The sixth race of the T100 Tour is set in Oropesa, Spain. With just two more races before the Grand Final, athletes will be looking to solidify their standings.
Trirating.com expert Thorsten Radde breaks down the competition for Spain T100 on September 20, 2025. (Photo: T100)
Published September 16, 2025 09:37AM
When the T100 and World Triathlon calendars were announced at the start of the year, late September was meant to bring another blockbuster “double header” weekend. But when Valencia’s port suddenly became unavailable due to construction, the plans unraveled. Organizers scrambled, and while the World Triathlon Championship Series shifted its stop to Karlovy Vary a week earlier, the PTO’s Spain T100 held firm on the date, relocating just an hour up the coast to Oropesa.
The men and women will be racing on the same day, Saturday, September 20. The men will go off first at 9 a.m. local Spanish time, the women’s start will be at 10:10 a.m. Everyone can watch the free livestream on Outside TV starting at 1:45 a.m. ET/10:45 p.m. September 19 PT. Outside+ members can watch the replay at their leisure.
Spain T100 course overview
The swim is going to be the typical 2K swim with two laps and an Aussie exit to confirm who is in which group. The bike course consists of six laps of about 13K. Each lap is a gradually climbing road, gaining about 100m of elevation in each lap, then a turn at a roundabout, and a return down the descent. With no technical turns, bike times are expected to be fast.
The run will also be six laps on a palm-lined road. With turnarounds at the two far ends, athletes will have many chances to get splits to the competition.
After the single-loop bike course at the French Riviera, Spain T100 will be back to multiple laps. Athletes liked the varied terrain across the 80K, but smaller loops are easier to close off for traffic and are better suited for the broadcast and the timing company. We can look forward to close racing all the way to the finish line!
Spain T100 men’s contenders
Even with three wins in his three starts, Hayden Wilde (NZL) is only second in the T100 standings – that’s because leader Jelle Geens (BEL) has four results, all of them on the podium. A seventh place in Spain will be enough for Wilde to take the lead, but for sure, he’ll be aiming for the “perfect score” by adding a fourth win. Behind the two leaders, Germans Mika Noodt (three podiums) and Rico Bogen (only one podium, but that was a win) are tied in third place and will be looking for a podium finish, possibly disrupting a Wilde-Geens duel.
Typically, men’s T100 races have a big lead group followed by a few stragglers. With the field for Spain, all 20 athletes could be within a minute after the swim – something the better swimmers will try to prevent by going hard at least until the Aussie exit. Once on the bike, Bogen can be expected to push the pace on the climbs. Can he get away from most of the field, and who will go with him? This time, he may have some help from Noodt, but both will also look to shake off Wilde, even if their main goal will be to put time into Geens. Bogen and Noodt took first and third in San Francisco earlier this year. If they are also running well in Spain, we could once again have two Germans on the T100 podium.
Hayden Wilde
28 years old, New Zealand, PTO #1, 2nd T100 Standings (105 points)
Hayden Wilde is a favorite going into Spain T100. (Photo: T100)
So far in 2025, Hayden Wilde has delivered the perfect T100 season – three starts, three wins. It’s a bit of a shame that his most recent win at the French Riviera is overshadowed by the discussion around how his racing shoes weren’t approved. Wilde can show in Spain how he deals with the allegations that he knowingly broke the rules. Will he race with same self-assurance as in earlier races?
So far this season, he always seemed to be in control of the race – both before his injury at the start of the season in Singapore and after in London and Frejus. He was in the first big group after the swim, just a few seconds behind in T1. Then he rode well, keeping Bogen at the front on the bike in his sights, then took the lead shortly after T2 and was never really challenged in the second half of the run.
There can be little doubt that he is the top favorite for Spain as well. While Bogen will do his best to put pressure on him in the swim and on the bike, he’s always been able to run at least two minutes into Bogen. Geens has posted some quicker run splits, but then Wilde consistently outbiked him. Will Wilde extend his winning streak in Spain? He’d then have the perfect score before the Qatar final, putting him in a great position to take the 2025 T100 World Champion title.
Jelle Geens
31 years old, Belgium, PTO #2, 1st T100 Standings (119 points)
Jelle Geens is the T100 Tour leader headed into Spain T100. (Photo: T100)
Geens comes to Spain as the leader in the T100 standings; however, it’s unlikely for him to hold on to that position. He already has four scores in his current total, and his worst score is a third place from London. Even if he can replace that with a win in Spain, he’ll only improve nine points since the 35 points for the win would replace his 26 points from London – so even beating Wilde in Spain would not be enough to hold on to the lead.
