Women’s Ironman World Championship 2025: Age Group Stats

Last weekend we saw the final separate women’s Ironman World Championship in Kona. To properly examine the results I’ve compared them with past races in Kona and removed male results in order to give a clear comparison. With this we can then consider the impact a separate championship had on performance in Kona.

Result Distributions

Comparing recent results for women in Kona with this year’s race shows a similar overall distribution. This year’s swim was slightly slower, but the run slightly faster. The comparison includes a mix of 2019, a single day race, 2022, a partially split race where some male age groups raced the same day as the women, and 2023, when only women were racing.

For the second distribution I’ve compared the two (2023, 2025) fully independent women’s races in Kona with 5 years of women’s results from joint races. What we see here is a clearly slower race at the average, at least 30 minutes difference, but a more comparable race at the front. The major source of that difference is the run, with some contribution from the swim. Bike splits are more comparable.

The main factor is likely the increased numbers of competitors. This meant more women in older age groups present and also a deeper field selected from qualifying races.

DNF Rates

The DNF numbers above are not segregated on gender so use them as a guide to whether a race year was tougher/slower than others. With that in mind this year look typical for Kona, while 2023 appears to have been a particularly good year for the course.

Median Splits

As we saw with the most recent race comparison there’s not much difference at the medians. Splits vary across age groups but by small margins of low significance.

Competitor Origins

There’s a broad spread of athletes racing this World Champs. Just over a quarter from the US, but spreading widely beyond that.

Performance Changes

Tracking the times for specific places over the years shows Kona to be one of the more consistent races when considering the front of larger groups. We can see how the more recent races with more slots available opened up numbers allowing the largest age groups to exceed 100 athletes. Also how 2023 was a good year for most age groups and this year’s results line up well with recent years.

Age Group Top 20

If we consider the top twenty of each age group then this year was consistently faster than the average and in some age groups pushing towards one of the fastest year. Look at F18-24 and those over 50 and you see times among the fastest for the course.

Conclusion

Overall this year’s championship compares well with recent years in Kona. The separate and larger women’s championship did see some decrease to the median finish time, but the front of pack remained as competitive with a number of age groups being near their fastest.