When it comes to bike training, most triathletes are locked into a power zone on their indoor trainer or focused on getting to the top of the next hill as quickly as possible. Time-saving details tend to come in the form of gear, like the latest reduced-drag skin suits or funky positions to place water bottles for full fairing effect. But even though building your aerobic base and finessing your position is always beneficial, you might be surprised just how much free speed – and time – you are leaving out on the course by not placing a bit more emphasis on those bike handling skills, particularly when it comes to descending.
One of the best examples of this is the Ironman World Championship course in Nice, France, with its 8,000 feet of elevation in the Maritime Alps. In 2019, we marveled at Rudy Von Berg railing it around the corners on familiar roads in the 70.3 worlds. Last year, we saw fellow Frenchman Sam Laidlow deliver similarly over the full distance as he became the youngest men’s winner ever. But perhaps the best example is that of British athlete Kat Matthews at the 2024 Ironman World Championship Nice, whose descending in the second part of the bike leg – much of it in the company of eventual winner Laura Philipp – meant that by the time the pair reached T2, they were seven minutes ahead of French local Marjolaine Pierre and the rest of the field had splintered in their wake.
To illustrate just how hard Matthews rode, she handily uploaded her data to performance tracking app Strava – and, thankfully, to give even more helpful context, so did many of the pro women she raced against. When we pore over the Strava data at different sections of the descent, we can can really show where the time gaps were created.
How Descending Shaped the Race at the 2024 Ironman World Championship Nice
As you can see from the graphic, the Ironman course in Nice is one loop climbing to a rolling plateau before dropping back to the coast.
We’ll look at each of the notable descents in turn and then put them into the bigger picture of the race.
Descent #1: Route de Grasse Toward Pont du Loup
Just over 20 miles into the ride, there is the first descent before the major climb to Col de L’Ecre. At 3.87 miles, the “Route de Grasse towards Pont du Loop” segment on Strava drops 618 feet at an average grade of 3%.
It’s not a particularly technical descent, but we can tell the women are racing it – and also benefiting from closed roads – because the top eight times on this segment are set during the race.
Matthews takes the QOM (“Queen of the Mountain” on Strava) and 13 seconds on Pierre. It’s worth noting that at this point, other than the descent, Pierre is on the charge, leading the race and putting time into everyone except Philipp (who is further back out of the water). That she loses even a few seconds here is a tell for what might come later.