Chrissie Wellington

Christine Ann Wellington (born 18 February 1977) is an English former professional triathlete and four-time Ironman Triathlon World Champion.

Her record of 8 hours 18 minutes 13 seconds is more than 32 minutes faster than the record which stood from 1994 to 2008, when Yvonne van Vlerken broke it by just over 5 minutes.

After graduating with first-class honours in geography from Birmingham University in 1998, Wellington travelled the world for two years, which she described as opening her eyes to the "many problems that exist in the world, but also to the opportunity for positive change."

In 2000, supported by a £10,000 scholarship from the Economic and Social Research Council, she enrolled in an MA course in development studies at the University of Manchester.

Graduating with a Distinction in October 2001, she joined the UK government agency DEFRA in London to work on international development policy.

At DEFRA, she was part of the team that negotiated for the UK at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, and became involved in following up the UK government's commitments on water and sanitation.

She also worked on post-conflict environmental reconstruction policy.

Disillusioned with "bureaucracy and paper pushing", in September 2004 Wellington took sabbatical leave from DEFRA to work in Nepal for Rural Reconstruction Nepal (RRN), a Nepalese development NGO.

Based in the capital, Kathmandu, she managed a community-led total sanitation scheme in Salyan, a conflict-affected district in the west of the country.

She also performed many other tasks for RRN, including preparing project proposals, editing books and writing papers.

Wellington's first triathlon race was at the Eton Super Sprints on 16 May 2004, where she finished third.

In the following two months, she won this race on both occasions.

In July and August she sampled two longer (Olympic distance) triathlons: the Milton Keynes Triathlon and the Bedford Triathlon, finishing fourth and third respectively.

In August, she won the mixed team British triathlon sprint-distance relay championship in Nottingham.

She had to put her triathlon racing on hold for her sabbatical in Nepal, where she was based in Kathmandu, at an altitude of 1350 m (4430 ft).

Every morning before work she would cycle around the neighbouring countryside on her mountain bike, with a group of foreign and Nepali cyclists known as the "Mongolian Cycling Team".

She would also go running along the many hilly trails in the Kathmandu valley.

When riding around the outlying villages on her mountain bike she would often have to wait for male co-workers to catch up with her.

On leaving Nepal at the end of 2005, she travelled to New Zealand, Tasmania and Argentina before returning to her old job at DEFRA in May 2006.

In addition to the Ironman titles, she was also the 2006 International Triathlon Union (ITU) Age Group World Champion and the 2008 ITU long-distance World Champion.

Before becoming a professional triathlete, Wellington worked for the British government as an adviser on international development and, for Rural Reconstruction Nepal, on development projects in Nepal.

International development remains one of her passions.

She is actively involved in supporting charities relating to international development and supporting and encouraging women and girls to take up sport.

She became, after meeting the parents of Jon Blais at her first world championship, an ambassador for the Blazeman Foundation, performing a "Blazeman roll" in his memory at the finish line of all her triathlon races since then.

She campaigns for full equality of women in prize money, sponsorship, and media reporting of sport, and equal opportunities, notably in cycling, for women to be able to compete on the same terms, and over the same race distances, as men.

She was a founding member of Le Tour Entier, which campaigned for a Women's Tour de France and improvements to women's cycling generally.

Christine Wellington was born in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk and grew up in Feltwell, a small village in Norfolk.

She was a competitive swimmer as a teenager, when she swam for Thetford Dolphins, and went on to swim for her university.

She describes herself as a "sporty kid, swimming, playing hockey, running, but never excelling and always more interested in the social side of the sports scene".

She was educated at her local comprehensive school, Downham Market High School and Sixth Form, where she was a member of most school sports teams, but "focused more on my studies than I did on reaching my full potential on the pitch."

She won the World Championship in three consecutive years (2007–2009), but could not start the 2010 World Championship race because of illness, then – while suffering from injuries so severe that her former coach Brett Sutton said she should "not even be on the start line" – regained the title in 2011.

She is the first British athlete to hold the Ironman Triathlon World Championship, and was undefeated in all thirteen of her races over the ironman distance.

She is the only triathlete, male or female, to have won the World Championship less than a year after turning professional, an achievement described by the British Triathlon Federation as "a remarkable feat, deemed to be a near impossible task for any athlete racing as a rookie at their first Ironman World Championships."

She left this job in February 2007 in order to become a professional triathlete.

She held all three world and championship records relating to ironman-distance triathlon races: firstly, the overall world record, secondly, the Ironman World Championship course record (from 2009 until Mirinda Carfrae lowered it in 2013), and thirdly, the official world record for all Ironman-branded triathlon races over the full Ironman distance.

She lowered the world record on all three occasions (2009–2011) she raced Challenge Roth (formerly Quelle Challenge Roth) at Roth in Bavaria, Germany.

Paula Newby-Fraser's course record at the Ironman World Championships had stood for 17 years until Wellington broke it in 2009.

At the time of her retirement, Wellington held the four fastest times ever recorded by a woman over the ironman distance, and had the greatest number of sub-9 hour times – nine, five more than Newby-Fraser's previous record.

Following her 2010 world record, her former coach Brett Sutton described Wellington as "a person of true international sporting excellence that is overshadowed by no one in any other sport."

Her record stood for 12 years until Daniela Ryf set a time of 8 hours 8 minutes 21 seconds in June 2023.