Daniela Ryf and Kristian Blummenfelt take PTO World #1 spots following spectacular performances at the Ironman World Championships in St. George.

It was a day of epic racing over the full distance in St George and winners Daniela Ryf and Kristian Blummenfelt were truly next level. With any point score above 100 signalling an extraordinary performance, these two champions smashed the competition to earn the highest scores so far in 2022.

Daniela Ryf – Back To Her Best

Unwell at Kona in 2019 and having struggled with immune system issues through lockdown, Daniela Ryf put together as perfect a long course performance as we’ve ever seen to score a whopping 124.6 points. Triathlon fandom was united in awe as the Angry Bird returned to her best with a goosebumps-raising exhibition of dominance.

Fourth out the water, Ryf was soon in the lead on the bike and stuck to the gameplan that had seen her take four IM world titles going into St. George – ride hard and then, when everyone else’s legs are burning, ride even harder. Leading by seven minutes at the start of the run, a sub-three-hour marathon created an almost nine-minute margin of victory to second place Kat Matthews and 12 minutes to defending world champ, Anne Haug.

With an Adjusted Ideal Time (AIT) of 08:54:42, Ryf’s 8:34:58 finish was certainly worthy of her colossal points score, which saw her regain the lead in the PTO World Rankings.

Meanwhile, Kat Matthews’ second place saw her score 113.59 points to move up three places into PTO World #3. Anne Haug also moved up three spots, her 109.56 score seeing her move up into PTO World #2 just above Matthews.

Skye Moench (fourth in St. George) moved up one place to PTO World #7 while Lisa Norden jumped five spots to PTO World #12. Ruth Astle was the biggest mover, moving up 16 places to PTO World #15. Fellow Brit Fenella Langridge improved by three places to take the PTO World #19 slot.

Of interest for the Collins Cup, the top five women in the world are all from Team Europe, putting the defending champions in the driving seat for Samorin in August.

Kristian Blummenfelt – GOAT In The Making?

With his win in St. George, Kristian Blummenfelt becomes the first reigning Olympic Champion to win an Ironman world title. The win came courtesy of a dominating run performance, the Norwegian clocking 2:38 on a challenging course in tough conditions.

Running at a fearsome pace, Blummenfelt took first around 28km into the marathon and victory looked assured from there. His finish of 7:49:15 – compared to that AIT of 08:00:02 – was worth 114.98 points. With that, Blummenfelt had a third high-scoring race to his name, seeing him rocket 41 places up the rankings, overtaking countryman Gustav Iden to take the coveted PTO World #1 spot.

Braden Currie, third on the day in St. George, moved up 10 places to become PTO World #6 as well as take the second spot for Team International men in the Collins Cup standings.

Florian Angert improved by four places to sit one place behind Currie as PTO World #7 while Leon Chevalier‘s breakthrough performance saw him move 16 places to PTO World #11. Chris Leiferman jumped 25 spots to PTO World #13 and become second in the Team US standings for the Collins Cup. Sam Laidlow improved his ranking by 17 places and is now PTO World #16 with Ben Hoffman climbing six places to PTO World #18 – now fifth in the Team US rankings, just one spot from automatic qualification.

With lots more racing to come this season, there is still plenty of time for the rankings to move around, for athletes to secure Collins Cup qualification and to earn a bigger slice of the PTO’s $2,008,000 end-of-year bonus pool!