A Year in Triathlon: The Breakout Performances of 2025

Norways Solveig Løvseth won the 2025 IRONMAN world crown in her first attempt at the race. Photo: Kevin Mackinnon

The 2025 triathlon season is coming to a close, bringing an end to an incredible year of racing for a few new stars. From short-course competition up to IRONMAN events, several athletes made names for themselves this season after posting big wins and impressive results. This is by no means a list of the only athletes who had breakout performances in 2025, but here are the top six who could carry the momentum and form they built this season into next year and beyond.

Stornes Takes on the World

Coming into 2025, Norway’s Casper Stornes had a few 70.3 wins to his name, but nothing career-defining. He had attempted one IRONMAN, back in 2021, but he registered a DNF. The biggest result of his career was his win at the World Triathlon Series (now World Triathlon Championship Series, or WTCS) event in Bermuda way back in 2018. Stornes was perpetually in the shadow of his friends and training partners, fellow Norwegians Kristian Blummenfelt and Gustav Iden. That changed this season.

The top result the year for Stornes was of course his win at the IRONMAN World Championship in Nice. He executed that race perfectly, hanging with Blummenfelt, Iden and the other top men throughout the ride and much of the run before flying away on his own to take home his first world title. He ran an amazing 2:29:25 marathon on his way to the victory, solidifying himself as a contender in middle-distance and long-course racing.

Stornes wins the 2025 IRONMAN World Championship in Nice, France. Photo: Kevin Mackinnon

Nice wasn’t the only great result of his season, though. After a pair of subpar showings at WTCS Abu Dhabi (where he finished 36th) and 70.3 Oceanside (24th place) to start the year, he turned things around with a fifth-place finish at IRONMAN Texas. A month later, he grabbed second behind Blummenfelt at 70.3 Pays d’Aix, and six weeks after that he was third at IRONMAN Frankfurt.

This could have been enough to consider the year a success for Stornes, but as already mentioned, he went on to win in Nice, then he wrapped up 2025 with a podium finish at the 70.3 World Championship in Marbella, Spain, and second place in the IRONMAN Pro Series standings.

Before 2025, Stornes may have been the other Norwegian, but now he is well and truly part of the big three of triathlon, and he will be considered a threat at every race he enters.

Hauser’s Amazing Season

Australia’s Matt Hauser has been a contender on the WTCS circuit in recent years. He entered 2025 with WTCS wins and podiums on his resume, a Commonwealth Games medal and a top-10 result from the Olympics, but this season was different. This was the year when he went from a contender to the contender.

Before 2025, his best result in the WTCS year-end rankings was sixth. Last year, he finished eighth in the standings. This season, though, he was almost unbeatable. He raced seven WTCS events, won five of them, missed the podium only once and walked away with the 2025 world title. Hauser is the man to beat going into the 2026 WTCS season, and it shouldn’t be a surprise if he picks up right where he left off.

Hauser wins WTCS Hamburg. Photo: Kevin Mackinnon

Tertsch Steals the World Title

Like Hauser, Germany’s Lisa Tertsch has been around in years past. In 2024, she finished just off the WTCS podium, grabbing fourth in the series rankings. She had won and finished on the podium in some WTCS races and taken a few world cup victories, but she had yet to have a serious breakthrough.

Tertsch got the year off to a great start with a win at WTCS Abu Dhabi, and she followed that up with third at the WTCS event in Yokohama. After a couple of disappointing results in the middle of the season, she finished third and second at the WTCS races in Karlovy Vary and Weihai, putting her within reach of the year-end podium as she prepared for the Grand Final in Wollongong.

The podium wasn’t a sure thing for Tertsch going into the last WTCS race of the year, so her taking the overall series win wasn’t on many people’s radars. She not only needed to have the perfect day in Wollongong, but also for the top three women (Cassandre Beaugrand, Beth Potter and Jeanne Lehair) to falter tremendously. That didn’t look all too likely, but it is exactly what happened.

Tertsch had the season of her life in 2025. Photo: World Triathlon

Tertsch won the race and the three women ahead of her had terrible days. The result catapulted the German to the world title, giving her the breakthrough she had shown she was capable of in recent years, but had yet to achieve.

Perterer Goes Long

After the Olympics in 2024, Austria’s Lisa Perterer dove headfirst into middle- and long-distance racing. After making her long-course debut in Cozumel (where she finished second) last November, she raced four more IRONMAN events in 2025. She finished third at IRONMAN Texas, second in Lake Placid, fifth in Kona and won in her return to Cozumel just last month.

Perterer was fine at short-course racing. She wasn’t the best, she wasn’t the worst. After competing for the podium at T100 and 70.3 races, she has shown that she is good at middle-distance events. When it comes to IRONMAN racing, however, Perterer could be great. She had a stellar season in 2025 and put the rest of the pro tour on notice, and it will not be the least bit surprising if, and when, she continues to tear up the IRONMAN circuit in 2026.

Perterer finished fourth in her Kona debut. Photo: Kevin Mackinnon

Løvseth’s Dream Season

We started the list with a Norwegian IRONMAN world champion and we will finish the list with one. Like her compatriot Stornes, Solveig Løvseth had a remarkable season that amounted to much more than just an IRONMAN world crown.

Before 2025, Løvseth had focused mainly on short-course racing. Similarly to Perterer, she was not exceptional on the WTCS circuit, but she was solid enough to qualify for the Paris Olympics. After the Summer Games, the Norwegian turned her focus to longer events.

She kicked the 2025 season off with a win at 70.3 Jesolo in Italy, but this result didn’t turn too many heads. It wasn’t until IRONMAN Hamburg when the greater triathlon community learned Løvseth’s name. She finished third in that race, which was her first IRONMAN, running a 2:46:40 and finishing in 8:12:28 to place third behind Laura Philipp and Kat Matthews.

Løvseth had an incredible season, winning the IRONMAN World Championship in her first try. Photo: Kevin Mackinnon

Løvseth wasn’t done there, as she went on to win IRONMAN Lake Placid a month and a half later. She then finished third at 70.3 Zelle am See before arriving on Hawaii’s Big Island for her debut at the IRONMAN World Championship.

Despite being in Kona for the first time, Løvseth raced like a seasoned veteran, riding solo for much of the bike and keeping within striking distance of race leaders Lucy Charles-Barclay and Taylor Knibb. On the run course, it looked like Charles-Barclay and Knibb had first and second locked up, but a third-place finish for the young Norwegian would have been an amazing debut.

All of a sudden, however, Charles-Barclay dropped out of the race, moving Løvseth up to second. With only a couple of miles to go, Knibb collapsed on the side of the road, putting Løvseth in first. She held on for the win, taking home the world title. That would have been great enough, but she tacked on a sixth-place finish at the 70.3 World Championship less than a month later and finished second in the IRONMAN Pro Series standings, capping off an incredible season that has left her as one of the top women to beat heading into 2026.

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