Kona 2026 World Champion
Taylor Knibb is a 70.3 and IRONMAN World Champion
In the space of 28 days, Taylor Knibb became a 4-time IRONMAN 70.3 World Champion, raced the UCI World Time Trial Championships in Montréal, and became IRONMAN World Champion in Kona. This extraordinary season makes Taylor the fifth ever to win both IRONMAN world titles in the same season.
Three very different races, one common thread: a position that lets her deliver power for longer, while still running off the bike. That position has been developed with DRAG2ZERO and Matt Bottrill in the Wind Tunnel and at Catesby Tunnel, and it is built around the DRAG2ZERO.66 Pole System and her custom .66 AeroBib.
This is the story of her season, and of the work behind the speed.
A Fourth 70.3 World Title and a New Course Record
On 12 September, Taylor won her fourth IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship in 4:19:24, taking 3:40 off the course record.
She came out of the 1.9km non-wetsuit swim with the leaders, then took the race apart on the bike. Within 20km she had a minute on the field. By the summit of the Col de Vence the gap was over six minutes.
The climb is where the numbers stand out. Taylor set a new record of 29:48 for the ascent, holding over 300 watts for roughly half an hour and gaining more than four minutes on her main rivals. Her 2:32:07 bike split was the fastest of the day by over three minutes.
Then she ran a 1:17:56 off it to win by just over four minutes. A hard ride is only useful if you can still run afterwards, and that is exactly what her position and equipment choices are designed to allow. Improving aerodynamic efficiency on the bike to save energy for the run.
Montréal: Against the Clock
Eight days after Nice, Taylor lined up for the USA at the UCI Road World Championships individual time trial. It was her Worlds debut, against a field of the best pure time trialists in the sport.
The course covered roughly 39km through Montréal with only around 220m of climbing. Flat, fast and exposed, it rewards one thing above all: sustained power through a low-drag position.
Taylor finished an impressive 13th in 52:43, 2:19 behind the winner. As an early starter, she set the fastest time at the first check and sat in the hot seat for some time. She was the top American by 1:22.
For a triathlete with a 70.3 world title still in her legs, 13th against the world’s best time trialists is a remarkable result. It also showed that the position we develop for triathlon holds its own in a pure, 50-minute effort.
Taylor used the DRAG2ZERO.44 Pole System during this event.
DRAG2ZERO.44 UCI Poles
In order to comply with the UCI regulations, Taylor Knibb used our DRAG2ZERO.44 Pole system to ensure she had the best advantage over her competition during her race.
Small adjustments were made to the position to dial in the .44 poles with Taylor’s position to maximise her aerodynamic efficiency.
Kona: IRONMAN World Champion
On the 10th of October, Taylor Knibb realised her dream, becoming IRONMAN World Champion in 8:36:29, a year after leading late into the 2025 race before collapsing in the heat.
She was second out of a rough 3.8km swim, 1:26 behind Lucy Charles-Barclay. Taylor caught her on the 180km bike, and the pair traded the lead for much of the ride. In the final third, Taylor finally rode clear and reached T2 with a three-minute lead.
Her 4:40:07 split was the fastest of the day, but around nine minutes slower than her 2025 ride. That shows how punishing the wind and heat were this year.
After 2025, we knew Taylor’s energy balance was on a knife edge. The goal was to be as fast as possible on the bike while saving just enough for the run. Through sessions in the wind tunnel and at Catesby Tunnel, we worked hard to find an aerodynamically optimised position she could hold efficiently for nearly five hours. It wasn’t built for peak power. It was built to protect her legs for the marathon.
The run produced one of the most dramatic finishes Kona has seen. Defending champion and fellow DRAG2ZERO.66 pole system rider Solveig Løvseth passed Taylor with around 8km to go and looked set to retain her title. Then, in the final mile, the conditions caught up with her. Taylor ran past to take the win with a career-best 2:57:46 marathon.
At the finish, she said she was stunned. Having already won the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship this year, she becomes only the third woman to win both world titles in the same season.
The Position and Pole System
Sustainable, Powerful, Efficient
The fastest position on paper is NOT always the fastest position on race day. With nearly 90 years of shared experience in cycling aerodynamics, showing that no Gain is Easy. Matt Bottrill and Simon Smart took a pragmatic approach to Taylor’s riding position. Drag numbers mean little if a rider cannot produce power in that position, or cannot hold it for 90km, let alone 180km, before a marathon.
So our work with Taylor has been built on four principles, in this order:
- Sustainable. She has to be able to hold it, in heat, wind, and fatigue, for hours. A position she sits up out of loses all of its advantage.
- Nutrition. Taylor has to be as efficient as possible when taking on nutrition, and that is where the AeroBib comes in. Nutrition exactly where you want it
- Powerful. Her hip angle, reach, and arm support have to let her push the watts she is capable of, on the flat and on long climbs.
- Efficient. Within those limits, we take out every watt of drag we can find to save calories.
Get the first two right, and the third and fourth become far more valuable. A rider who can stay low, stay comfortable, and keep pushing power is faster across a whole race than one who tests well for five minutes. That is also what makes the run possible: less wasted energy on the bike means more left for the last 10km.
Catesby Tunnel: Proving it on the road
Catesby is a 1.7-mile former railway tunnel in Northamptonshire, sheltered from the wind. This setup enables us to test Taylor’s riding position in a controlled environment under real riding conditions. This shows whether a position that tested well in the wind tunnel still works when she is moving, breathing hard, and producing power, and whether she can repeat it hour after hour.
The combination is what makes the difference. The wind tunnel tells us what is fastest. Catesby tells us what is fastest for Taylor at race effort. Only changes that pass both make it into her race setup.
The Wind Tunnel: Dialling the position in
In the wind tunnel, conditions are perfectly controlled and repeatable. That makes it the place to compare small changes with confidence: stack height, reach, width, angle, extension grip, head position, and how the shape holds across a range of yaw angles and speeds. We measure each change in CdA and turn it into the number that matters to an athlete: watts saved at race speed.
The .66 Pole System
The .66 pole system gives Taylor a cockpit that can be set precisely to the position found in testing and adjusted as it evolves. Stack, reach, and armpad setup can be fine-tuned without compromising stiffness or control, so the shape she rides in Nice, Montréal, and Kona is the shape that was proven in the tunnels. It is the same principle as our “wind tunnel in a box”: the knowledge from testing, built into the hardware.
The .66 AeroBib is the final piece. Custom-made for Taylor and fitted to her .66 cockpit, saving an additional 10 watts of drag whilst also improving stability and control in windy conditions. Doubling as storage for gels and nutrition, which matters on a 180km ride where fuelling is part of the race.
The AeroBib is made to fit a position that is already settled. That is why it comes last: only once Taylor was confident in her setup on the .66 poles did it make sense to build the AeroBib around it.
You do not need to be a world champion to benefit from the same approach. The principles behind Taylor’s position apply to every athlete: a position you can hold that lets you push power, made as slippery as possible within those limits.
The path is the same one Taylor followed:
- Ride the .66 pole system and dial in your position with an AeroFit session.
- Ride, train, and adjust until you are confident and comfortable in it.
- Once your position is settled, add a custom .66 AeroBib to further reduce your drag and improve nutrition storage.
Congratulations, Taylor, on an extraordinary season. We are proud to have played a part.
What this means for your racing
