Ironman Texas 2025: Age Group Stats and Qualification Times
We’ve seen some crazy fast Pro times at Ironman Texas this year, but how did the Age Groups fare? Texas is a championship race so a lot of qualification slots are on offer for Kona and Nice. This can draw a faster field but it’s also a large race, with over 2,000 competitors, and at that size we tend to see a broader range of athletes.
I’ve compared this year’s finisher distributions against results from the previous 5 races (there was no race in 2020). If we start with the finishing distributions, they aren’t hugely different for mid-to-back of pack athletes. The density there is similar. Moving forward in the field we really see a difference in the top 5-10% where 2025 results are slower than times over the last 5 races. While there were stand out pro times we’re not looking at an overall fast day in Texas.
Swim and run both clearly trend slower at the front, bike a little less so. The swim appears to have been generally slower than the last few years, but at the mid-pack neither bike nor run are that different.
DNF rates are in line with recent years of racing in Texas. It should be noted that 15% is quite high compared to many races, but that’s the level Texas has been at since 2019. Swim and run DNFs were a little higher this year while bike DNFs were slightly lower.
As seen in the distributions above the mid pack isn’t too different to previous years of racing. This is reflected in the median splits which are also quite similar. You can now filter and adjust the range of results used to calculate average splits on the Ironman Texas 2025 Averages page. For example, you can adjust the data to show the average splits for age groupers finishing under 10 hours.
Unsurprisingly, the majority of competitors are North American in origin. The qualification slots arte likely to have been shared out a bit more broadly though.
Finishing times have been quite variable in Texas. There’ve been years with adjusted courses – like 2016 – even so looking at recent races there’s a wide range of times for these age group finishing positions. The general trend for most of these positions is a slower race than 2023/2024 but not the slowest of recent races. It varies a lot with age group though, compare F40-44 with M40-44, two very different patterns in recent years.
Based the number of slots available at this race and the number of athletes starting I’ve calculated the expected allocation and the times that would qualify before any roll down. There are a lot of slots on offer which helps bring down qualifying times despite some age groups having very fast winners.
The Ironman Texas 2025 Qualifiers page now lets you adjust the number of slots to see how that would impact qualification times.
Looking at times for the top twenty in each age group there’s an interesting pattern here. For most female age groups this year’s race was faster than the average and faster than last year. For men though this year’s race is often slower than the average and last year. There are exceptions but enough age divisions show this pattern to be worth commenting on. I can’t help wondering if the Kona slots for women led to a more competitive field there while there was less depth for men?
My conclusion on this year’s age group race is that it wasn’t too different to recent years of racing when we consider the whole field. It looks like the front of pack wasn’t quite as fast though. Hidden in that top level view is the fact that women’s age groups were faster at the front than usual.