We Noticed: Jan Frodeno Runs UTMB Nice, IRONMAN Heads to Vietnam, UCI Caps Track Bike Pricing and Big Results in Chattanooga and Augusta
Jason West on the bike at the IRONMAN World Championship Nice. Photo: Kevin Mackinnon
Triathlon stories have emerged from across the globe over the past few days. In France, triathlon legend Jan Frodeno conquered his first UTMB ultra race in Nice. In Asia, it was announced that the coastal city of Da Nang, Vietnam, will host the country’s first-ever full-distance IRONMAN event. Finally, in the U.S. on Sunday, top pros made stops in Georgia for 70.3 Augusta and Tennessee for IRONMAN Chattanooga.
Frodeno’s Big Race
Jan Frodeno on interview duty at the IRONMAN World Championship in Nice. Photo: Kevin Mackinnon
Frodeno walked away from professional triathlon in 2023, but like many retirees, he seems to be even busier now than he was when he was doing his day job of training and racing around the world. The three-time IRONMAN world champ lives in Andorra with his wife (fellow Olympic gold medallist, Emma Snowsill) and kids, but he is often on the road, making appearances at races, working events and following the T100 World Tour for color-commentator duties.
Now, Frodeno has a new side-quest in ultrarunning. He completed a pair of trail races in Andorra earlier this year, but they were much shorter events, allowing him to dip his toe into off-road racing. He then set his sights on the UTMB Mont-Blanc OCC race — a 38-mile event that doubles as the UTMB World Series 50K category final every year.
UTMB has a unique qualifying process, however, as athletes collect “Running Stones” from previous World Series events. Athletes can earn these stones at more than 50 UTMB events worldwide, after which they can use the stones to enter the UTMB Mont-Blanc lottery.
After announcing that he had planned to race the OCC, Frodeno took to Instagram to explain that he was “bit naive about the whole qualifying process,” adding that he planned to “honor the race” and earn a spot the traditional way for 2026. And so, he found himself in Nice, just two weeks after he had been in town for the IRONMAN World Championship.
Frodeno entered the 50K option in Nice, which is actually 55 kilometres (or 34 miles) and features more than 7,000 feet of climbing from start to finish. Unsurprisingly, he did quite well, finishing 16th overall and first in the men’s 40 to 44 age group. He crossed the line in a final time of 5:27:02, averaging just over nine and a half minutes per mile.
“Well, it was a long time on my feet,” he wrote on Instagram after the race, continuing on to say that he plans to be back for more off-road action in the future.
IRONMAN Stops in Vietnam
IRONMAN has announced that Vietnam will play host to a full-distance race starting next year in Da Nang on May 10, the same day as the pre-existing 70.3. After a decade of tremendous success with 70.3 Da Nang, it only made sense to give Vietnam a shot at a full-distance IRONMAN.
“Da Nang has been an incredible host venue for IRONMAN 70.3 triathlon racing since 2015,” Jeff Edwards, The IRONMAN Group’s managing director of Asia, said in a press release announcing the news. “We look forward to working closely with our partners in Vietnam to bring athletes and their supporters to this incredible destination.”
Located halfway up the Vietnamese coastline on the South China Sea, Da Nang is a tourist hotspot, with sandy beaches in one direction and lush forests to explore in the other. Just as so many athletes have done in years past at the 70.3, anyone travelling to Vietnam for the full IRONMAN will want to budget some extra time to see the sights in and around Da Nang.
“When we brought IRONMAN 70.3 to Vietnam in 2015, the vision was always bigger,” said Bang Trinh, the co-founder of Sunrise Events Vietnam. “I believed then — and still do — that Vietnam has everything it takes to host a full-distance IRONMAN triathlon and become a true hub for world-class racing.”
Registration is now open for both the 70.3 and full-distance races in Da Nang.
UCI Slaps Price Caps on Olympic Track Bikes for LA 2028
Starting January 1, 2027, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) will be putting hard price caps on Olympic track bikes and equipment leading into the LA Games. This stems from Paris 2024, where the world saw the most advanced bikes we have ever seen on the track that weren’t just fast — they were priced like Lamborghinis. The Japanese V-IZU TCM2 was listed at $136,000, the TC-M1 at $121,000, and Team GB’s UKSI-BC1 frameset was a cool $69,000… and that’s just the bare frameset, not even a full bike. Then you had Pinarello charging $24,000 for custom 3D-printed extensions, and Black Inc. rolling out disc wheels at $20,000.