Whenever he was healthy at a start line this season, Geens has proven that he’s a serious contender for a podium. His run is better by minutes than almost everyone else. Compared to Noodt, he was consistently about two minutes quicker in the third leg. Their comparison also shows that when Geens can ride roughly the same time as Noodt on the bike (as he did in San Francisco and Vancouver), he’ll be able to beat him across the line. But with a weaker bike in London, Geens lost more than three minutes to Noodt into T2 and wasn’t able to catch him on the run. Will Geens be able to ride better in Spain, and where will he place in the end?
Mika Noodt
25 years old, Germany, PTO #5, 4th T100 Standings (93 points)
Mika Noodt started the T100 season strong with three podium finishes in the first three races. But then he took the next two off and is returning for Spain. (Photo: T100)
In the first half of the season, Noodt was on a roll, finishing on a T100 podium three times. After finishing in second place in London at the start of August, he decided to take a short break and skipped the French Riviera T100. His last season ended with an injury when he was hit by a car shortly before Lake Las Vegas T100, but apparently, his break this summer was just to catch his breath for the second part of the season. Now he’s back for Spain T100 – will he be able to pick up where he left off?
Compared to his 2024 season, Noodt has further stabilized his already impressive swim and bike, and he’s become a much better runner as well. He’s not quite at the very top level of Geens or Wilde, but he probably runs faster than anyone else who may step off the bike within a minute or two of him in T2. Will he be content with a similar podium result for Spain – or will he be able to ride with Bogen and start to build a gap on the super-runners? If Noodt can finish ahead of Bogen, he’ll firmly grasp third place in the standings. Will he feel good after his break, possibly going hard for his first T100 win?
Dark Horse 1: Rico Bogen
24 years old, Germany, PTO #4, 3rd T100 Standings (93 points)
Rico Bogen tends to push the pace in the swim and bike, but struggles to hold on through the run. (Photo: T100)
Whenever Bogen is on the start line, you can expect him to push the pace on the bike and to lead into T2. But so far this year, he was only able to hold on to the lead once. In San Francisco, he had a lead of almost three minutes, and he also ran well. In his last races, he seemed to struggle a bit in the second half of the run, probably a combination of lack of calories and disappointment. Can he have a better, more stable run in Spain to finish at least on the podium – or can he even show an overall performance at a similar level to San Francisco?
Dark Horse 2: Samuel Dickinson
28 years old, Great Britain, PTO #25, 17th T100 Standings (26 points)
Samuel Dickinson was a wildcard French Riviera T100. After a podium finish, he has been offered another wildcard entry for Spain T100. (Photo: T100)
Sam Dickinson was racing French Riviera T100 with a wildcard, but he made the most of it with a run onto the podium – the only one in the 2025 T100 season by a non-contracted man. He was promptly re-invited for Spain. In his last race, he jumped onto the lead group when the race split after about 25K on the bike. He reached T2 within a minute of the lead and more than three minutes ahead of the chasers. He also ran well, battled with Bogen for a full run lap, and finished third. Will he be able to race as intelligently in Spain? Another podium finish could see him jump into the top 10 in the standings, which would guarantee him another invite to the next T100 race.
Spain T100 women’s contenders
With many of the biggest races of the 2025 season coming up, some of the well-placed athletes, such as leader Julie Derron (CHE) or third-place Taylor Knibb (USA), are in the middle of a hard training block and have decided to skip Spain. This will be the chance for Kate Waugh (GBR) to jump into the lead in the standings after her last-minute withdrawal in France, and for Lucy Charles-Barclay (GBR) to build on the excitement of her London win. The momentum might also be with Ashleigh Gentle (AUS) after her win at the French Riviera. Spain T100 will have a significant impact on the standings before the fall T100 races in Wollongong, Dubai, and the Qatar Final.
The women’s swim is likely to break up quickly, with Charles-Barclay, Waugh, and Jessica Learmonth (GBR) pushing the pace. These three can also be expected to go hard on the bike, possibly building a lead of four minutes to the other contenders. Are we going to see another run duel between Waugh and Charles-Barclay for the win, as in London? Are the strong runners from the chase group too far back to contend for the win? Can Gentle run onto the podium, or is there going to be another surprise in the women’s field?
Lucy Charles-Barclay
32 years old, United Kingdom, PTO #7, 5th T100 Standings (84 points)
With Lucy Charles-Barclay, the big question is how her training build for Kona will impact her race at Spain T100 since it is three weeks before the Ironman World Championship. (Photo: T100)
Charles-Barclay secured an emotional win in her “home race” at the London T100, but it was also a confidence builder for her. She didn’t dominate the race in the swim; she had company on the bike, and Waugh took the lead early on the run. But then Charles-Barclay never let Waugh build a gap of more than 20 seconds and retook the lead at the start of the final run lap. In the end, she won by a minute with the fastest run split of the day.
