Charles-Barclay Skips Nice to Focus on Kona

Lucy Charles-Barclay will not defend her IRONMAN 70.3 world title. The British athlete has pulled out of the race in Nice on 12 September to put everything into Kona. The full-distance world championship is held there on 10 October, just 28 days later.

Nothing to do with form

Charles-Barclay said plainly that the withdrawal has nothing to do with injury or poor condition. “I am healthy, training is going really well, and that is exactly why this decision was so hard”, she wrote in a statement and on Instagram.

The problem, she explained, is not the race in Nice itself but everything around it. The taper, the travel, racing at full intensity and recovering from it, all inside the last four weeks before the main goal of the season. “Once I switch the engine on, I do not have a 90 percent mode”, she added. Defending the title in Nice would mean racing flat out rather than treating it as part of the build.

A hard return from surgery that worked

Charles-Barclay started the 2026 season late after surgery on her plantaris tendon. The comeback went well, with a win at IRONMAN Lanzarote in May, only 16 weeks after the operation. In July she added Challenge Roth, where she finished second behind a sharp Alanis Siffert and ahead of the rest of the front group.

Her history in Kona

Few athletes have a longer history with the world championship in Hawaii. Charles-Barclay finished second four times. The title came only in 2023, when she led from start to finish. 2025 ended very differently. She led again, then dropped out of the marathon around 14 kilometres from the line. Taylor Knibb, who looked to be taking over, also came apart close to the finish. Solveig Løvseth of Norway won ahead of Kat Matthews and Laura Philipp. All four of them, Løvseth, Matthews, Philipp and Knibb, are due on the start line again this year alongside Charles-Barclay.

Charles-Barclay first took the 70.3 world title in St. George in 2021. Taylor Knibb of the United States then won the next three editions, 2022 to 2024. Charles-Barclay ended that run a year ago in Spain to take the crown back.

Now everything goes on one race. “I do not want to be in a dark moment in Kona wondering whether I left a piece of my best form in Nice”, she said of the decision.