Women’s Ironman World Championship 2024 Nice – How the Race Unfolded
Here are the Top 10 finishers from the women’s 2024 Ironman World Championship in Nice and a few other notable athletes who played an important role as the race progressed:
| Rank | Name | Nation | Swim | Bike | Run | Time | Diff to exp. | Prize Money |
| 1 | Laura Philipp | GER | 00:53:16 (17) | 05:02:25 (1) | 02:44:59 (1) | 08:45:15 | -28:43 | US$ 125,000 |
| 2 | Kat Matthews | GBR | 00:49:43 (8) | 05:05:46 (2) | 02:53:06 (2) | 08:53:20 | -23:25 | US$ 65,000 |
| 3 | Chelsea Sodaro | USA | 00:49:58 (11) | 05:15:14 (4) | 02:54:25 (3) | 09:04:38 | -12:38 | US$ 45,000 |
| 4 | Marjolaine Pierre | FRA | 00:49:56 (10) | 05:12:27 (3) | 03:02:30 (9) | 09:09:34 | -18:42 | US$ 25,000 |
| 5 | Nikki Bartlett | GBR | 00:55:30 (22) | 05:17:42 (6) | 02:57:24 (5) | 09:15:47 | -36:11 | US$ 20,000 |
| 6 | Marta Sanchez | ESP | 00:49:13 (1) | 05:18:00 (7) | 03:06:27 (15) | 09:19:08 | -27:59 | US$ 18,000 |
| 7 | Penny Slater | AUS | 00:56:46 (25) | 05:18:36 (8) | 03:01:22 (8) | 09:21:47 | -27:24 | US$ 15,000 |
| 8 | Lotte Wilms | NED | 00:49:19 (5) | 05:22:02 (9) | 03:05:39 (13) | 09:23:28 | -13:58 | US$ 13,000 |
| 9 | Jackie Hering | USA | 00:55:23 (18) | 05:26:07 (13) | 02:57:40 (6) | 09:25:09 | -05:49 | US$ 12,000 |
| 10 | Hannah Berry | NZL | 00:49:20 (6) | 05:28:25 (18) | 03:09:25 (18) | 09:32:13 | -04:38 | US$ 11,000 |
| Ruth Astle | GBR | 00:56:23 (23) | 05:16:37 (5) | DNF | ||||
| Els Visser | NED | 00:58:58 (36) | 05:23:15 (10) | DNF | ||||
| Anne Haug | GER | 00:53:07 (14) | DNF | |||||
| Anne Reischmann | GER | 00:57:39 (27) | DNF |
You can find the full results in my Nice Results post.
The following graph shows how the race developed (click for a hi-res version):
Here’s a summary of the race:
- During the swim, a front group of about 10 athletes was established. Fenella Langridge and Marta Sanchez led out into T1.
- At the start of the bike, Marjolaine Pierre rode away from the rest of the field and built a lead of three minutes in the first 25 miles.
- For some time, Kat Matthews was the first chaser, but in the climb to the Col de l’Ecre she was caught by Laura Philipp who erased a four-minute swim deficit. Kat was able to stay within a minute of Laura, and they caught up to Marjolaine at about the halfway mark.
- The three rode together on the plateau before Laura forced the pace in the climb after mile 75, building a lead of about a minute. As before, Kat was able to bridge back up to Laura, and these two reached T2 with a solid lead of seven minutes.
- Laura and Kat ran together in the first of four run-laps, then Laura started to slowly run away from Kat in lap 2. Her lead grew from one minute after two laps to six minutes by lap 3 and eight minutes across the finish line.
- Kat had some issues on the run, but she was able to hold on to second place. Third place went to Chelsea Sodaro who had the third-best marathon. Marjolaine lost more time on the run but was able to hold on to fourth place.
(All photos supplied by Ironman.)
Let’s have a closer look at each of the top finishers.
