Svenja Thoes sets her sights on Challenge Roth
DATEV Challenge Roth, which describes itself as the ‘home of triathlon’, is more than just a triathlon – it is a sporting celebration that brings together athletes and fans from all over the world. Sunday (7 July 2024) sees the world’s largest long-distance triathlon race being held in Roth in Middle Franconia for the fortieth time. Some 300,000 spectators will once again line the route and create a truly magical atmosphere for participants.
The race of superlatives
This race sets the hearts of endurance sport fans racing and sees more than 3,500 individual starters and 650 relay teams competing over the 226-kilometre route. An entire district is turned upside down when the athletes take on the challenge of a 3.8-kilometre swim, 180-kilometre cycle and a 42.2-kilometre marathon run.
As is the case every year, Challenge Roth has attracted a prestigious professional field. Participants include Saarland triathlete Svenja Thoes, who is particularly looking forward to this milestone in her competition season in front of a home crowd. It will be Svenja’s second time competing in Roth. At her first event in 2022, she finished in seventh (just one week before her Ironman Nice win).
Strong competition at Challenge Roth
Once again this year, the Saarland athlete will be lining up with some of the best triathletes in the world, including two-time Roth winner Anne Haug and Laura Philipp. Last year, Anne Haug was only beaten by Swiss competitor Daniela Ryf with a new world record time (8:08:21 hrs). Laura Philipp, the German record holder for long-distance triathlon, is returning to the home of triathlon after achieving third place in Roth last year.
Svenja Thoes has also had some previous successes in the long distance – also known as the IRONMAN distance – during her career: the 33-year-old has already won four Ironman races, including the Ironman Italy 2022 (with a course record), Ironman France in Nice 2022, Ironman Ireland 2022 (with a course record) and Ironman Mexico 2018.
The season and Svenja are both gathering speed
Roth will be Svenja’s first full Ironman distance race this year. The former flight attendant launched her 2024 season with seventh place at the Challenge Mogan Gran Canaria. Thoes completed this middle-distance event, comprising a 1.9-km swim, 90-km cycle and 21.1-km run, in an overall time of 4:25:55 hours. Despite needing to recover after a long break from running due to injury, she put in a strong cycling performance and gained the second-best time. In May she finished in third at the OMNi-BiOTiC® Apfelland Triathlon in Austria, another middle-distance race. Plans to compete at the Audi Triathlon Ingolstadt in early June were thwarted by flooding, so she entered the TradeINN Zarauzko Triatloia in Basque Country instead. In difficult and adverse conditions, she gained valuable experience and competition strength for her upcoming tasks and races.
The highlight awaits
It will be exciting to see how Svenja fares against strong national and international competition. Challenge Roth on Sunday is another season highlight for this professional triathlete, and a good opportunity to gauge her current performance and prepare for the season’s peak in September. This will see Nice (rather than Hawaii, so separate from the men’s competition) hosting the women’s Ironman world championships on France’s Côte d’Azur, for which Svenja has already qualified.
We are crossing our fingers once again for the Challenge in Roth. We look forward to seeing Svenja in action and wish her every success at the DATEV Challenge Roth 2024.