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Over more than 40 years of racing at the Ironman World Championships, triathlon fans have seen some incredible feats from women like Paula Newby-Fraser, Chrissie Wellington, Daniela Ryf, and more. But who pulled off the best Ironman World Championship performance of all time? That's a question we could debate for days, much like discussing who's the greatest triathlete of all time.
One way to determine the best women's Ironman World Championship performances is to look at who finished the fastest. But that's too simple - Ironman World Championship athletes in the early years were much slower than today's, partially because of better equipment, but also advances in training, nutrition, and aerodynamics.
Sometimes our choices for the title of "best Ironman World Championship performance" involve factors that don't have anything to do with the actual level of performance - we all have our favorite races for a variety of reasons. For example, the only time I have been able to follow a Kona race in-person was in 2017, so for me, that year's winner, Daniela Ryf, will come to mind more easily than Linda Sweeney, who won in 1981.
However, it's interesting to look for more objective data to build a good base list before adding in more subjective factors. Using the ideas behind the Professional Triathletes Organization (PTO) World Rankings, I have calculated points values from Ironman World Championship races and built a list of the best women's performances.
Of course, isn't "the definitive list" - rather, it's a starting point for creating your own list and discussing the performances with your triathlon friends. It's also a great trip down memory lane before we head into the 2024 Ironman World Championship women's race, held for the first time in Nice, France.
Can't get enough Ironman World Championship coverage? Visit our Nice Hub for news, analysis, history, photo galleries, and so much more - new stories added daily from our team on the ground in France.
The PTO World Rankings assign a points value to a race finish using three different aspects:
Here's how we adapted these aspects for the Kona races.
No adaption was needed for the points for the finishing position. Assuming a Diamond tier race in all years, the winner gets 100 points, second place 98 points, third place 96.04 and so on. Obviously, this won't be enough to rank performances between different years, so we need more criteria.
Next are points for the finishing time relative to the competition. Except for the smaller fields in early years, each finisher's time was assigned points relative to the average time of the top five. This way, we get performance points that don't favor the "fast Kona years" (no wind, milder temperatures) over slower years. It also awards points relative to the current level of racing, rather than a constant level applied across all years. For example, the reference time 12:26 is much slower than the 2017 time of 8:59, reflecting the different levels of what was considered "fast racing." This aspect also requires very little adaption to provide useful numbers across different Ironman World Championship courses, such as Oahu (1978 to 1980), Kona, St. George (2022) and Nice (starting in 2024 for the women).
That's why a measure of strength of field is also needed. The PTO World Rankings use the average of the best five athletes' ranking points, which are based on the most recent 52 weeks. However, there was much less racing in the early years, and we're far from having complete data for these races. So instead, we used each athlete's highest-scoring previous Kona race, and then calculated the average of the best five athletes racing.
This simple approach helps address races like Sweeny's 1981 performance: None of the previous participants raced in 1981, so it was the weakest possible strength of field. Consequently, Sweeney's win drops outside the top 25, even behind some second- and third-place finishes in stronger fields.
Based on the algorithm outlined above, we've calculated the points for every World Championship finish since 1978. In the table below, we're only listing each athlete's best performance.
Each one of these performances are remarkable, and there are many stories to tell from them all, but let's have a closer look at the top five.
When Chelsea Sodaro started Kona 2022, she had only one Ironman race under her belt - a second place at Ironman Hamburg, where she finished more than 15 minutes behind winner Laura Philipp.
In Kona, Sodaro swam and biked well, starting the run in fourth place behind some pre-race favorites. At that point, she was seen as a solid top-10 candidate, but what actually happened was a surprise to almost everyone: Sodaro was the fastest runner and took the lead after the initial 10 miles along the ocean. She always took her time in the aid stations, walking a bit to take on extra water and ice. Many wondered: Was that a sign of struggles or just smart strategy in the Kona heat?
At the turnaround in the Energy Lab, Sodaro had built a lead of almost five minutes, and an explosion seemed less and less likely. When she crossed the finish line, she had won by almost eight minutes, running a 2:51 marathon, the fastest of the day by six minutes.
The 1988 women's race was supposed to be a showdown between 1986 winner Paula Newby-Fraser and Erin Baker, the 1987 champion. That day, Baker was about a minute ahead after the swim, but then Newby-Fraser executed what she called "the perfect race."
Newby-Fraser improved her own bike course record by 25 minutes and also set a new run course record. Her overall finish time of 9:01:01 was a new course record by 34 minutes, 36 minutes ahead of third and 53 minutes ahead of fifth place. Newby-Fraser's 1988 race is unrivaled in relation to the men's race: She was only 30 minutes behind the men's winner Scott Molina, and she finished in 11th place overall, including the men.
After 1988, triathlon fans had to wait two years for a rematch between Baker and Newby-Fraser. It was Baker who won this time, outsplitting Newby-Fraser in all three legs, including a new run course record that would hold for the next eight years. The margin between the two was just over six minutes, but they had pushed each other to build a huge gap of forty minutes to third in the best women's field to date.
This earned Baker the number three spot in our overall performance rankings, and Newby-Fraser's finish earned her the highest score for a female who didn't win the race.
In 2007, Chrissie Wellington's rookie win surprised everyone, in 2008 she was almost out of the race when she struggled to fix a flat in the lava fields, yet she pulled off another win.
But in 2009, everything went exactly right, and she dominated the race: Wellington had her fastest Kona swim, and then built a huge lead in T2 with the only sub-five-hour bike leg of the day. Even though Mirinda Carfrae posted a new run course record to finish in second place, Wellington still won the race almost 20 minutes ahead of her.
Daniela Ryf dominated the Ironman World Championship between 2015 and 2018, winning the race four times in a row. She usually took control of the race on the bike, building a big gap to anyone who might be able to outrun her.
Her best performance, however, was in 2016, when she set her first Kona course record. That day, Ryf exited the water just four seconds behind swim leader Meredith Kessler, then quickly took the lead on the bike and posted the only sub-five-hour bike split of the day (eight minutes faster than Heather Jackson, who had the second-fastest bike leg that day).
Ryf then went on to post the fastest run split of the day, outrunning even Mirinda Carfrae by 90 seconds. In the end, her winning margin was 24 minutes, while second to fifth were only five minutes apart.