Ironman World Champion: Laura Philipp
After a third place in Kona 2023, Laura Philipp proved that she was clearly the strongest female in Nice:
As is typical for her, Laura Philipp lost time to the leaders in the swim. In Nice 2024, she was 4:03 behind Fenella Langridge and Marta Sanchez, who were first out of the water. Last year in Kona, she was seven minutes behind Lucy Charles but as Lucy didn’t race this year, we can’t use her to assess Laura’s swim. When you look at some of the athletes in the front group, Laura was quite a bit closer to strong swimmers such as Lotte Wilms (3:57 in Nice, was 5:36 in Kona) or Rebecca Clarke (4:00 in Nice, was 5:38 in Kona). In addition, Laura came out of the water just a few seconds behind Anne Haug – in Kona 2023 there were 2:39 mins between them, and 2:37 in Roth 2024. On the other hand, a few of her main competitors were able to swim in the front group: Kat Matthews (3:33 in Nice, was 2:43 in Kona) and Chelsea Sodaro (3:18 in Nice, was 2:49 in Kona) started the bike with a slightly bigger lead over her than in Kona. Possibly, the pace in the Nice wasn’t quite as “on” as in Kona, an observation also supported by the bigger size of the lead group. (For most of the swim, eleven athletes were close together; at the swim exit there were still seven athletes within 10 seconds, with the other four just 30 to 45 seconds back.)
In the first hills after Nice, Laura gained a few spots but lost another minute: After 25 miles, she was tenth but almost six minutes behind leader Marjolaine Pierre and still three minutes behind second place Kat Matthews. But in the long climb up to the Col de l’Ecre, Laura rode through the chase group that had broken up as everyone was riding their own pace. You could follow Laura’s progress with some great helicopter shots, and towards the end of the climb she was even able to overtake Kat Matthews and moved into second place. Kat couldn’t match her speed directly, and Laura was 30 seconds ahead of Kat at the top of the climb, still 50 seconds behind Marjolaine. In the flatter sections after the climb, she continued to close the gap to Marjolaine, but at the same time she wasn’t able to shake Kat who slowly eased her way back. Shortly after the halfway mark, all three were back together, and they stayed together on the plateau. Laura had some problems with her behind-the-seat bottle cage: Trying to put one of the water bottles into it, it sheared off her seatpost. She couldn’t just throw it away (that would have been intentional littering), and it also wouldn’t fit into her pockets or in her race top. So she had to carry it in her hands for the next ten minutes, until she was finally able to get rid of it in the next aid station. In the ascend to Coursegoules after about 75 miles, Laura again proved to be the best climber: Marjolaine started to lose significant time, but Kat again stayed within a minute behind her and worked her way back to Laura in the flat and downhill sections back towards Nice. There was less than a second between the two when they entered T2. Laura rode a 5:02:25 bike split, almost exactly the time that I had calculated before the race for the women on the Nice bike course – and the time that her coach had planned for her on a good day..
Kat had the slightly faster transition and Laura had to rush, losing her sunglasses but not her nutrition. They ran the first loop of the four-loop run course shoulder to shoulder, Laura maybe a quarter step ahead of Kat. They started very fast: Laura’s first loop was at a 2:41 marathon pace, Kat was only a few seconds slower. In the second loop, Laura slowly pulled away from Kat, at the half-marathon mark she was 1:11 ahead of Kat. Laura’s pace in lap 2 was only 26 seconds slower than in the first lap, she passed the half-way mark in 1:21:10. In lap 3 she only slowed down another 22 seconds, and she was able to increase her lead over Kat significantly – it was just over six minutes at the start of the last run lap. In the TV pictures you could see coach and husband Philipp working almost as hard as Laura, waiting to get splits to Kat and then leapfrogging Laura on the bike to pass the new information to her. Laura couldn’t quite believe that she was winning in Nice and was very glad that Philipp kept her up-to-date almost to the finish line. Even with a big lead, grabbing a German flag and enjoying the finish chute, Laura hardly slowed down, running a 2:44:59 marathon, the fastest by a female in any Ironman World Championships.
Second Place: Kat Matthews
For a long time, Kat Matthews stayed close to the race leader, eventually crossing the finish line in second place:
For most of the swim, Kat was able to stay in the lead group and only lost 31 seconds towards the end. On the bike, she used the flat section before the first climb to ride up to the lead group, but by then Marjolaine had already ridden away. At the end of the initial climb at 17 miles, Kat was in second place but already 2:37 behind. At the start of the climb up to the Col de l’Ecre, Kat rode away from the rest of her group, but then Laura came from behind and even passed her. Kat was able to keep the gap small and to ride slowly back up to Laura in the flatter section. After the short out-and-back, Marjolaine, Laura and Kat rode together for the next miles. In the climb to Coursegoules after mile 75, Laura pulled away again, but once more Kat could close the gap in the downhill and even took the lead by a few seconds.
