Svenja Thoes – another IRONMAN Cozumel to round off the season
Whilst Germany is settling in for the winter, Saarland triathlete Svenja Thoes is longing for heat and sunshine. As she wrote in a social media post a few days ago, she is missing heat and sun, and looking forward to returning to warmer climes this year. Her goal: the IRONMAN Cozumel in Mexico, held on Saturday (19 November 2023) at 7:15 a.m. local time (1:15 p.m. German time).
Cozumel is the largest Mexican island in the Caribbean Sea. It is just under 20 kilometres from the eastern coast of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula and the popular holiday destination of Cancún.
The Switzerland-based triathlete associates this popular holiday destination with more than just lovely holiday memories and warm temperatures – she has also enjoyed some competition successes here in the past. In November 2018, the then 27-year-old Saarland athlete won the IRONMAN Mexico (3.86-km swim, 180.2-km cycle and 42.195-km run) in Cozumel, the first Ironman win of her professional career. She has already competed in the IRONMAN 70.3 in Cozumel three times, a middle-distance triathlon consisting of a 1.9-km swim, a 90-km cycle and a half-marathon (21.1-km run). She came third in 2017 and second in 2018 and 2019.
The triathlon in Mexico will be her sixth solo race this year. At the Apfelland Triathlon in Stubenbergsee in Austria, she finished in second place in the middle distance (70.3). She came fourth in the middle-distance Triathlon de Gérardmer in France, and sixth in the (also middle-distance) Challenge Gran Canaria. In addition, in 2023 Svenja Thoes earned second place at the long-distance IRONMAN Vitoria-Gasteiz in Spain and finished in fifth (and as the top German) at the World Triathlon Long-Distance Championships in Ibiza.
In October 2023, Thoes competed in the legendary IRONMAN Hawaii, finishing fourteenth overall. She seemed optimistic and motivated regarding her performance potential after the race, and convinced that she could improve further.
The IRONMAN Cozumel will be the last race of this year’s season for the 31-year-old athlete. It will be interesting to see how Svenja Thoes performs in this race and whether she can repeat her previous Mexican successes from past years. The competition is being organised by the World Triathlon Corporation as part of their IRONMAN Triathlon series. This means that the first three finishers secure a guaranteed place on the starting line of the 2024 IRONMAN World Championships, this time being held in Nice for the women’s event. We wish Svenja Thoes much success once again for her final competition of the season.