The Men's 2024 Ironman World Championship Start List (2025)

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The start list is set for the men’s 2024 Ironman World Championship in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. The exciting line-up features four past Ironman world champions and a deep field of podium contenders, so we’re sure to see one amazing race play out on October 26.

Read below for the list, along with a quick analysis of who’s racing and some stats for a bird’s-eye view of what the field will look like as the men return to Kona at the 2024 Ironman World Championship.

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How do pro athletes qualify for the Ironman World Championship start list?

Between August 21, 2023 and August 19, 2024, professional triathletes competed for pro qualifying slots at designated Ironman races around the world, each with a varying number of Ironman World Championship spots on offer (some races, like the Ironman European Championship in Frankfurt, had six spots up for grabs, while other races, like Ironman Italy, only had one spot; most had three or four).

Athletes could earn their world championship spot by placing high enough in a qualifying race to get first dibs on accepting their spot at a post-race slot allocation ceremony. If a higher-finishing athlete had already accepted their spot at a prior race, or if they did not attend the slot allocation ceremony, the slot rolled down to the next present eligible pro athlete.

Slots also rolled down in the case of a declined or withdrawn world championship spot – for example, after 2024 Ironman Texas champion Tomas Rodriguez Hernandez was suspended following an anti-doping rule violation, Ironman told Triathletehis spot rolled down to Andre Lopes, who was next on the list in Texas.

Ironman champions from the past five years, podium finishers (second or third place) from the previous year’s Ironman World Championship, and the reigning Ironman 70.3 world champion receive an exemption from the qualification process through a process known as validation. These athletes automatically receive an exemption from qualifying through the traditional route; instead, these athletes only need to validate their spot by racing competitively in at least one qualifying Ironman race or two qualifying 70.3 races within the qualifying year. Finishing the race automatically cements that athlete’s spot for the Ironman World Championship.

This is how 2023 Ironman World Champion Sam Laidlow validated his spot for 2024, after being disqualified post-race at Ironman Vitoria-Gasteiz for not serving a drafting penalty. Ironman upheld the disqualification, but ruled Laidlow technically still met the standard for “racing competitively” by finishing the event and awarded him a spot on the start list for Kona.

Pro Men Ironman World Championship Qualifiers: 2024

Four previous Ironman World Champions validated their spots for the 2024 race in Kona:

• Two-time champion Patrick Lange (2017, 2018)
• 2021 champion Kristian Blummenfelt
• 2022 champion Gustav Iden
• 2023 champion Sam Laidlow

The list also includes 12 of the top 20 men in the Professional Triathlon Organization’s (PTO) world ranking list and 31 of the top 50. This is in contrast to 2023, when we saw less than 50% of the top 50 PTO-ranked men in Nice.

With 62% of the top 50-ranked men qualified for Kona, the ratio of top pros looks much more like 2022, when 66% of the Kona field was ranked that top 50.

While most of the major long-course players made the list, there are a few notable names missing, like Sam Long—who failed to qualify this year—and quick up-and-comers like Kyle Smith, Youri Keulen, and Rico Bogen—who are focusing on the T100 Tour and 70.3 racing.

Interestingly enough, when Ironman moved the men’s world championships Europe for the first time ever in 2023, we saw a big increase in European men making up the majority of the field—especially when compared to American pros, who typically took top honors for sheer numbers on the start list. We would have guessed that this composition would “flip back” to the way it once was when the men returned to Kona in 2024, but this has not been the case at all.

Looking at the nationality breakdown for Ironman World Championships this year, we see France again sending the most male athletes (seven), with the U.S. just behind, sending six.

We see only a minor uptick of American male pros in Kona (as opposed to the American women, who were all over the start list in Kona last year), and almost no decrease from European Union countries like France, Germany, and Denmark. In fact, there are more Danish male pros in Kona in 2024 than there were in Nice last year. The breakdown of the list:

• France: 7
• United States: 6
• Germany, Australia, Denmark: 5
• Brazil, Canada, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland: 3
• Belgium, Great Britain, Norway, Sweden: 2
• Austria, Italy, Spain South Africa: 1

2024 Pro Men Ironman World Championship Start List