Taylor Knibb, Holly Lawrence and Skye Moench gave some of the most inspiring performances in an all-time, must-see edition of Kona
We told you that Taylor Knibb, Holly Lawrence and Skye Moench had “the firepower and verve to be the major stories” of the Ironman World Championship in Kona. We didn’t know that we’d be this right.
Kona was an all-timer. Knibb gave one of the gutsiest athletic performances you will ever see, and it ended in gutting fashion with the three-time Ironman 70.3 World Champion forced to abandon what looked like a winning bid just two miles from the finish.
Lawrence and Moench, meanwhile, gave stirring performances as new mothers. Lawrence finished sixth in her first ever trip to Kona, checking off a career bucket list item and proving she has the strength, stamina and mettle to hang with anyone in a full-distance Ironman. Moench made her return to competitive racing on her sport’s biggest stages, less than a year after giving birth. She finished 21st, a result she called “by the numbers and placing, my worst ever world championship performance. But in my heart, the most meaningful one.”
Taylor Knibb standing ready with her Project One ICON Speed Concept ahead of Kona.
Kona doesn’t mess around. The course is notoriously hilly, and those climbs feel exponentially harder when the temperature hits a high of 82 degrees Fahrenheit with 70 percent humidity.
For a while, it seemed as if nothing could slow down Knibb. She took control of the race at the 68-mile mark of the bike leg, moving ahead of Lucy Charles-Barclay to lead the field after Charles-Barclay served out a 60-second penalty for littering.
Charles-Barclay wouldn’t catch up to Knibb until 10 miles into the marathon leg, sparking what appeared to be a thrilling duel for the win between two giants of the sport. Knibb caught back onto Charles-Barclay, and then put in a gap of over two minutes into the Brit, who began to show clear signs of exhaustion. After alternating walking and running, and doing everything she could to cool herself down, Charles-Barclay was forced to pull out of the race, seemingly leaving Knibb to win down the closing stretch.
But with two miles to go, on the final climb of the race, Knibb finally paid the toll for the heat, humidity and full-gas racing. She began wobbling on her run, and eventually had to sit down on the pavement. Her day was done.
“Sometimes our greatest strengths can also be our greatest weaknesses, depending on the context/situation and how they may be harnessed (or not),” Knibb wrote on Instagram after the race. “Knowing what I know now, of course I would have adjusted how I approached that section and the race. But only knowing what I knew in the moment when I made/was making the decision, I wouldn’t.”
Knibb may not have finished the race, but her performance will be remembered for a long time. Few people compete with more passion and determination. Knibb is up for any challenge, any time, anywhere. And when she’s back in Kona, you can rest assured she’ll be giving us yet another blockbuster performance.
Holly Lawrence just keeps blowing our minds this year.
Enough can’t be said about Lawrence. She had already given one of the best performances of the year in June when she finished fifth at T100 San Francisco in her first race back from giving birth the previous October. Somehow, she arguably bettered that effort in Kona.
Lawrence was simply one of the strongest women from start to finish. She’s made her career in the middle distance category, winning the 2016 Ironman 70.3 World Championship. Yet when Lawrence should have been fading, she only seemed to get stronger, coming off the bike in eighth place and finishing two spots higher. She had never raced Kona before, and had done just one full Ironman race in her life, a fifth-place finish in Lake Placid in July. The performance perfectly exemplified the joy she also brought to San Francisco, when she said that having a child helped reframe her relationship with triathlon and race with passion and freedom she hadn’t felt since early in her career.
“Now I race a bit more free and train a bit more free, and that’s actually how I get the most out of myself, instead of setting serious, stressful targets,” Lawrence said. “That is never how I’ve got the best out of myself.”
Skye Moench crushed it in her return to action.
Moench has been open about her struggles to get back up to speed after having a child. She has finished as high as seventh in Kona, and by that standard maybe Saturday’s result wasn’t what she wanted. But by any other standard she’s an absolute force.
Moench wrote on Instagram that she was unsure of her decision to race Kona before the race. We’re so glad she did. Her journey was one of the best stories in a day chock full of them.
