Professional triathlete Jamie Riddle has spent much of his career searching for a performance that would convince him he belonged among triathlon’s elite.
In Nice on Sunday, despite finishing seventh at the Ironman 70.3 World Championship, the South African finally felt he had found it.
Riddle stopped the clock in 3:54:44, matching 2025’s seventh-place finish, but said the performances were “not even comparable” after stronger and more stable swim and bike legs before producing the 12th-fastest run of the day.
The result came in one of the deepest fields he has faced, with Hayden Wilde winning ahead of Kristian Blummenfelt and Jelle Geens, while Gustav Iden finished fourth. Riddle was less than four minutes behind Wilde.
More importantly for the 26-year-old, he was racing rather than merely surviving.
“I was a key player in that race,” Riddle said in a sit-down on his YouTube channel reflecting on the race.
“I’ve always been a player in the race, but I’ve never been … making decisions instead of just reactions.”
That was a significant shift for an athlete who admitted he was often just satisfied with making the front group on the bike before fading on the run.
Riddle exited the water 11th and moved towards the front on the bike, reaching the Col de Vence climb in second before helping drive a break in the leading group.
He described the opening section as “super dynamic” before a bizarre setback occurred.
His nutritional aids, which were concentrated into a soft flask, messed all over his aerodynamics bars after he tried to consume them at the top of a gruelling climb during the opening sections of the bike leg.
Then, the water he thought he had stored in the holders fell out along the course, which prevented him from rectifying an increasingly “sticky” situation.
That mishap, which made riding in an aero position unsafe and forced him to ride in a more upright position on the handlebars, resulted in a loss of 40 seconds over a five-minute period before Riddle reached an aide station to fix the issue.
“I was terrified. It was just an absolute show,” he said.
Despite consuming far less carbohydrate than planned, Riddle recovered and produced a 1:10:11 half-marathon, running alongside Casper Stornes and passing athletes he normally expects to beat him on foot.
“My whole career I’ve raced scared,” he said.
“My whole career I’ve raced with insecurities of the run.”
That changed in Nice, with Riddle’s belief that he has gathered even more evidence which shows the gap between his fitness and his ability is starting to close.
Rather than measuring himself solely by podiums and wins, Riddle said he needs to judge whether he reached his potential on the day.
“I feel like for the first time I discovered what I’m capable of,” he said.
That belief now carries into the next challenge, with Riddle preparing for the Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii, on October 10.
- Follow The Herald WhatsApp channel today and stay connected to the stories shaping our world.
The Herald