Coming into T2, Kat and Laura were neck-and-neck, and Kat also stayed with Laura in the first lap of the run. In the second loop, Kat started to struggle and was no longer able to stay with Laura. In lap three, Kat had to take a few walk breaks and even a short stop that looked like stretching out a cramp. Even though Kat slowed down and had to let Laura build a big gap, her own gap to third place stayed the same. In the end, Kat finished with a second-best 2:53 marathon in second place. Even after her cramping problems, she ran through the finish line to embrace winner Laura Philipp.
Third Place: Chelsea Sodaro
Third place went to the Kona 2022 Champion, Chelsea Sodaro:
Chelsea’s day also started well, swimming in the front group. She lost a few more seconds than Kat in the last section into T1, she was 46 seconds behind in T1. On the bike, she lost some more time in the initial climb, falling out of the first bigger group. She rode much better in the climb to the Col de l’Ecre and moved ahead in the field. On the flatter section after the big climb, she stayed on pace, and after 80 miles she also shook off Lotte Wilms and Marta Sanchez. Chelsea reached T2 in a solid fourth place, almost ten minutes behind the leaders and probably without any real chances to win the race, but just three minutes behind Marjolaine, a podium spot within reach.
On the run, Chelsea once again showed she is one of the best runners in long-distance triathlon. She wasn’t quite able to match the pace of the two leaders, but her first lap was only about 40 seconds slower – on pace for a projected 2:44 marathon. She caught Marjolaine after 9k and was clearly the third-fastest runner on the course. As long as she didn’t slow down dramatically, no one seemed to be able to challenge her. But like Kat, she had some problems and had to take a few walk-breaks, maybe to cool down in the Nice heat. But even so, she kept the pace up and was even able to make up a few seconds to Kat in lap 3. At the start of the last lap, things had settled down: Chelsea was still in third, eleven minutes behind Kat in second place but also six minutes ahead of Marjolaine in fourth. In the last run lap, Chelsea slowed down a bit but her third-place finish was never in doubt.
Fourth Place: Marjolaine Pierre
24-year-old Marjolaine Pierre finished in fourth place, the first Top 10 by a French woman in a long time:
Marjolaine was able to swim in the lead group, she exited the water with Chelsea Sodaro 45 seconds behind the lead. Then she had a quick transition and quickly took the lead. At the first timing split (10k into the bike, even before the first hills started), she was already 20 seconds ahead of the swim leaders. Like her boyfriend Clement Mignon and Sam Laidlow in last year’s men’s race, she attacked the initial hills and started to build a big lead. After 25 miles she was almost three minutes ahead of the chase group with Kat Matthews and six more athletes.
When Laura Philipp biked through the chase group, her lead started to come down, but it took Laura until the short out-and-back at the halfway mark before she reached Marjolaine. Kat had been able to follow along, and the three formed a new lead group about four minutes ahead of the rest of the field. They stayed together for most of the plateau until about mile 75, slightly extending their lead to just over five minutes. When Laura pushed the pace in the climb up to Greolieres, Marjolaine had to let the other two ride away, and her gap to Chelsea Sodaro behind her started to shrink. When she reached T2, she was still in third place but seven minutes behind the leaders and only three minutes ahead of Chelsea in fourth.
On the run, Marjolaine wasn’t able to match Chelsea Sodaro’s run speed and fell back to fourth place at the end of the first run lap. But no one behind her seemed to be able to challenge her for fourth place – some were losing time to Marjolaine, others were already too far back to catch her even with a good run. Before Nice, Marjolaine had only one Ironman finish, winning IM Portugal with a 3:00:49 marathon. Would she be able to run a similar time even after going hard on the hilly bike course in Nice? After the first run lap, she was projected to run a 2:58 marathon, and she didn’t slow down much in the next three laps, running a 3:02:30 marathon and finishing in fourth place. It was the first Top 10 finish of a French female in the Ironman World Championships since 1995 when the Mouthon sisters finished second (Isabelle) and eighth (Beatrice). At 24 years of age, Marjolaine was one of the youngest starters – can she continue to improve on the long distance?
