This was our preview and live stream for IRONMAN 70.3 European Championship Tallinn 2024 – you can read full reports on how Panagiotis Bitados and Caroline Pohle claimed brilliant victories in the Pro races.
Estonia is the latest stop in the IRONMAN Pro Series as it plays host to the IRONMAN 70.3 European Championship Tallinn today (Sunday August 25) with defending men’s champion Pieter Heemeryck and Kat Matthews two of the big-name contenders.
Set in the capital City of Tallinn, qualifying slots to the 2025 IRONMAN 70.3 World Championships in Marbella are also up for grabs as well as Pro Series points.
Another huge start list of nearly 100 pro athletes are expected to line up in what is one of the final stops on the circuit before the IRONMAN World Championship races in Nice (women) and Kona (men).
We have everything you need to know about the race, including start times, how to follow live and a full rundown of the pro fields…
How to watch, start time and live tracking
The race takes place today (Sunday August 25) and should have started in Lake Harku, but is now off Stroomi Beach (more details below). The pro races will begin with the men at 09:00 local time, followed by the women 10 minutes later. That corresponds to 07:00 / 07:10 in the UK, 08:00 / 08:10 CET and 02:00 / 02:10 Eastern Time.
As part of the IRONMAN Pro Series there is live coverage which is embedded below so you don’t have to leave this page.
The race will be broadcast for free across multiple platforms for global viewers including proseries.ironman.com, Outside TV, DAZN, L’Équipe in France, and YouTube among others.
The ever reliable IRONMAN Tracker is the perfect data addition to the live coverage too, whether for the pro races or following friends or family in the age-group events.
Pro Women start list
Denmark’s Maja Stage Nielsen will be wearing bib number one and currently sits in fourth place in the Pro Series standings with a total of 11,025 points, thanks to three top 10 finishes so far, including a second at the IRONMAN European Championship in Hamburg.
But Britain’s Kat Matthews is surely the pre-race favourite and her very first 70.3 pro victory came in this event back in 2020. The world number four is the highest ranked in the field and has two Pro Series victories to her name already this season (IRONMAN Vitoria-Gasteiz and IRONMAN Texas) as well as two T100 podiums.
Matthews is the #2 ranked runner in those PTO standings and she’ll be up against the top-rated Tamara Jewett (CAN), who has started to hit form in her last couple of races.
Els Visser (NED) has managed to stay in superb form pretty much throughout 2024 – she’s raced no fewer than 10 times with three wins and eight podiums in total – and not once has she been outside the top five.
And watch out too for Solveig Løvseth, with the Norwegian on the start list following her first Olympics appearance. She’s raced two 70.3s before and won them both – Indian Wells last year and then Warsaw in June.
Pro Men start list
The name that jumps out in the men’s field is last year’s winner Pieter Heemeryck.
The Belgian is making his IRONMAN Pro Series debut and tackling his first 70.3 triathlon of the year, having focused primarily on the T100 which has seen him finish third in Singapore and sixth in London.
He rounded off a successful 2023 with victories at both IRONMAN Portugal-Cascais and IRONMAN 70.3 Knokke-Heist and is currently #10 in the world rankings.
The next highest ranked (at #27) is Kacper Stepniak (POL), though whether he’ll race just a week on from his seventh at IRONMAN Frankfurt remains to be seen – though he did say ‘let’s go again’ on his Instagram page, albeit with a 🫣 emoji!
Pro cyclist Cameron Wurf (AUS) is also slated to start as he builds up to Kona.
And there’s an intriguing name further down the list – Sam Dickinson.
The Brit is part of the BMC Pro Tri team and comes here fresh from his selfless work helping Alex Yee to gold at the Paris Olympics, followed by his own brilliant display in the Mixed Team Relay.
His one previous 70.3 race saw him finish runner-up to Vincent Luis in Bahrain at the end of the 2022 season.
Tallinn course – and swim change
There’s an important update to report as following water quality tests in Lake Harku, which have shown that the current water samples do not meet IRONMAN’s safety thresholds. A decision in collaboration with the Republic of Estonia Health Board and the University of Estonian Marine Institute has now been made to move the swim to Stroomi Beach.
So athletes will now start take on a 1.2-mile (1.9km) bay swim in the typically calm waters of the Baltic Sea, though they’ll have a long ‘run’ at the start as the water is very, very shallow initially.
They’ll then embark on the two-loop 56-mile (90km) bike course, which boasts a mix of city and countryside through the southern villages of Tallinn.
The 13.1-mile (21.1km) two lap run course promises to be flat and fast as athletes run along Tallinn Bay and Stroomi beach, finishing in front of the Rocca al Mare Shopping Centre.
Very small course adjustments have been made to the bike and run course to accommodate the new swim location.
For a much more detailed look at the course, especially from an age-group perspective, take a look at our ‘Let’s Race’ guide here.
Prize Money: What’s on the line?
The prize purse on offer this weekend is $75,000 – with each of the winners collecting a $12,000 share of that total.
In addition to money, there will be a total of eight qualifying slots (four MPRO / four FPRO) for the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship in Marbella, Spain in 2025.
The total funds will be paid ten-deep, as follows:
- $12,000
- $7,000
- $4,250
- $3,500
- $2,750
- $2,250
- $2,000
- $1,500
- $1,250
- $1,000
