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Kate Waugh (L) and Hayden Wilde (R) won both T100 Qatar and the overall 2025 T100 world championship titles today. (Photo: T100)
We did it! We made it to the end of the season! It’s been a massive year of racing, with more events and a longer season than ever. This means there’s no truly “easy” anymore, as athletes are turning up across the board to make a statement and bring home the big bucks. Case in point: the T100 Triathlon Tour, which started all the way back in April and wrapped up in Qatar today.
With the offseason in sight and a share of the $2.94 million bonus pool on the line, everyone brought their best to the final. In the end, it was Kate Waugh (GBR) and Hayden Wilde (NZL) who came out on top. Here’s how the final triathlon showdown of the year shook out.
This year’s women’s series came down to a three-way battle in the professional women’s field between Kate Waugh (GBR), Lucy Charles-Barclay (GBR), and Julie Derron (SUI). With only nine points separating the trio, the lead-up to the final race in Qatar had plenty of speculation about who would come out on top – but no one really knew for sure.
Waugh, who raced this year on a hotshot contract, ended up being one of the most consistent racers in the series, always finishing on the podium and entering the final with two wins (Singapore and Wollongong). That put her six points ahead of Derron, who had won relatively convincingly in Dubai, and Charles-Barclay, fresh off her second 70.3 World Championship win.
In the end, we saw it was perhaps a race too far for Charles-Barclay, particularly after an emotional couple of months in October and November – first a DNF in Kona, then winning the Ironman 70.3 World title. Though she led out of the swim and put in the work in the front pack of the bike (along with Derron, Waugh, and Brit Jess Learmonth) she faded on the run and eventually finished fifth. Perhaps the heat in Qatar brought back doubts in Charles-Barclay’s head, which would be understandable after her Kona meltdown.
Derron, meanwhile, put in the work but found herself with just too much gap for her to run back, eventually finishing third.
Waugh, however, got everything out of herself in Qatar (and perhaps everything out of herself this season). Just the final few meters before the line, she could be seen physically retching, and on crossing the line, there was no real elation, only exhaustion as she sank to her knees and emptied her insides.
Waugh’s win was rightly earned, not just today but over the course of the series. She won by the biggest margin in a T100 in Singapore earlier this year, and her consistent podium placement in all seven races shows that her commitment to her hotshot contract has paid off. She didn’t race any Ironman 70.3s, and only two WTCS events (Abu Dhabi in February, and Hamburg in July).
Taylor-Brown crossed just twenty seconds behind in second place, having closed the gap to Waugh pretty rapidly in the final few kilometres. She looked so controlled, as if she could have carried on, and if there had been one more kilometer in the race, it’s possible she could have taken the win. Today’s final race puts her seventh overall in the series – not bad for a wild card athlete without a contract. In fact, Taylor-Brown only has four races out of a possible five counted toward the standings; after finishing twelfth at London, she’s gotten consistently better at middle-distance racing, culminating in a win at Ironman 70.3 Bahrain just last week and second at T100 Qatar. Not bad for an athlete who was, in theory, stepping away from triathlon this year. Turns out taking some time off to do some bike races and gravel is just the ticket to progress. If Taylor-Brown wanted to focus on the T100 and 70.3 distance, I believe she could be the next dominant athlete in the distance. She’s a world-class athlete, and her results this year indicate she’s only just getting started at the middle distance. However, she’s said her heart is in short-course, so I feel it is likely she’ll return her focus next year to the WTCS circuit and qualifying for the LA Olympics.
Derron, who finished third in Qatar, secured second place in the series. Like Waugh, last year was all about the Olympics, and she perhaps surprised the majority of the world by finishing with the Silver Medal. One year later, she’s finished second in the T100 series, with two wins. Derron also raced Ironman Vitoria, qualifying for the Ironman World Championships in Kona, though she did not start due to injuries sustained in a crash while training.
Ashleigh Gentle (AUS) has received mixed reviews on her 2025 season. In Qatar, she finished sixth, which put her fourth in the overall series. While she may not have fully hit form this year, I think Gentle has still had a great year – there was just an influx of short-course athletes who raised the bar from the swim. She’s been one of the most committed, racing every T100, except one, and she did win in Wollongong. Just this week, she publicly announced she’d had a miscarriage, and to then turn up in Qatar and produce the fastest run of the day, after an emotionally and physically trying time, is incredibly impressive.
