Previewing T100 Spain 2026: Kate Waugh Returns To Racing as Defending Champ

The T100 Triathlon World Tour is back in action this weekend with the third event of the season, this time hitting the streets of Pamplona, Spain, for another all-women pro race. The women’s T100 season kicked off in March in Gold Coast, Australia, where American Taylor Knibb grabbed the first win of the year. With Knibb absent from this weekend’s starting lineup, there will be a new addition to the list of 2026 T100 winners after what is sure to be an action-packed day of racing in Spain on Saturday.

Waugh vs. the Field

Great Britain’s Kate Waugh has to be the favourite heading into this next race. After a 2025 season that saw her win three races and reach another four podiums, she won the T100 world title handily. Waugh missed the first T100 race of the year, but she has not been sitting on the sidelines waiting to start her season. Instead, she opted to go back to her roots in short-course triathlon for a couple of races, competing at the World Triathlon Cup in Chengdu, China, in early May and at the WTCS event in Yokohama, Japan, this past weekend.

She finished third in China in a thrilling sprint finish that saw her cross the line one second behind first and second place. The field in Yokohama was of course more competitive (not to say that Chengdu wasn’t), with the top short-course specialists all in attendance. Despite having much more of a focus on middle-distance racing these days, Waugh still held her own, finishing in 14th place.

While short course may be where Waugh’s roots lie, the T100 is where she has found most of her success as a pro, and it will be exciting to see her back in action this weekend. She finished second at T100 Spain last year, a full two minutes behind winner and fellow Brit Lucy Charles-Barclay. Charles-Barclay is not racing in Pamplona this year, as she will be busy in another part of Spain at IRONMAN Lanzarote.

While Waugh lost by a sizeable margin to Charles-Barclay in Spain last year, she still beat third place by the same two-minute gap that separated her from the win. If not for Charles-Barclay, Waugh would have been unbeatable that day and cruised to the win. Will that be the case on Saturday? Not so fast — there are several women who could spoil Waugh’s T100 season debut.

The Top Chasers

Leading the way as the women who are most likely to steal the win from Waugh are Switzerland’s Julie Derron and Imogen Simmonds, along with Waugh’s compatriot Georgia Taylor-Brown. Derron won two T100 races last year, beating Waugh on both occasions. Her first came at T100 San Francisco, where she used the second-fastest bike and run splits on the day to finish well ahead of second-place Knibb and more than four minutes up from Waugh.

Derron’s other win was in Dubai near the end of the season, when she had the fastest bike and run on the day to once again beat Waugh with relative ease, crossing the line more than three minutes ahead of the eventual series champion. Derron finished the season in second place in the tour rankings, capping off a tremendous year that saw her reach the T100 podium four times.

Derron has raced twice so far this season, winning both times. Her first triathlon of 2026 came in mid-April at the Olympic-distance Yangtze River Delta International Triathlon in China. A week later, she threw down a dominant performance in a limited pro field at Challenge Taiwan to take the win by almost 13 minutes. She hasn’t been challenged too much by rivals just yet this season, but Derron looks to be in great form, meaning it could be a fun battle between her and Waugh on Saturday.

Derron’s fellow Swiss racer Simmonds is a bit of a question mark going into the race in Spain. She has had a great start to the season with a third-place finish at T100 Gold Coast and second last weekend at 70.3 Pays d’Aix in France. She has only raced against Waugh once before, however, at last year’s T100 finale in Qatar, where she finished well back in 17th.

The T100 Grand Final was her only race of the year, as she spent much of 2025 barred from competition due to a doping infraction of which she was ultimately cleared and retroactively found not guilty. She entered the race in Qatar well out of practice, but she has looked to be back to her usual self after the first couple of races of the year. It will be interesting to see how she fares against Waugh, Derron and the other top women as she tries to keep her great start to 2026 rolling.

Finally, there is Taylor-Brown, who seems to be a threat in any race she enters, no matter the distance. In 2025, Taylor-Brown had an amazing last couple of months to the season. In early November, she finished fourth at the 70.3 World Championship in Spain. A week later, she was fourth again, this time at T100 Dubai. A week after that, she won the Laguna Phuket Triathlon, followed by a two-week break before winning 70.3 Bahrain. Once again, she had one week to recover before racing the T100 Grand Final, where she finished second to Waugh.

The three-time Olympic medallist has raced a pair of short-course events so far this year, first at the World Triathlon Cup in Lanzarote (where she finished second) and the WTCS season opener in Uzbekistan (where she was fourth). Taylor-Brown loves to go all-out in any and every race, so she very well could take it out hot from the gun and punish the rest of the field, Waugh included, right to the line.

Other Contenders

The thing about T100 races is that their small pro fields mean they only accept the best of the best. This means that any one athlete is capable of charging to the podium or outright win on any given day. Belgium’s Hanne De Vet is one athlete who looks ready to take the step from mid-top-10 results onto the podium. After finishing second last in her first T100 race of 2025, De Vet had a stellar rest of the season. She finished in the top 10 at three T100 races, including a fifth-place result in Wollongong, Australia. She followed that up with ninth at the 70.3 worlds a month later.

She has raced twice this season, first placing 14th at T100 Gold Coast before bouncing back this past weekend with a top-five finish at 70.3 Pays d’Aix. De Vet has proven that she can duke it out with the best in the world, so it really seems like only a matter of time before she has a big, career-best result.

Dutchwoman Lotte Wilms is definitely better at full-distance racing than T100s or 70.3s (she has recorded multiple IRONMAN podiums in her career, including a third-place finish at IRONMAN New Zealand earlier this year), but she has still shown her competitors that she can hold her own in shorter events. Last year, she finished sixth at T100 Wollongong, and this year she was eighth at T100 Gold Coast just two weeks after her podium result in New Zealand. She may not be able to take out Waugh or Derron for the top spot in Spain, but don’t be surprised if she jumps to a big finish on Saturday.

While Waugh and Taylor-Brown are the two Brits most likely to take the win in Pamplona, this list wouldn’t be complete without mentioning one of their other compatriots, Holly Lawrence. Lawrence had an amazing 2025 season after returning to racing since becoming a mother. She raced seven times across the T100 and IRONMAN circuits, finishing in the top 10 all but once (she registered a DNF at T100 London).

Lawrence’s best results included a sixth-place finish in Kona and seventh at the T100 Grand Final. Anyone who thought she may take a while to get back to her old ways after giving birth to her daughter was immediately proven wrong in 2025, and Lawrence’s amazing showing points to her continuing with that form as she kicks off her 2026 season.

Finally, one last athlete to keep an eye on is France’s Audrey Merle. Merle was relatively unknown to many triathlon fans before 2026. Her biggest result before this season was a win at last year’s Challenge Vieux Bocau in France. She started 2026 in a big way, however, after a surprise third-place finish at a very competitive 70.3 Oceanside.

Merle started 70.3 Pays d’Aix last weekend, but she recorded a DNF. She has never raced a T100, so it will be exciting to see where she ends up on the day in Spain. Could she have another shocking performance like she did in Oceanside? We’ll have to wait to find out.

T100 Spain starts at 12:00 p.m. local time and can be live-streamed on the T100 website.

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