Recapping a Record Breaking Day in Kona

As I wrote in my lead-up articles to yesterday’s IRONMAN World Championships, I repeated the same phrase over and over again: Kona is full of surprises. Yesterday’s race was no exception.

The first, to me, being just how fast everyone went. The expected surf on the water never materialized, creating a much larger front pack starting the bike together. And once everyone realized that Sam Laidlow had gone up the road and was planning on distancing himself, the bike became classically frantic. That main pack had many moving parts to it, especially as Magnus Ditlev arrived to the party.

And then the wind kicked up a little, and the temperatures got hotter.

In the final 35 miles of the bike, Laidlow extended his lead out from 2:40 (over Ditlev) to almost a full six minutes (to Robert Kallin). Ditlev had seemingly cracked — he was another minute back. The chase pack splintered apart, with Kristian Hogenhaug, Matthew Marquardt, Leon Chevalier, and Menno Koolhaas in the first bit of the remains, and Nick Thompson, Kristian Blummenfelt, Gregory Barnaby, Kacper Stepniak, Rudy Von Berg, Patrick Lange, and Antonio Benito Lopez bringing in the rear. That group had lost nearly four minutes in the same time period.

On paper, this was Laidlow’s race to lose. But, as Von Berg noted in his post-race interview, “Kona hits different.”

Patrick Lange won this race on Ali’i Drive. “Well, Ryan, they finish on Ali’i Drive. Of course he did.” No, I mean in the opening 10 kilometers of the run course out-and-back along Kailua Bay. Lange ran the outbound section in 5:34/mile pace, or 2:25 marathon pace. By doing so, he passed nine men on the road to move into second. He was still just over seven minutes behind Laidlow.

But it was that action — of crushing the first part of the run — that looks like it may have forced Laidlow into upping his pace. On his way back to town, Laidlow’s pace jumped by 10 seconds per mile, despite the return leg being slightly more uphill. He had been running in the 6:05-6:10/mile range, but once he had seen Lange post turnaround, it became sub-6:00 miles. That may not seem like much, but given the totality of conditions, it was enough. By the time Laidlow had gone over the top of Palani he looked like he had completely melted, and it was now Lange in firm control.

Full credit to Laidlow: he stuck around to finish in 18th place. Putting the speed of the day in perspective again, he completely fell apart on the marathon, running 3:12:49, and still had a total time of 8:02:01. It’s just that fast now.

Other notes:

Bike Course Record Blown Away

Seven different men all beat Laidlow’s prior bike course record of 4:04:36.

Much will be made about whether Laidlow overbiked; the classic adage of “there’s no such thing as a good bike followed by a bad run” comes to mind. That said, I do not think the case is that simple. I think a better argument might be that Laidlow overbiked given the tactical choices he made on the run. I think he had a game plan of trying to run in the mid-2:40s and to try to see if anybody would catch him and he got caught out by Lange’s surge out of transition.

That said, it was a mixed set of results for those who biked this fast. Laidlow, Chevalier, Kallin, and Ditlev all suffered immensely at some point during the run. Of them, it was Ditlev and Chevalier who rebounded and were able to finish second and fourth (with Chevalier nearly hunting down Rudy Von Berg again for third). Wurf and Hogenhaug both had good runs to take 6th and 9th, respectively. Kallin, like Laidlow, could not rebound and finished 23rd.

As for Foley: after coming out of the water nearly last, he had nearly ridden onto the back of the primary chase group when he crashed in the final miles of the bike. He was able to get back on and finish riding, but did not finish the race. A shame, as he looked like he had potential to run through this field.

Also, a special shoutout to Australian age-group athlete Sam Askey-Doran, who is the proud owner of the swim course record. His 45:43 swim took 56 seconds off the previous record, set by Jan Sibbersen in 2018. Askey-Doran would finish in 9:26:29 total time, good enough for 17th place in the M18-24 age group.

One for the Old Guys

Lange is 39, and his six year time gap between world titles is the longest in IRONMAN history. For all the talk of young guys changing the game, it was some of the old guard that had the best days.

In long course triathlon terms these days, Gregory Barnaby (33), Cameron Wurf (41), Kristian Hogenhaug (33), Matt Hanson (39), Bradley Weiss (35), and David McNamee (36) are ancient. (Yes, it pains me being the same age as Hanson to say that; M40-44, here I come!) But the wily veterans proved that race-craft still exists. Roughly half of the paychecks earned yesterday went to guys 33 and over.

Of those performances, I think Wurf and Hanson stand out the most. Wurf has always raced well in Hawaii with a worst performance on debut in 2017 of 17th. Otherwise, he’s been in the top 12. Yesterday was no different, using his best-ever marathon run in Kona to take a well deserved 7th place. Hanson, on the other hand, has almost had the opposite luck. He has been long-suffering poor results here, never finishing higher than 15th. A best ever swim, along with his consistent run, saw him take 10th place — and a good enough result to earn more critical points in the IRONMAN Pro Series.

Underrated Performance of the Day

Leon Chevalier takes this in my book. He was 34th coming out of the water, more than 3.5 minutes off of the lead. And he rode his tail off on the second half of the bike. It was his efforts late that turned the chase pack into scattered remnants. On the run, he was one of many to be suffering; perhaps one of the more famous images of the live stream will be him sticking his entire head into a plastic trash can full of ice, desperately trying to cool down in the Natural Energy Lab. It was here he lost his podium position to Rudy Von Berg, but nearly gained it back before the finish line.

Chevalier has flown under the radar at World Championship events. He’s now gone seventh, fifth, and fourth. He will be impossible to ignore going forward.

Honorable Mention: Magnus Ditlev. Ditlev was written off by many, myself included, when he faded hard in the final miles of the bike and then took significant time in transition. Although the bike fade certainly wasn’t part of the plan, the time in transition was; Ditlev knew that he had to keep his temperature down in order to have a chance.

In hindsight, he made the absolute right call. He was one of the few to be able to collect himself and rebound, carving through the field on his way to a second place. He is bound to win an IRONMAN World Championship one day. It’s just a matter of when and where (I think he may have a better shot in Nice than Kona, due to the nature of the course).

The Spectacular Explosions

Kristian Blummenfelt: It felt…off…to keep the camera on Blummenfelt for as long as they did while he was doing his best Family Guy ipecac impression. Blummenfelt simply could not stop vomiting for what felt like an eternity. It felt like he’d be off the bike in Hawi.

Of course, that isn’t how Blummenfelt rolls, coming into transition as part of what was left of the chase, and was outrunning everyone not named Lange on Ali’i. It looked a repeat of Hamburg, where Blummenfelt also struggled with stomach issues and somehow won. But Blummenfelt is, in fact, human. He slogged through a 3:32 marathon for a 35th place finish.

Other athletes with marathons over 3:10: Laidlow, Robert Kallin, Ben Kanute, Lionel Sanders, Daniel Baekkegard, Tomasz Sala, Jason Pohl, Jackson Laundry, Andre Lopes, Thor Bendix Madsen, Igor Amorelli, and Stephen McKenna.

And your DNF counter: Gustav Iden, Chris Leiferman, Leonard Arnold, Trevor Foley, Arnaud Guilloux, Robert Wilkowiecki, Reinaldo Colucci, Denis Chevrot, Clement Mignon, Pieter Heemeryck, Matt Burton, and Arthur Horseau. That’s 12 men, or 22% of the men’s pro field that wound up not completing the event for one reason or another. It’s also an increase of four athletes not finishing the race over last year’s event in Nice.

As Von Berg said: Kona hits different.

Photos: Jason Strohbehn

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