Lucy Byram (GBR) also had an emotional return to racing after the loss of her boyfriend, Sam O’Shea, who was killed when struck by a vehicle while riding. It was a horrific tragedy for someone so young. The two traveled to races together and were such a force for good with their energy and professionalism. I can hardly imagine what Lucy has been going through, and to put herself back in the race environment is impressive and brave. In Qatar, Byram put in the fastest bike split of the day and finished eleventh overall and ninth in the series.
It was pretty clear before the race started that Hayden Wilde (NZL) was the favorite to take the men’s T100 World title. Apart from a blip in Dubai, where he completed an extra lap on the bike, he’s been undefeated, winning five races before Qatar. Like Waugh, Wilde was on a hot shot contract. After winning the first race in the series back in Singapore, Wilde then suffered a a bad bike crash and missed San Francisco and Vancouver. He came back in style, winning in London, France, Spain, and Australia – and then topped it off with a sweet victory in Qatar.
As with his other races, Quatar was a Wilde masterclass – he was calm, controlled, and looked like he had more gears if needed. This is Wilde’s first world title, after narrowly missing out on wins at the Olympics and 70.3 World Championships in recent years. He’s dominated the T100 distance this year and is the deserved champion. Certainly, his WTCS racing has suffered, but he’s made up for it by making the other pros suffer in the T100. He’s in a class above the rest, and the target on his back is getting bigger and bigger. His competitors respected his racing this year, stating he’s on another level, but I think they’re also secretly plotting ways to take him down in 2026.
Morgan Pearson (USA), in many ways like Taylor-Brown, has found his feet over the past year of racing the T100 distance. He started with an eighth-place finish in San Francisco, then took seventh in Vancouver, sixth in France, a win in Dubai, and in Qatar finished second with the fastest run of the day. His result in Qatar moved him up to finish fourth overall in the T100 series. Pearson has shown his abilities in short-course racing for several years, but hasn’t always hit the mark on race day. I feel he has a lot of potential to thrive at the T100 distance, if he wanted to. He’s gotten better with each race, indicating he’s willing to learn and work on his weaknesses. He’s put significant attention into his bike while maintaining the ability to execute his blistering run. We’ll have to see how much he focuses on WTCS with the LA Olympics qualification period coming up – we may have to wait a few more years before we really see him have a dominant impact in middle-distance racing.
Marten Van Riel (BEL) finished third in Qatar after a frustrating year of racing. For the 2024 T100 World Champion, 2025 has been a mix of bad luck and unfortunate events. Although he has stepped up the distance to race Ironman, with some impressive performances, an error in Dubai, where he followed Wilde in an extra lap of the bike, probably cost him two spots in the series, in the end finishing in sixth place for the year.
Out of the top four men in the overall series, Noodt is the only one to not have won a race, yet he’s been so close, so many times, with two second-place finishes and two third-place finishes. Noodt has been one of the most committed athletes on the men’s side, only racing T100 events in 2025. This, I feel, has been deservedly rewarded with the second-place finish in the overall series. It’s surely only a matter of time before he gets his chance to stand on the top step in a T100 race. He came close in Dubai, physically crossing the line first, but having been directed to the finish a lap early, as Pearson was already partway through his last lap. He ended up finishing second when the results were adjusted to the end of lap seven, the penultimate lap.
Jelle Geens came into Qatar with a small-but-possible chance to challenge Wilde for the overall series title. He started 18 points behind Wilde, and would have needed to win and for Wilde to finish in third to take the title. Though the idea was exciting, the execution was less so: on race day, Geens simply didn’t fire, fading on the bike and run to finish in seventh. Perhaps that has something to do with his dramatic race and sprint finish against Kristian Blummenfelt at the Ironman 70.3 World Championship, where he successfully defended his title from 2024. The emotional and physical fatigue that goes with winning a World title should never be underestimated. Still, Geens is probably hungry for more, and Wilde’s dominance is likely to add some fuel to his off-season fire.
But first, we all must rest. It’s been a long season, and we all deserve some festive time off. And on that note, I must sign off my final dispatch for 2025! I hope everyone has a wonderful, relaxing holiday – before we know it, we’ll be racing again in 2026!