Charles-Barclay’s plan surrounds Kona in October as her main event, but three weeks before Hawaii, the Spain T100 sounds like a good time for a proper form check. Her proven swim and bike skills should be strong enough to be in the front group, probably alongside Waugh and Learmonth as in London.
Whenever Charles-Barclay is on a start line, you can expect her to give her best for the win. Which strategy will she choose for Spain T100? Will she still carry some fatigue from her Kona block, and how will that affect her run speed? Will she go a bit harder on the bike to build a gap before the run? Or can she run just as well as in London and win another tight battle against Waugh?
Kate Waugh
26 years old, United Kingdom, PTO #5, 2nd T100 Standings (90 points)
Kate Waugh is a strong swimmer and biker, but when other female competitors have pushed the pace on the run, she has struggled – perhaps since she’s new to middle-distance racing. (Photo: T100)
For most of the run at London T100, it looked as if Waugh would be able to take the win and also take the lead in the T100 standings. But when Lucy Charles-Barclay upped the pace in the last run lap, Waugh, maybe not yet fully adapted to running 18K, wasn’t able to answer. But after her second place in London, she already has a complete set of T100 podium positions. With current leader Julie Derron skipping the Spanish race, she only needs a 14th place to jump into the No. 1 spot – but she’ll be looking for another big score to further improve her title chances at the end of the year.
In this year’s T100 races, Waugh had good swims – typically helping to push the pace in the lead group. In London, she was also strong on the bike, extending the lead over most of the field. Are we going to see a rematch of the London run battle with Charles-Barclay? Or can she bike away from her as in Singapore and become the first female athlete to win two 2025 T100 events?
Ashleigh Gentle
34 years old, Australia, PTO #6, 4th T100 Standings (89 points)
Ashleigh Gentle won French Riviera T100 and is likely looking to carry that momentum into Spain. (Photo: T100)
After a slow start to the season without a podium finish, Gentle showed at the French Riviera T100 that you can’t ignore her in T100 races. After a solid bike leg, she had the fastest run of the day and quickly caught bike leader Alanis Siffert (CHE) and Georgia Taylor-Brown (GBR), who looked strong on the first part of the run. It almost looked like 2022 when Gentle won the PTO Canadian and U.S. Opens with her irresistible run.
With the momentum of her win, will Gentle also do well in Spain? With Charles-Barclay and Waugh, there are two athletes in the field for Spain who beat her by about seven minutes in London. It’ll be hard for Gentle to make up that gap completely, but she can attack a number of smaller goals: In London, she was six minutes behind them in T2 – she might stay within three or four minutes in Spain. With the frequent turnarounds, she’ll have a good idea of how much time she loses to the leaders – ideally, less than 30 seconds in each of the six bike laps. The other goal would be to post the fastest run split once again. If she can manage to do well measured against these smaller goals, she’ll be at least in solid contention for a podium spot, which would underscore her improved form for the second half of the T100 season.
Dark Horse 1: Jessica Learmonth
37 years, Great Britain, PTO #13, 7th T100 Standings (68 points)
Jessica Learmonth suffered disappointment at French Riviera T100 when she had to stop during the run and accept a DNF. Spain could offer her a redemption race. (Photo: T100)
After finishing third in Vancouver and sixth in London, Learmonth was flat for the French Riviera T100. She fell out of the lead group after 40K on the bike, lost two minutes into T2 and then stopped after just 3K on the run, having nothing left. She was hoping for a good performance, but after her son caused a sleepless night before the race, she had to accept a DNF. Hopefully, she can sleep better before Spain T100. Then she should be able to push the pace on the swim and bike, and a top five performance is definitely possible for her.
Dark Horse 2: Lisa Perterer
33 years old, Austria, PTO #9, 11th T100 Standings (43 points)
Lisa Perterer is also building toward the Ironman World Championship in Kona, which might leave her more fatigued headed into Spain T100. (Photo: T100)
Lisa Perterer is another athlete using the Spain T100 as a key prep race before the Ironman World Championship in Kona. She is likely one of the strongest bike riders in the chase group and could offer a good reference point for Gentle. With a demanding Kona build, Perterer might be too tired to run well, but she showed with her second place in Singapore that she can do well when she races without too many expectations. Another good result would help her secure a spot in the top 10, which would lead to more invitations for the remaining T100 races.