Marten Van Riel Runs Away With IRONMAN Lake Placid: Shatters Course Record

Marten Van Riel went 7:41:57 after running a 2:34:39 marathon to shatter the course record at IRONMAN Lake Placid today to set a new course record by eight minutes, while also breaking Trevor Foley’s run course record to dominate the day at the latest event in the IRONMAN Pro Series. That puts the Belgian star very much in contention to take the Pro Series title this year – he’s now in second place behind Kristian Blummenfelt and has a 70.3 performance to add to his points total. (Van Riel finished second to Blummenfelt at IRONMAN Texas earlier this year, but has today’s win and a win at IRONMAN 70.3 Elsinore to go along with that runner-up finish.)

It wasn’t quite a wire-to wire win for Van Riel, but it was close. Fraser Minnican (GBR) would lead the way out of the swim in 47:04, but Van Riel had done much of the leading through the first leg and was right with him as Americans Thomas Gorden and Ben Kanute trailed by roughly a minute. Three of the other potential favourites – Matthew Marquardt, Rudy Von Berg and Jason West – all hit T2 roughly three minutes behind the leader. Foley, who won in New Zealand earlier this year, finished the swim well behind – heading up to the transition area in the Lake Placid’s speed skating oval after a 55:21 swim split in the non-wetsuit swim.

Once on the bike Van Riel quickly made it clear that he wasn’t going to be holding back, steadily pulling clear of the rest of the field. Defending champion Marquardt found himself 2:24 back by the half way point of the ride, with Kanute at 4:38, while Foley and Von Berg were roughly six minutes down.

By the end of the ride Marquardt was able to gain back a bit of time, reaching the speed skating oval 1:18 back of Van Riel, with Foley at 7:24, Kanute at 7:32 and Von Berg sitting in fifth at 10:48 back.

Out on the run course Marquardt managed to keep the gap roughly the same through the first seven miles of the challenging Lake Placid run course, but then the elastic snapped and Van Riel started to pull clear – by the halfway point of the run he was a shade under three minutes ahead, and would hold steady to finally cross the line with just over a four minute cushion. Marquardt had an excellent performance – besting his previous course record of 7:50:08 with his 7:46:11 finish – it just wasn’t enough to compete with Van Riel on this day.

The race for the final spot on the podium turned into an interesting duel between Kanute and West, who had come off the bike in eighth place, 16 minutes behind Van Riel. While Foley was in third halfway through the run (but still 11:07 behind), he would fade dramatically over the last six miles the run. Kanute (@13:14) and West (@15:21) were fourth and fifth at that halfway point. By the 20 mile point Foley was still in third, but was just over 15 minutes behind, with West just 17 seconds back and Kanute sitting about a minute behind. Three miles later, though, Foley had cracked and found himself in sixth as Von Berg had also passed, with West in third, but suddenly starting to lose steam and only a few seconds ahead of Kanute. West would end up stopping for a short time, which allowed Kanute to make the pass and, within a mile, was 40 seconds up. Kanute would hang tough, running a 2:43:48 marathon to take third, while West, despite the stop, would put together the day’s second-fastest marathon to finish fourth. Von Berg would nail fifth, with Germany’s Frederic Funk bouncing back from Challenge Roth a couple of weeks ago to take sixth and get himself Kona qualifying slot.

“Matthew really made me work for it,” Van Riel said after the race. “I had a really rough patch at the end of the bike and then at the start of the run. And I started running quite fast. And Matthew was catching a bit, and I was thinking, ‘what am I going to have to do today to beat this guy?’ But. then on the uphill, he started losing a little bit of time again, and that was obviously a confidence boost for me to keep pushing.”

After the race, Marquardt was asked what it was like to find himself chasing all day.

“It’s frustrating in a good way, in that I knew that I was having a really good performance and still not really able to bring very much time back on Martin,” the American said. “So. I knew that he was racing really well too, and, you know, hoped that he would crack, but that didn’t quite happen. But I am super happy overall with how the day went, because I was faster than I was last year … Martin had an incredible day.”

In terms of Kona Qualifiers, it looks like those slots will go to West, Funk, Sowieja and Hogenhaug – who grabs the last spot after also competing at Challenge Roth.

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