Whakatāne’s Hayden Wilde will kick off his 2026 season alongside a talent-packed field at Ironman 70.3 Geelong on Sunday.

The race marks the second stop of the 2026 Experience Oman Ironman Pro Series following the season opener in Taupō, New Zealand.

The race will be broadcast live and free for all international audiences on YouTube, ironman.com/proseries and DAZN.

The men’s race begins at 9.30am New Zealand time on Sunday, with the women’s race starting five minutes later.

The Ironman 70.3 Geelong triathlon will offer professional triathletes a professional prize purse of $US50,000 and three qualifying slots per gender to the World Championship event in Nice, France in September.

The men’s race features a showdown for the ages, as reigning and two-time world champion Jelle Geens (Belgium), 2022 world champion Kristian Blummenfelt (Norway), and Wilde, the 2024 world championship runner-up go head-to-head for the first time over the middle distance.

The last time the trio raced was at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, where Wilde took the silver medal.

Geens, who lives on the Gold Coast in Australia, returns to Geelong as the defending champion but will face serious competition from Blummenfelt, in a repeat of their incredible battle at the 2025 world championship triathlon in Marbella – where Geens outsprinted Blummenfelt to clinch his second championship title by just three seconds.

Geens will also face Wilde, another athlete he’s beaten to the world championship title, having run away from the Kiwi in the final few kilometres of the 2024 edition held in Taupō.

Wilde’s short course speed is expected to be a decisive factor in the race for the title in Geelong.