History was made in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, on October 14, 2023, at the first-ever women’s-only VinFast IRONMAN World Championship. (The men’s field raced on France’s Côte d’Azur on September 10, 2023.)
Great Britain’s Lucy Charles-Barclay earned the crown of IRONMAN World Champion. She finally broke through the tape first leading the race from start to finish after four previous second place finishes at the IRONMAN World Championship.
The female professional field featured defending and past IRONMAN World Champions, as well as a host of IRONMAN winners creating for one of the deepest and most talented fields in race history.
History was made on the course across both the women’s professional and age-group race:
- All 2,097 starters who went into the water, finished the swim within the cut off. Additionally, the race saw the highest single day finisher rate of any IRONMAN World Championship in race history with 2,039 completing the event (97.23% finisher rate).
- Lucy Charles-Barclay (GBR) set a new women’s course best IRONMAN World Championship time with 8:24:31 and was the first woman to lead from cannon to tape since the first women, Lyn Lemaire raced in the second-ever IRONMAN World Championship in 1979. Charles-Barclay’s achievement was made even more special, given Charles-Barclay has come runner-up in the same event four years prior (2017, 2018, 2019, 2022).
- Charles-Barclay also became the second person to ever to win the IRONMAN World Championship after winning an IRONMAN World Championship age-group title (2015, 18-24 age group champion), joining Lori Bowden who won the 1999 IRONMAN World Championship after winning the IRONMAN World Championship 25-29 age group title in 1994.
- The run course best was broken by Germany’s Anne Haug, who ran 26.2 miles in 2:48:23, breaking the previous best by over two minutes, set by Mirinda Carfrae (AUS) in 2014.
- 16 professional women went under nine hours – the most ever at an IRONMAN World Championship race.
- IRONMAN rookie, Taylor Knibb (USA) secured a fourth-place finish as she completed not only her first ever full-distance IRONMAN triathlon in 8:35:56 but also her first ever marathon.
- USA’s Adrienne Bunn (12:41:18), Lisa Cloutier (12:22:24), Marlyne Stutzman (12:41:18) became the first known female athletes with autism to complete the IRONMAN World Championship.
- Adrienne Bunn (USA) was also the youngest finisher in the 2023 women’s IRONMAN World Championship, with Diane Tracy as the oldest finisher in a time of 16:52:54, at 71 years old.
- Ultra trail runner, Lucy Bartholomew (AUS) became just the second woman ever to complete the UTMB World Series Finals in Mont-Blanc, where she finished 10th overall, and the VinFast IRONMAN World Championship in the same year. That’s nearly 400km just six weeks apart. Bartholomew finished the IRONMAN World Championship in 10:43:41 with a 3:30 marathon.
