Taylor Knibb first came to the Ironman Kona World Championships at age 12 in 2010 to see her mom, Leslie, finish 11th in the 40-to-45 age group.
“I remember standing on Ali‘i Drive drive watching the helicopter following the race leader,” Knibb said. “In my family we call it chasing the helicopter. That’s what I wanted one day, to be the athlete underneath it, chasing it, leading the race.”
In 2025, Knibb chased the helicopter. The D.C. native led the 140.6-mile triathlon on Hawaii’s Big Island as the Ali‘i Drive finish line approached.
But with two miles to go of the final leg, the marathon run in 80-degree temperatures, Knibb slowed to a wobbly walk. She took a seat on the Queen Ka’ahumanu Highway, one mile before the famed right turn onto Palani Road — a crowning stretch for so many champions.
“I want to be done,” she said as Solveig Løvseth ran past her, minutes later becoming the first Norwegian woman to win the race.
Knibb was done.
Her coach, Dan Lorang, and agent, Patrick Lemieux, were among the first people to reach her on the pavement.
“Taylor said a lot of a lot of things,” Lorang remembered. “She didn’t stop talking.”
Knibb, in a Triathlon Hour podcast published four months later, recalled what she could.
She balked at the suggestion of an ambulance, instinctively thinking of the potential expense. She did get into a medical car, where she vomited on Lorang.
Her temperature was taken rectally with about 15 people surrounding her: 104.9 degrees, though it was recorded “a decent amount of time” after she stopped running.
“I overheated myself completely with less than 3k to go,” she posted.
The day after the race, Knibb took another seat, this time on a beach, and reflected.
“If you told me I could either win Kona or keep my career, I’d choose my career every time,” she said in a video posted in December by The Feed, one of her sponsors. “That day reminded me how much I love what I do. People ask if it feels like failure. It doesn’t. It feels like clarity. I race to win, and I’m at peace with that. I’d rather know I wasn’t good enough on the day than wonder forever if I played it too safe. I learned that my limits are closer than I thought. I learned that I can literally push myself to the edge. And I learned that sometimes you fall over that edge.”
Knibb is back in Kona to race the Ironman on Saturday. She is among the favorites after a stellar season that included winning a fourth Half Ironman (70.3 mile) world title -- by 4 minutes, 6 seconds -- in Nice, France, on Sept. 12.
“It was the most complete Taylor that I have seen so far,” Lorang, her coach since 2024, said of that performance.
Knibb entered her first triathlon at age 11 (a 30-minute race), inspired by her mom. Around that time, her dad, Bob, said that if she ever won Ironman Kona, that he’d do a 140.6-miler one day, too.
“My dad can’t swim; well, he can if he needed to save his life, but he really can’t swim,” Knibb said Thursday. “I think he got very scared last year.”
Knibb matriculated at Cornell — just like mom — where she ran and swam. In 2021, she became the youngest American to race an Olympic triathlon, placing 16th individually and winning a silver medal in the mixed-gender relay.
Knibb won her first Half Ironman world title in 2022, then placed fourth in her 140.6-mile debut in Kona in 2023. She returned to the Olympic distance (32 miles) in 2024, finishing 19th individually in Paris and winning another mixed relay silver.
Knibb also won the U.S. road cycling time trial title in 2024, earning an Olympic spot in that event. She was 19th in Paris, crashing four times in the rain but becoming the first American since 1988 to compete in two sports with different international governing bodies at one Summer Olympics.
Knibb could bid for the same double at the 2028 LA Games. This past May, she returned to Olympic distance triathlon for the first time since Paris, placing 11th in a World Series event in Italy. In June, she won another national time trial title on the bike.
“I declared I’m not going back to this (Olympic distance triathlon after Paris),” Knibb told Bob Babbitt last month, “but then I realized how much I missed racing.”
Knibb actually fell further in love with Kona after last year’s experience.
On Saturday, she will bid to become the second American woman or man to win in Kona in 24 years after Chelsea Sodaro in 2022. And the first U.S. Olympian to win since Julie Leach in 1982.
“I hope I’ll be back chasing that helicopter again,” Knibb said after last year’s race. “One day I’ll make it to the top of Palani again. And this time I’ll finish the job.”