For perspective, the most expensive track bike at the Tokyo 2020 Games was the Worx Vorteq at about $30,000. Four years later? That wouldn’t even buy you a set of bars and a front wheel.
The official line from the UCI is about “integrity of competition,” and making sure every nation has a fair shot at the same gear. Caps will cover framesets, forks, wheels, bars/extensions, helmets and skinsuits. Basically, all the stuff that’s gotten silly. And, as always, whatever shows up in LA has to be registered and raced beforehand, so teams can’t drop a secret spaceship on the start line.
The truth is, most of this kit isn’t even intended to be bought. Those $100k+ price tags are more of a “don’t call us” sign than an actual MSRP. It’s been an arms race between the big programs, and smaller federations don’t even get to play. By setting caps, the UCI is trying to drag Olympic track cycling back into a space where equipment is both fast and, at least on paper, attainable.
What’s “reasonable” pricing going to mean? Nobody knows yet. $20k? $30k? Less? Teams are going to need answers fast, because bike projects for 2028 are already underway, and nobody wants to get caught re-engineering a bike with two years to go. But one thing’s clear: the days of six-figure Olympic track bikes are numbered.- Eric Wynn
West and Findlay Take Augusta
Jason West got his second 70.3 win in as many months, stopping the clock in 3:35:05 to win IRONMAN 70.3 Augusta. The American found himself in full chase mode after countryman Ben Kanute led the way out of the water, with West part of the chase group about 35 seconds back. Kanute was still in front through 32 miles of the ride, but eventually was caught by a group that included Canadian Jackson Laundry, Aussie Sam Appleton and Americans Kevin McDowell, West and Miguel Mattox. Also in that group was Louis Woodgate (GRE), who would power clear of the group and hit T2 with a lead of 1:12.
Once he was on the run, though, West was in a class of his own and had caught Woodgate within a couple of miles. By the halfway point of the run he was over a minute ahead and would post a blazing 1:09:43 run split to easily hold off countryman Ari Klau (3:37:19) and McDowell (3:38:26).
For the women, Canada’s Paula Findlay looks to be in incredible form as she moves toward the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship in Marbella, Spain, in just over a month. She took her fourth 70.3 win of 2025 on Sunday in Georgia, winning 70.3 Augusta in a final time of 4:04:43.
Findlay had a bit of a deficit to make up after the swim, climbing out of the water in 21:02 and finding herself more than a minute back of the lead. The fastest bike split of the day (a 2:15:43 ride) helped her to eliminate that gap fairly quickly, and she followed that up with a 1:22:32 half-marathon to take the win.
She has had great results at the 70.3 World Championship in the past three years, finishing second in 2022, fifth in 2023 and sixth in 2024. With 70.3 wins in Oceanside, St. George, Boise and now Augusta (as well as a second-place finish at a very competitive T100 French Riviera last month), everything seems to be clicking well for Findlay, and she will be a serious threat for the podium in Marbella.
No Sam Long in Chattanooga
Sam Long was on the start list for IRONMAN Chattanooga (a race he won in 2019 and 2024), but after just racing at the world championship in Nice two weeks ago, he ultimately decided against racing.
“With my bags fully packed and 30 minutes left till I needed to get to the airport I realized this race wasn’t meant to be,” Long wrote on Instagram. “I finally started listening to my body! I have gone since 2014 without an injury and my body is telling me that doing another full IRONMAN carried some risk of putting me over the edge.”
Long may have been out of the field, but there was still a ton of fire power in the men’s race in Chattanooga. Sweden’s Rasmus Svenningsson charged to his first win of 2025 with the second-fastest bike ride of the day (behind eventual second-place finisher Cam Wurf’s 3:59:05 split) and the third-best marathon in the men’s race. (Svenningsson’s 2:49:57 was faster than most of the other men ran, but France’s Arnaud Guilloux blew everyone out of the water with a 2:43:16 run.)
Svenningsson took home the win in 7:34:27, edging out Wurf by a little over a minute. American Trevor Foley was less than a minute back of Wurf.
In the women’s race, Austria’s Anna Pabinger recorded the biggest win of her career to date. She stopped the clock in 8:38:55 (a time that included a 2:59:18 marathon — the fastest run of the day), smashing the rest of the field by more than 15 minutes.
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