Lucy Charles-Barclay Out of IRONMAN 70.3 Worlds
Reigning IRONMAN 70.3 world champion Lucy Charles-Barclay has decided not to race at this year’s event in Nice. The two-time 70.3 world champ and 2023 Kona winner has decided to “put Kona first … as she commits fully to the final stage of her IRONMAN World Championship preparation.”
Here’s what the British star had to say earlier today:
“I’m healthy, and training is going really well. If anything, that’s what has made this decision so hard.
“I’ve gone back and forth on it more times than I can count, but I kept coming back to one question: what gives me the best chance of arriving on the Big Island at my absolute best?
“Anyone who knows me knows I’m a racer. Once the gun goes, there’s no 90 per cent setting. Nice could never be a training day or something I simply slot into the build. It’s a World Championship, I’m the defending champion, and I’d go there to give it everything I have.
“That would mean tapering, travelling, racing flat out and then recovering, all of which would mean missing key workouts with only a few weeks to get back.
“I don’t want to reach a hard moment in Kona and wonder whether I left part of my best performance in Nice. Once I looked at it like that, the risk versus reward became clear.
“Choosing not to defend a world title carries real weight, but Kona is the race I’ve built my whole season around. Sometimes being all in means having the patience not to race.
“I want to arrive on the Big Island knowing I did everything I could to be ready.”
There are just 28 days between the race in Nice and Kona, which lends credence to Charles-Barclay’s concern about turning things around after tapering and racing hard on the challenging Nice course.
Charles-Barclay’s year began with some challenges – she underwent surgery to remove her plantaris tendon in January.
“I remember barely running in January. I was in so much pain from the swelling of the plantaris rubbing on my Achilles tendon, and I texted my sports doctor back in the UK and he was like, ‘We can literally operate in two days,'” Charles-Barclay said in an interview in May, just before she won IRONMAN Lanzarote and validated her Kona slot. “I remember sitting on the green at Club La Santa debating whether I should do this. The decision was made when I thought: if I’m getting to my Kona camp here in August and it’s still annoying me, I’ll just be so annoyed that I didn’t nip it in the bud and get the surgery. So I decided to go ahead, and honestly, it was the best thing I could have done. Being back here running now and kind of pinching myself doing a 30 km long run with no pain — I couldn’t even run 10 km in January without stopping and walking, with other things in my body hurting because I was running awkwardly. It feels like it was a miracle surgery. I guess I don’t want to say that too soon — I haven’t finished the IRONMAN yet — but if I can finish the race here healthy, validate for Kona, then it feels like I’ve put to bed the surgery, I’m over it. And we can move on to hopefully a solid championship season.”
Charles-Barclay followed the race in Lanzarote up with a solid runner-up finish to Alanis Siffert at Challenge Roth, and has now set her sights on another big day in Kona and a chance for redemption after a tough day last year. Charles-Barclay and American Taylor Knibb were in the lead in Kona last October, but Charles-Barclay would be forced to pull out of the race with just under 10 miles of running remaining, while Knibb would collapse dramatically just over a mile away from the finish line, leaving Norway’s Solveig Lovseth to take a close win ahead of Kat Matthews and Laura Philipp.
I wonder if a little “niggle” has flared up and is motivating this decision the most.
Wondering about this data point.. how many have not skipped 70.3 worlds and got kona top 3 podium?
Yeah, it’s either this or the fact that 70.3 World’s is a B race for her and gets in the way of her Kona prep.
Lanza + Roth after that surgery sounded like a lot. My thought was unloading a big volume stretch for 4 days for easy/rest before 70.3 world and another 4 days of easy/rest after offers 9 days of regeneration with a hard session in between and COULD actually be better, but as you point out it is only potentially better if you have no niggles you are dealing with, and if you are this is good cover with your competition that you’re all systems 100% for Kona. It’s like during playoff hockey, if an athlete has an injury and has to sit out a game, they only day, “upper body injury that is day by day” (when it could be a playoff ending separated shoulder). Lucy needs them to think all the way to T2 that they can’t let her go because she will run at full speed, even if there is a risk she is limping thru it.
IT feels to me to be exactly what she is saying. Unless someone knows of these phantom niggles, likely she is looking at Knibb and Solveigh, along with Kat and decided she has to be 100% to beat all those ladies, and not 99%. And she is so good on that island, the heat is fine for her, and having someone to race off the front with gives her a distinct advantage over the uber runners chasing.
Moneywise it is not really a factor, not in the series and if she were to actually win Kona, would dwarf the prize money she is giving up in Nice..I think it a smart move, like she said, if she pitches up, she goes for the win at all costs..
“The heat is fine for her.”
You watched last year’s race, right?
Yes, did you watch the 6 before that???
Listen, there is no human alive that can’t cook themselves in Kona. Even the Queen of Kona PNF had her heat meltdown one year. But if you take a history of races there from certain individuals, you can see if they are heat tolerant or not. Lucy certainly is in the tolerant category, the pointy end of the physiology required to be dominant and successful in those conditions…
Especially after what must have been a great payday going to Roth.
Lucy is one of the few Triathletes whose sporting “celebrity” transcends Triathlon. You just have to look at how many non-triathlon or even non-sports podcasts she in invited to. She is a sponsors dream and ‘aint hurting for money.
As for last year in Kona.I blame serving the penalty on the QueenK as the beginning of the end,regardless of it being in the shade of a tent.
She is without question the most “Professional” person we have in the sport by a long shot.
I agree, serving that penalty put her in a mindset of “gotta catch up, gotta catch up” and she overcooked that last portion of the bike. But due to her superb heat physiology, she began and ran the run quite well for 10 miles. But as we now know with heat, once you take up your temp, almost impossible to get back down during the heat of battle. You can bump up against that wall and race there very well for a long time, just cannot peak over the wall without consequence later on…
Yep,you can manage heat on a blazing hot,humidity road like that quite well,but once you stop and stand still for even 30 seconds your temperature will start to spike. As you say,it is hard to come back from.
Yeah the rest of the race there was airflow to cool her radiator. Once she was in the tent the radiator had no airflow and the core temp would hit the ceiling and then after that overbiking “a bit”. I do hope she had no niggles after major surgery and two Ironmans. Last year she was on fire at the T100’s in the Kona lead up, so perhaps she wants to keep a lid on speedier events and not even risk the repaired leg
Good point. I would have said Jan a few years ago, but with him retiring, it is now her.
Without LCB to lead the swim out, and Lopez also not there now either, maybe it’ll be a USA 1,2,3 out of the water: Kasper, Campbell, Knibb. Possible Evans (nee Coldwell) to swell that FP.
Going to be a lonely old race for Knibb.