June 2025

Course Conditions

As is often the case, IM Brasil offers fast conditions. This year saw some very fast times at the front of the field, but on average the Pros did not race extremely fast. This year’s adjustment was 18:41, maybe sightly slower than the course rating of 21:18, similarly for the run (adjustment of 0:48, run course rating 4:03).

There were still a few notable times. Men’s winner Luciano Taccone improved Tim Don’s bike and overall course records from 2017 (then 4:06 and 7:40, now 4:00 and 7:31). On the women’s side, second-place finisher Fiona Moriarty set a new bike course record with her 4:39 (faster than the 2019 4:43 record set by Sarah Piampiano). 

Of course the most significant result from the 2025 IM Brasil was the 2:26:50 run split by second-place finisher Manoel Messias which is the first sub-2:30 marathon split an Ironman race. Is this a legitimate time? There are a few question marks around this time: It was his first full-distance race, and while he is an established athlete on short-course, so far he never really was that strong a runner on the half distance. For example, he race 70.3 Chattanooga two weeks before IM Brasil and only had the sixth-best run split, running five minutes slower than Jason West who had the best run split and three minutes slower than winner Sam Long. Winner Luciano Taccona also ran well, his 2:37 marathon was about seven minutes quicker than his run split from a year ago. However, there aren’t too many big run PRs and quite a few Strava sessions that indicate that the course was reasonably accurate (e.g. this post from fourth place Andre Lopes), and there is nothing in Manoel’s splits that looks suspicious to me. Unfortunately, Manoel declined his Nice slot so we won’t be able to assess his run strength against the very best athletes in our sport. So even if it feels a bit that Manoel didn’t race his very best on the bike (maybe to save his legs for a quick run) and one maybe would have liked to see the 2:30 barrier get broken in an epic battle for a big title, the run should be accepted based on the available information and I will update my IM Records page accordingly.

Kona Qualifying 

IM Brasil had three Pro slots each for the men (Nice) and women (Kona). These go to 

• Luciano Taccone, Frederico Scarabino and Andre Lopes
  and
• Fiona Moriarty, Rachel Olsen and Bruna Stolf.

Pamella Oliveira and Manoel Messias have declined their slots. You can find all qualifiers in this post.

Male Race Results

Female Race Results