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- My Week in Tri: 28 August
My Week in Triathlon
My triathlon thoughts and learnings over the last week. Hit reply if you have feedback…or to let me know if you’ve raced a world champs before? I tried to qualify twice, failed twice and now have a book on Amazon about it 🤓
70.3 World Champs: Full Results here
Knibb was out the water with a small lead group, including Simmonds. The other favourites were about 90s behind. Knibb broke away on the bike with only Simmonds keeping pace until the 45km mark. She got off the bike 2min ahead of Simmonds and 5min ahead of the other superstars. Knibb remained strong having the 4th fastest run split. Matthews had the 2nd fastest run of the day catching Simmonds and somehow keeping Pallant-Browne at bay. | Men: A large group were lead out the water by Nieschlag with Blummenfelt a stone’s throw away. Sanders and Long were just over 2min back. The front group was whittled down to 7 with Funk and Margirier the two big names really pushing hard on the bike. Margirier and Funk got into T2 first and had remarkably extended their lead to the chase pack (inc. Long) to over 3:30. It looked to be the strong running Margirier’s race to lose in the opening stages with potentially Nieschlag coming from behind and Funk somewhere in between…BUT Bogen had other ideas. Just after 3km he made a surge and never looked back. Funk kept the pressure on while Margirier faded eventually being passed by Stratmann.
Women🥇 Taylor Knibb (03:53:01) 🥈 Kat Matthews (03:57:04) 🥉 Imogen Simmonds (03:57:55) | Men🥇 Rico Bogen (03:32:21) 🥈 Fred Funk (03:33:25) 🥉 Jan Stratmann (03:34:10) |
Challenge Davos: Full Results here
An interesting race with the bike only being 54km long due to the two epic mountain climbs and 1,770m of vertical gain 🤯
Nieuwoudt came out the swim with a 2min deficit but found herself leading by halfway on the bike. She was caught by Brunnee and the pair entered T2 together. Nieuwoudt was class on the run and is now leading the Challenge rankings. | Viain had just over 1min to make up after the swim. Viain reached the top of the first climb a few seconds from the leader Thalmann. By the time they hit T2 he had a 3min lead. Noble lost almost 8min on the technical bike but ran from 5th into 2nd with the 2nd fastest run.
Women🥇 Magda Nieuwoudt (04:11:16) 🥈 Merle Brunnee (04:13:26) 🥉 Lisa-Maria Dornauer (04:19:29) | Men🥇 Simon Viain (03:37:27) 🥈 Caleb Noble (03:42:33) 🥉 Samuel Boettinger (03:43:02) |
Menen European Champs: Full Results here
Diederiks was almost 3min behind and in 9th place after the swim with Pedersen in the lead. She was by far the strongest rider and consolidated her lead with the 2nd fastest run. Langownik stormed the run coming from around 7th to finish in 2nd. | Naeyaert found himself about 1min behind in T1 with Wayaffe having a similar deficit and Comhair way back in 23rd almost 4min behind. The all Belgian podium were strong on the bike with Naeyaert finding himself at the front into T2. Wayaffe closed down over a minute on the run but ultimately ran out of road.
Women🥇 Diede Diederiks (04:11:05) 🥈 Marta Lagownik (04:14:24) 🥉 Jenny Jendryschik (04:16:30) | Men🥇 Louis Naeyaert (03:45:47) 🥈 Jonathan Wayaffe (03:46:23) 🥉 Dieter Comhair (03:47:37) |
Super League London Full Results here
3 back to back 300m swim, 4km bike and 1.6km run.
Potter took an early lead of about 6s after the first mini tri. On the second bike, a group of 8 whittled down to just 5, with the run being led by Spivey, Potter, Coldwell, Lehair and Waugh all finishing together. On the last bike, Spivey and Coldwell had a small break away. Waugh brought her dropped teammate Potter back to the front to make a front pack of 4 with Lehair a few seconds behind. Potter faded on the run while Lehair came from behind and had to defend two short chutes from Coldwell and Spivey to take the win! | Yee had a small deficit after the first swim but there was a large group finishing the first mini tri together. A group of 8 mostly stayed together on the 2nd bike but Brownlee, Yee and Reid broke away on the run to get ahead. The 3 leaders had maintained their lead on the last swim and bike and Yee brought it home with his trademark run.
Women🥇 Jeanne Lehair (00:49:51) 🥈 Sophie Coldwell (00:49:53) 🥉 Taylor Spivey (00:49:54) | Men🥇 Alex Yee (00:45:23) 🥈 Jonny Brownlee (00:45:25) 🥉 Tayler Reid (00:45:33) |
Other Bullets:
Worlds Where What: What happened to some big names at 70.3 World Champs? Ryf had an off day and came 9th. Philipp had a very poor swim and fought back to 6th. Lawrence DNF’d after admitting she’s fighting an injury. India Lee DNF’d on the bike. West didn’t start due to illness. Blummenfelt came 36th after suffering with illness. Sanders was DQ’d after crossing an imaginary line…can you imagine…article here.
ITU Cash: Max Stapley admitted on the Triathlon Mockery podcast that his girlfriend came 7th at the Paris Test Event and only “broke even” after having her accommodation paid for her but having to buy her own food. Link to podcast here.
Classy Funk: Such a cool interview by The Daily Tri where he interviewed Fred Funk and his significant other. It’s such a great perspective of an athlete when seeing them in conversation with their partner. Video here.
Matthews Vulnerable: In the post race press-conference an emotional and honest Kat Matthews admitted to still struggling with mental health post her horrific accident. She said she had recently suffered a panic attack while at home on the indoor trainer. Lots of other goodies in the press conference video here.
Matthews vs Dan: Mark Matthews came under fire last week for accusing a “British triathlon Youtuber” for buying Instagram followers. Triathlon Dan made a video saying that people could easily tell Matthews was talking about him. Importantly, he mentioned he recently had two Stories go “viral”, leading to many new followers. Matthews then had Dan’s video taken down due to copywrite as Dan used the Podcast audio in his video. Matthews says it was because the video comments were getting hateful with people threatening him and Kat. Watch Dan’s final follow up video here. The podcast and initial video have both since been taken down. Had Matthews left out the word “British” in his accusation this may not have blown up?
Outside Coverage: Outside TV has the rights to stream Ironman triathlons. This platform has notoriously been buggy and about halfway during the ladies race on Saturday it all failed…with viewers outside America left, well, on the outside of the broadcast. Luckily they switched to Youtube which seemed to work perfectly.
30min = 30min: Have you ever found yourself running faster when doing a 30min run with the subconscious hope to finish it quicker? 🙃
Data
I’m lazily going to re-hash two posts I put out on Instagram yesterday…apologies to those that have already seen these!
I was sure Margirier was going to take the World Champs win as he and Funk were leading at the start of the run. I posted the below to compare how the two athletes runs have compared in the past:
As you’ve heard, Margirier didn’t quite take the win and I couldn’t believe how many breakthrough races we had seen. I took the top 8 athletes previous highest PTO points, calculated their PTO points from this race and then compared them. Bogen had an improvement of 21% but, notably, so did Josh Lewis in 5th. Bogen will and should take all the limelight, but there will be lots of extremely proud athletes after this weekend.
That’s it for today.
Yours in low CdA,
Aero MaccaFrodownlee
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