.3 world title (something no man has ever done) and he has quite the season ahead of him.

Wilde’s Time Trial

Wilde has had one of the craziest stories over the past year. He entered 2025 with big goals that were put on hold after a devastating accident that left him with a punctured lung, multiple broken bones and in need of surgery. It wasn’t just his season that was at risk of ending prematurely — it very well could have been his career as a triathlete.

Against all odds, Wilde not only returned to racing just a few months after the accident, nor did he simply get back to winning — his comeback was one of pure domination. He lost just one middle-distance race all season long, and that was likely only because of the lap-counting fiasco at T100 Dubai (he had been leading on the bike before riding an extra lap). He wrapped up 2025 with an overall win in the T100 series standings, and he entered 2026 with all eyes on him.

Instead of kicking the year off with a triathlon, Wilde decided to take on a new challenge, entering the Elite Road National Championship in Cambridge, New Zealand. He lined up against the country’s top cyclists on Thursday and tackled a 27-mile course, which he covered in 54:30. This worked out to an average pace of 30 miles per hour, earning him a fourth-place finish a little over two minutes back of national champion Finn Fisher-Black. (He was just four seconds off of a podium result.)

“TT done,” Wilde wrote on Instagram after the race. “Happy with where the power is at this part of the season.”

He may have finished off of the podium, but he was likely the only athlete to go for a run after the time trial. As he said in his Instagram post (in which he tagged uber-biker Cam Wurf), “it would be rude not to run off the bike.”

While the TT is done, Wilde still has one more event this weekend, as he will compete in the national championship road race on Saturday.

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