🎥 American time trial champion Knibb claims dramatic Ironman World Championship in Hawaii: 'I thought: I’m done. This is awful.’

Solveig Løvseth, the defending champion, led for a long time, but—like several others—she succumbed to the hot conditions in Kona, Hawaii. With less than a kilometre left of the race, she began to stagger, lost her bearings, and fell to the ground.

Løvseth— see the footage below— even ran in the wrong direction for a moment and ended up falling, only to get back up and cross the finish line in eighth place a few minutes later.

Knibb had spent much of the day at the front, trading the bike lead with Brit Lucy Charles-Barclay, who was forced to drop out of the race, before establishing a 3:06 advantage heading into the marathon.

Knibb, who is also the U.S. time trial champion, held back in the marathon in order to safely cross the finish line, avoiding the heartbreaking DNF she experienced in 2025.

Then, with her patience paying off, she overtook the Norwegian Løvseth, and won the title, capping off an unbelievable season. Last month, she also became world champion at the 70.3 Ironman in Nice, after Løvseth had overtaken her at the very end in Hawaii in 2025.

So the title went to Knibb after all, who responded via Trek. “I’m stunned. There were so many moments on the course when I thought, ‘I’m done. This is awful.’ But somehow, I kept coming back.”

So Knibb even considered giving up. “Actually, two weeks ago I was already ready to just not come. Dramatic, I know. But I really thought, ‘Ugh, this is way too much.’ But then a friend sent me a message during the flight here, and he said, ‘This is Taylor’s dream.’ And I thought back to when I came here in 2010 as a 12-year-old—if I’d seen myself in that position, I would have been her biggest fan,” said the woman from New York.