Ironman Triathlon: Laura Philipp and the triumph of the career changer

When triathlete Laura Philipp ran the last few meters on the Promenade des Anglais on Sunday as the upcoming winner of the Ironman World Championship, everything was new and familiar at the same time. Before the race, she had repeatedly played the film in her head of herself being the first to turn onto the finishing straight in Nice; that was part of the preparation, like speed runs and tinkering with the right position of the saddle. You don’t just have to tell yourself that, you have to have the confidence to do it, Philipp recently told the FAZ: to complete 3.8 kilometers of swimming, 180 kilometers of cycling and 42.195 kilometers with such courage that you arrive at the finish line as the fastest in the world. Only when that is firmly anchored in your head, so the calculation goes, will your body follow the plan.

But one could sense that reality would outstrip the dream when Philipp crossed the finish line on Sunday as the real Ironman World Champion. She had put more than eight minutes between herself and her closest rival, Briton Katrina Matthews. The winner even had time to raise an even larger German flag than the one she had grabbed from the crowd. Then tears of joy rolled down her cheeks.

Compared to the men, the German women have caught up a lot when it comes to Ironman successes. So far, only Anne Haug has become world champion, the most valuable seal of the long distance, in 2019 (Nina Kraft was doped with EPO when she won in 2004). And now the triumph of the 37-year-old from Heidelberg, who has one of the most impressive triathlon biographies of recent years.

From amateur athlete to professional, this happens more often in triathlon

Philipp is one of those examples that show that you can get into the grind of high-performance sport later in life, so as not to put too much strain on your mind and body too early. As a teenager, she climbed a lot and was not very familiar with endurance sports, apart from the 30 kilometers to school, which she cycled every day because the journey on public transport took even longer. Thanks to a relay event, she became aware of triathlon at the age of 24, by chance – and quickly became so good at the middle distance that she gave up her job as a physiotherapist in 2015.

From amateur athlete to professional, that is not a rare transformation in triathlon. Unlike in ski jumping, for example, the amateurs tinker with the equipment as passionately as the professionals, train in the same places, run the same races – and occasionally make it into the top performance segment. In 2018, Philipp completed her first long-distance race in 8:34:57 hours, faster than any debutant before her. In Hawaii in 2019, she came fourth, despite a bone fracture shortly before. That was only somewhat overshadowed by the fact that her compatriots Haug, Patrick Lange and Jan Frodeno were even better.

When competitions were cancelled during the pandemic, Philipp built a small swimming pool in her garden in which she paddled on the spot, secured with a rubber rope, to improve her technique in her weakest discipline. “I’m lucky that I try to turn things around quickly into something positive,” she once said in an interview with SZ. In 2023, she took third place in Hawaii, even though Philipp received a time penalty for drafting and lost a lot of time.

This year, an innovation helped her: to reduce the hustle and bustle in Hawaii, where the Ironman is based, the World Championship races are now held in Hawaii and Nice, with women and men changing locations every year. The women had their World Championship debut in Nice this time, and that gave Philipp a big advantage: unlike in Kona, the bike course is not a perfectly flat time trial, but a climb with a total of 2400 meters of elevation. She has trained for this often, and it suits Philipp better than her competitors, such as defending champion Lucy Charles-Barclay from Great Britain and Anne Haug.

Charles-Barclay had to pull out before the race because of muscular problems. And Haug, who had improved the women’s world record to 8:02:38 hours (!) in Roth in July, suffered such a severe puncture shortly after switching to the bike that she gave up the race: “I was lucky at the World Championships five years in a row,” said the 41-year-old, who had reached the podium five times. At some point, even the lucky ones get lucky on the long distance.

Even the winners never have it all smoothly. Philipp lost her bottle holder while cycling, and on a descent she steered onto a sidewalk to avoid falling. And in the transition zone before the marathon, important items slipped out of her hand. So what? “This shows once again that sometimes you need less and you can still get through it,” said Philipp later. What many had suspected happened: Katrina Matthews, the last pursuer who had already outrun Philipp in other marathon races, had clearly found the hard work on the bike too much. So Philipp bounced towards the finish, which she reached after 8:45:15 hours, more beautifully than she had ever dreamed.

Sometimes it is a misleading idea to predict further great achievements for winners in professional sport, but in Philipp’s case things are quite clear. High-performance careers are often like a candle, and for those who start so late as a “lateral entrant” (Philipp), the fire often burns longer. Anne Haug and Jan Frodeno are two prominent examples from the over-40s category. “As long as you are healthy and enjoy what you do, especially in your daily training, age doesn’t matter anyway. I have no concerns about that at the moment,” Laura Philipp once said. Sometimes, even at 37, you are still just getting started.