World Champions Set to Headline 70.3 Oceanside as 2026 IRONMAN Pro Series Makes First Visit to U.S.

The IRONMAN Pro Series is already two races deep in 2026, and the third on the calendar is set to go in Oceanside, Calif., on Saturday. IRONMAN 70.3 Oceanside is often frequented by top-ranked pros as they try to kick their seasons off with a fast win in a competitive field, and this year’s race will be no different, with multiple world champions on the start list. The men’s race will be headlined by Norway’s Kristian Blummenfelt, Casper Stornes and Gustav Iden, while their compatriot Solveig Løvseth will take on American Taylor Knibb, Canada’s Paula Findlay and more heavy hitters in the women’s race.

Another Norwegian Sweep?

The three Norwegian men will be big favourites heading into Saturday’s race in California, and there very well could be another all-Norway podium like we saw at last year’s IRONMAN World Championship in Nice, France. Neither Stornes nor Iden have raced yet in 2026, but their training partner already has two finishes under his belt.

Blummenfelt got his season started in Oceania, first with a disappointing sixth-place finish at IRONMAN New Zealand and then a bounce-back performance at Sunday’s 70.3 Geelong in Australia, where he blasted to a 3:30:25 win. This is a fantastic win just considering his splits and overall time, but it was even more impressive thanks to the calibre of athletes he took down on his way to the win, as he came from behind on the run course to beat two-time reigning 70.3 world champ Jelle Geens of Belgium and New Zealand’s Hayden Wilde.

Blummenfelt ran a blazing half-marathon to take the win in Geelong, posting a final split of 1:06:39. He wasn’t quite that fast on the run course at the 2025 edition of Oceanside, but he did cross the line with a race-best 1:07:19 split after a flat tire on the bike course ruined his chances at a top finish. He hasn’t given himself all that much time to recover after Geelong (not to mention he has a long, jet-lag-inducing jorney across the Pacific Ocean from Australia to the U.S. to deal with), but as long as he doesn’t suffer another flat this year, he still has to be considered a threat to lay down yet another fast result on Saturday.

Stornes enters the 2026 season with tremendous momentum after winning the 2025 IRONMAN world title before following that victory up with a third-place finish at the 70.3 World Championship in Marbella, Spain. He raced Oceanside last year, but had a sub-par performance, crossing the line in 4:02:08 for 24th place. While he has reportedly been dealing with a “sore achilles” (as he wrote on Instagram earlier this month), if his legs are 100 percent for Oceanside, he should be able to make up for last year’s disappointing race with a hard and fast effort on the weekend.

Iden’s competitors are likely regarding him as a man to watch on Saturday, but he’s a bit of a question mark on the start list. Like Stornes, he has been dealing with an injury (he rolled an ankle in training and had to pass up on the New Zealand-Australia trip to start the season), and he also ended his 2026 campaign on a surprising low note.

The 2025 season started off great for Iden with a third-place finish in 3:48:06 on the same Oceanside course he’ll hit this weekend. He then missed the top 10 at a pair of races before peaking in time for the IRONMAN World Championship, where he finished second behind Stornes. After what he called a not-so-great couple of months of training post Nice, he finished well down the list in Marbella, crossing the line in 36th.

If he has recovered from his injury and has trained well, there is no reason Iden can’t wow the field and take another podium finish and the overall win, but until the race gets underway, there is no really way to tell what version of him we’ll get.

The Non-Norwegians

The Norwegian boys may be the focus for many in the men’s race on Saturday, but there are plenty of other athletes who could charge to the win in Oceanside. The start list is stacked, and it includes Americans Sam Long and Rudy Von Berg.

Von Berg finished second to Lionel Sanders in Oceanside last year, beating Iden to the line, but that was his best result on the season. Von Berg has certainly proved that he can battle with the best of the best, as demonstrated through multiple podium and top-five finishes at the IRONMAN and 70.3 world championships. He got his season started earlier this month at 70.3 Dallas-Little Elm, but he will be looking for a better result in Oceanside than his seventh-place finish in Texas.

