The T100 World Championship Final: Your guide to one of the biggest triathlon events of the year

Taylor Knibb and Marten Van Riel are gunning for overall titles to cap spectacular seasons

The T100 World Tour was introduced at the beginning of 2024 as a yearlong, high stakes competition among the absolute best athletes in the sport, in exotic locales like Miami, Singapore, Ibiza and Dubai. Its ambitions were lofty, but heading into the World Championship Final this weekend, there’s no question that the T100 fully delivered.

And after six rounds of racing, Trek triathletes Taylor Knibb and Marten Van Riel are well-positioned to take home the T100’s top overall prizes.

Knibb is undefeated on the circuit, and in the home stretch of a season in which she qualified as a rare dual-sport Olympian and took home a silver medal from Paris. She’s the two-time defending Ironman 70.3 World Champion, and all season she’s shown why there isn’t a more dominant middle distance triathlete in the world. Knibb won T100 races in San Francisco, Ibiza and Las Vegas by an average of two minutes and 35 seconds, and posted the fastest bike split in all of them.

Taylor Knibb laying down the fastest bike time in Ibiza.

She currently leads the T100 women’s overall standings by 13 points over second-place Ashleigh Gentle, with the maximum total of 105 points. Knibb is the odds-on favorite to win the crown, but as she noted after her win in Las Vegas, she won’t be taking the competition in Dubai lightly, especially because of how the final race is weighted in the standings.

Until now, every race has been scored the same — 35 points for first place, 28 for second, 25 for third, 22 for fourth, 20th for fifth, on down (click here for the full breakdown). The series is made up of six races prior to the World Championship Final, but only each athlete’s top three placings from those races count towards their standings. Then no matter what, how they perform in Dubai matters, and the point values are upped — 55 for first, 45 for second, 40 for third, 35 for fourth, 30 for fifth, etc.

If you’re following along, then you know that even though Knibb has performed as well as anyone mathematically can thus far in the series, she hardly has the title in hand. For example, if Gentle wins and Knibb “only” takes third, she’d fall off the top spot. Long story short, get ready for a battle.

Sam Long is a crowd favorite and a force in the final two legs.

Van Riel is more comfortably in pole position than Knibb atop the men’s standings with a 19-point lead over second-place Magnus Ditlev. His second-place finish in Las Vegas was the first time he had ever failed to win a middle distance triathlon. Van Riel was a perfect six-for-six to that point, often winning in dramatic fashion. But with the addition of T100 wins in San Francisco and Ibiza, he has firmly established himself at the head of a cutthroat men’s field.

Good thing, because anything less than his absolute best could lead to several competitors swooping past him on the road. Behind Van Riel there is a logjam in the standings: Five athletes all within 10 points of each other. Among them is Sam Long, who sits fifth, just five points behind Ditlev, after taking second in Miami, second in Singapore and sixth in Las Vegas.

When Long is at his best, he’s a force. In Singapore for example, he posted the fastest bike and run on the course. The question as always: Where will he finish in the swim? He was the last man out of the water in Las Vegas, which cost him a potentially bigger result. But if he’s within shouting distance of his rivals as he’s hopping on the bike, he might be the most feared man on the course.

Ben Kanute will be one of the wild cards to watch in Dubai.

Last but not least, Ben Kanute will be one of the hungriest racers in Dubai. His season hasn’t gone as well as he hoped, with finishes just outside the top 10 at T100 Miami and San Francisco. But at his best, he can go toe-to-toe with anyone. And unlike Long, he’ll be at or near the front out of the swim, giving him a chance to dictate the pace of the competition.

In Dubai, the athletes will face a challenge unlike any they’ve seen this year. No, the terrain isn’t particularly daunting — the bike course features 388 meters of elevation gain (just under 1,300 feet). But the heat will be a major factor at roughly 87 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny for both the women’s and men’s races. That’s an especially difficult adjustment for American and European athletes coming from cozy fall climes.

Rarely do we get to watch triathlon racing with so much on the line. Whether you’re a diehard fan of the sport or not, you don’t want to miss this. And the good news is, there are lots of ways to follow the action.

Marten Van Riel has been magic in middle distance racing throughout his career.

How to watch

The Pro Women’s race will take place on Saturday and the Pro Men’s race will take place on Sunday, both starting at 1:30 p.m. local time in Dubai / 10:15 a.m. Central European Time / 4:30 a.m. Eastern Time in the United States.

You have a number of streaming options to watch: Max in the U.S. and most of Europe, and discovery+ and Eurosport in Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Indian subcontinent. Don’t have any of those streaming services? Don’t fret! You can also watch on PTO+ after signing up for a free account, or just go to the T100 YouTube channel and catch the livestreams.

Oh, and be sure to follow the athletes themselves to see behind the scenes and get their reactions.