Fifth Place: Nikki Bartlett
Nikki Bartlett finished in fifth place – “an absolute dream come true”:
Nikki swam in the third bigger group, reaching T1 6:17 behind the leaders in 22nd place. On the bike, she lost some time to Marjolaine in the early part of the bike but started to gain positions. She rode most of the bike course with Ruth Astle, and they slowly moved through the field as some of the earlier front group lost ground. By T2, Nikki was in eighth place, 18 minutes behind the leaders. She made up more spots with a solid run pace: At the end of the first lap she had moved into sixth place, but had she gone out too fast? She was on a projected 2:51 marathon, while so far her fastest Ironman marathon was a 3:07 from Frankfurt 2022. By lap three, her pace had slowed down a bit, but she was still able to overtake Marta Sanchez and climbed into fifth place. It became clear that her coach and partner, Bex Milnes, had put together the right run program to deal with her injuries: Nikki ran a big new marathon PR of 2:57:24 and finished the Nice Ironman World Championships in fifth place.
Sixth Place: Marta Sanchez
Marta Sanchez was strong throughout the day and finished sixth in her first Ironman World Championships:
After the gun went off, Marta set the pace for most of the swim. Exiting the water, Fenella Langridge was quicker to find her footing on the pebbles of the Nice beach, but Marta was only half a step behind her. Marta also rode well, staying in the first big group in the initial climbs. After the Col de l’Ecre, she rode with Chelsea Soadro, battling with Lotte Wilms for fourth to sixth place. Toward T2, Lotte fell back and Marta had to let Chelsea go, reaching T2 in fifth place. Marta’s first two run laps went well, but she had to slow down a few minutes in the third lap and was caught by Nikki Bartlett. But she rallied in the final lap and was able to secure sixth place.
Seventh Place: Penny Slater
After finishing 24th and 13th in her earlier World Championships, Penny Slater finished seventh in Nice:
Penny had the slowest swim of the Top10 finishers in Nice, losing 7:34 to the leaders. She lost a bit more time in the first 25 miles on the bike, starting the big climb almost twelve minutes behind. But then she matched the pace at the front for the next 50 miles, slowly moving ahead in the field. She reached T2 in ninth place and quickly gained one spot when Ruth Astle had to withdraw. At the end of the first run lap, she closed the gap to Lotte Wilms who was running in seventh place. For the rest of the run, they were in a close battle: By 25k Penny was able to build a lead of 1:36, then Lotte slowly came back and was just 16 seconds behind at 33k. In the final section, Penny was able to move ahead again and claimed seventh place.
Eighth Place: Lotte Wilms
With her eighth place in Nice, Lotte Wilms was the first Dutch lady in the Top 10 since Yvonne Van Vlerken’s fourth place in 2013:
Lotte had an eventful start: Her swim goggles were knocked off 300m into the swim. Putting them back on, she had to let the front group pass, and it took her until about the halfway mark to swim back up to the lead group. She was able to enter T1 just seven seconds behind the leaders. Then she picked up the wrong bag and lost 90 seconds in T1 – of course the front group was gone by then. Riding on her own, she lost some more time in the initial climb but then rode very well in the climb up to the Col de l’Ecre where she moved into fourth place. For 30 miles she was able to stay about 30 seconds ahead of the next athletes, but after 70 miles Chelsea Sodaro and Marta Sanchez caught and overtook her in the twisty descent before Greolieres. Reaching T2, she was still in sixth place but with only a small cushion to possibly faster runners behind her. Lotte was then able to run a new marathon PR and only fell back two spots, crossing the finish line in eighth place.
Ninth Place: Jackie Hering
After a solid performance across all three legs, Jackie Hering finished ninth:
Jackie swam in the third group, losing just over six minutes in the swim – probably a bit more than she was hoping for. No one from her group was able to make significant gains in the first half, and at 50 miles on the bike, she was eleven minutes back in 15th place. In the second half of the bike, string bike riders such as Nikki, Penny or Ruth Astle worked hard to make some time, and Jackie didn’t follow them. At the start of the run, Jackie was 27 minutes behind the leaders in 14th place. Building into her run, Jackie gained a few spots and was ninth after the first half-marathon, but the next athlete was still more than four minutes ahead. Even if Jackie couldn’t gain another place in the second half with her pace slowing down, she still ran a 2:56 marathon, the sixth-fastest of the day.
