Ironman Taiwan 2025: Age Group Stats and Qualification Times
Ironman Taiwan is next in the Ironman calendar. It’s been an inconsistent race with a number of years missed since it started back in 2015. This year’s event went ahead with 65 qualification slots for men (Nice) and 35 for women (Kona). So a slightly lower allocation of Kona slots than many other races. Taiwan is one of the slowest races on the calendar, this year doesn’t change that but gets a speed boost from a shortened swim.
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The significantly shorter swim makes for a much faster start to this race. Typically Taiwan has a slower swim than the average Ironman. The bike that follows is much slower than previous events in Taiwan and the run trends faster. The overall balance is a faster race most noticeably around the middle of the pack. The majority of this can likely be explained by the shorter swim times.
The DNF rates for this year’s race are the lowest this event has achieved. A short swim is an obvious help but the attrition rate is low compared with other years. Conditions in Taiwan make for a tougher race, this year appears to have been a little easier on the competitors.
The median splits confirm the differences shown in the distributions. The fast swim splits of course and then bike times slower while run times are faster. The differences are large enough to be quite consistent across age groups.
The majority of competitors in Taiwan are local or from the Asia-Pacific region. It’s not the easiest location to travel to outside of that area and conditions are challenging for racing. The majority of slots go to Taiwanese age groupers, Japan takes a large portion of the places compared to the number of athletes racing.
Tracking times for specific positions at Ironman Taiwan mainly highlights just how variable this race has been. 2025 is one of the faster years if only because of the shorter swim. The other comparable year – 2018 – also had changes to the swim that meant times were fast. The last race, in 2022, was significantly slower. You can also see here how few women athletes race making for very sparse charts.
Based on the number of athletes starting the event and the slots available for the race I’ve calculated the slot allocation. This doesn’t account for roll down at the event. The qualification times given are those that would automatically qualify with that many slots.
You can look at the allocation in more detail on my Ironman Taiwan qualification page. I’ve just added the ability to manually adjust the number of slots at the race and see how that impacts allocation and qualification times.
For the majority of age groups 2025 has some of the fastest top 20 finishing places. Short swim of course. There are some exceptions M40-44 trends closer to the course averages while M25-29 were definitely slower than average for the race. Not many under 30s entered the race this year.
To conclude, we have a faster year at a slower Ironman race. The extra speed coming from a shortened course on race day. Taiwan remains a challenging race that’s best suited to those comfortable racing in hot and humid conditions. It has slow qualification times as a result but is rarely a course I recommend for those looking to qualify.