Long has had success in Oceanside before, with a second-place finish there in 2024. He is coming off of a busy 2025 season that saw him win three 70.3s, but Oceanside will be a different beast. In those three wins last year, one race had a cancelled swim and in the other two, Long was three and four minutes behind the leaders as he exited the water. He made up time with some of the fastest bike and run splits in both of those races, but if he wants a chance at beating the likes of Blummenfelt, Iden or Stornes, he can’t be chasing from so far back after T1.

Other Americans who could have a big day in California are Ben Kanute and Jason West. Kanute is coming off of a second-place finish at 70.3 Dallas-Little Elm, and he has multiple top-five finishes at 70.3 Oceanside, including a pair of wins from 2019 and 2021. West has yet to race this season, but he had a great year in 2025, winning a couple of 70.3s, reaching the podium in a couple more and making the top 10 in multiple T100 races.

Outside of Norwegians and Americans racing on Saturday are Germany’s Jonas Schomburg (fourth at last year’s 70.3 world champs), Denmark’s Kristian Høgenhaug (second at IRONMANs Frankfurt and Lake Placid in 2025) and Canada’s Jackson Laundry (2022 Oceanside champion and second twice more), among others.

A Battle of World Champs

The two women who will have the most eyes on them in Oceanside are Løvseth and Knibb. Løvseth is the reigning IRONMAN world champion and one of the fastest-rising stars in triathlon. Knibb is the three-time 70.3 world champion and among the most dominant of middle-distance athletes the sport has ever seen.

In 2025, Knibb shifted focus from 70.3 and T100 racing to tackle long-course triathlon and try to win in Kona. She was extremely close to doing just that before falling to the ground just two miles from the finish, giving her a front-row seat to watch Løvseth run by to secure her first IRONMAN world title.

Just a few weeks after Kona, Knibb was back in action in Marbella. Many people thought it was too soon for her to be back to racing after such a brutal race on the Big Island, but she proved the doubters wrong with a second-place finish behind world champion Lucy Charles-Barclay.

Despite such a tremendous comeback, after that race, Knibb told Slowtwitch that she had a lot to work on in the off-season. She has only raced once so far in 2026, but she appears to be back to her old dominant ways, as she won T100 Gold Coast in Australia on Saturday.

Up until last season, Knibb appeared to be virtually unbeatable at middle-distance races, and her dominance in 70.3s notched her two Oceanside victories in 2022 and 2024 (as well as many other wins). She will have her work cut out for her on Saturday, but she is without a doubt the favourite heading into race weekend.

Løvseth will be looking to prevent a second straight Knibb win to start the season. While the young Norwegian showed she is at her best in long-course racing (in addition to the world title last year, she won Lake Placid and finished third in her IRONMAN debut in Hamburg), she can still throw down speedy times in 70.3s.

Løvseth won 70.3 Jesolo last season and finished third at 70.3 Zell am See. A month after her win in Kona, she raced in Spain alongside Knibb, finishing sixth. She is going to be a very real threat for the win on Saturday, especially if she can keep Knibb from getting too far ahead on the bike.

Other Women in the Mix

Findlay is the defending Oceanside champion, so she will be gunning for a second straight win on that course. She had a rough end to her 2025 season with DNFs in Marbella and at the T100 finale in Qatar, but not before securing three other 70.3 wins (in addition to her victory in Oceanside) in St. George, Boise and Augusta.

Americans Jackie Hering and Danielle Lewis could also be threats for the podium, as well as Spain’s Marta Sanchez, who will be racing for the first time since Kona, where she recorded a DNF and subsequently learned she had a stress fracture in her femur.

Australia’s Grace Thek is another woman who could push Løvseth and Knibb on Saturday. She is coming off of a great race in Geelong, where she finished second behind Kat Matthews.

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