Tenth Place: Hannah Berry
Even with some bad luck, Hannah Berry was able to improve on her eleventh place from Kona 2023:
Hannah swam in the lead group, then rode well in the first chase group in the initial climbs of the bike course. In the climb to the Col de l’Ecre she lost some time to that group and was riding on her own in ninth place. After about 67 miles, she had a flat and had to stop for about four minutes to fix it. Shortly before mile 80, she needed another, shorter stop to add more air to her tire. She had fallen back a few spots, but more crucially, she was also passed by other strong Top 10 contenders such as Nikki Bartlett or Penny Slater that she would have liked to ride with. By T2, Hannah was in eleventh place, 22 minutes behind the leaders. In the first run lap, she moved into tenth place with the DNF of Ruth Astle, in the second loop she gained one and lost one spot (passing Fenella Langridge, getting passed by Jackie Hering). As everyone else, her pace slowed down in the second half of the marathon, but with a 3:09 marathon, she was able to hold on to tenth place across the finish line, the best finish by a woman from New Zealand since Gina Crawford’s Top 10 finishes in the early 2010s.
Notable DNFs: Anne Haug, Anne Reischmann, Ruth Astle and Els Visser
Four athletes who could have played a big role in the race were not able to finish the race:
Anne Haug‘s day was over just outside of T1: She lost almost four minutes in the swim to the lead group, probably a bit more than she was hoping for. After a quick transition, she hopped on her bike and immediately had to stop again with a cut tire. She tried to fix the flat by putting in a spare inner tube, but that squeezed through the cut and popped. Bike support tried to get to her but it wasn’t exactly clear where she was and they were only allowed to join the bike course after the site of her mechanical. After a long frustrating wait, there was nothing else for her to do than to walk back to her hotel.
For the first few hours, the race went much better for Anne Reischmann. She was 8:26 behind the leaders after the swim but used to a T1 deficit. She quickly started to gain spots on the bike, and by mile 70 she had climbed into the Top 10. But she dropped off the tracker, after a while the news came that she crashed on the descent to Greolieres and unable to continue. In an Instagram post she described what happened: At the aid stations, water was passed out in flimsy plastic bottles, and in a fast descent a bottle slid through the bottle cage behind her seat, falling directly onto her rear wheel. “It blocked my rear wheel for a split of a second, causing me to lose control and slide sideways. I hit the ground at more than 50km/h – so lucky me that nothing more serious happened!” Hopefully Ironman will be able to use regular bike “bidons” for their main events in the future, avoiding dangerous situations such as what happened to Anne in Nice or athletes losing the bottles and getting a littering penalty such as Taylor Knibb last year in Kona.
Another athlete who was able to move into the Top 10 on the bike after a slower swim was Ruth Astle. Ruth swam about a minute quicker than Anne Reischmann, and then the two joined forces after mile 40. By T2, Ruth gained a few more spots and started the run in seventh place. She felt she had overcome her calf issues and felt good for the first 2k, but then her calf tightened up. She tried to walk and stretch, hoping in vain it was just a cramp.
Going into the race, Els Visser was dealing with pain in her lower right leg. She hoped that a few weeks of not running would still allow her a good race in Nice. She was further behind in the swim than she was hoping for, but then was able to improve her position on the bike and in the first lap of the run. However, the pain proved too strong and she had to abandon the race. After the race, the soreness was diagnosed as a fibula stress fracture, requiring a run break of six weeks. Even though she lost some fitness, she was already back to racing by November.
And a DNS: Lucy Charles-Barclay
Defending Champion Lucy Charles-Barclay was firmly on everyone’s list of favorites, and she still attended the press conference and the sign-in three days before the race:
However, less than 24 hours before the race she had to announce with an Instagram post that she wouldn’t be racing in Nice because she had some discomfort in her leg which was determined to be a grade 1c muscle strain. While a minor issue, racing could have turned it into something more serious, and she didn’t want to risk another long injury break as she had to go through after her win in Kona last year. Obviously, the withdrawal of the defending champion and likely leader from the start impacted the dynamics of the actual race in Nice.
