The IRONMAN World Championship in Kona saw another record-breaking day on Saturday as the sport continues to evolve into ever faster and faster racing.
The professional men produced an epic ‘testosterone fest’, just as six-time champion and triathlon great Mark Allen had predicted. We got record-breaking times, epic risk-taking and epic blowups. It was quite the spectacle as Patrick Lange roared through the field on the marathon to claim a third Kona title.
Record-breaking Kona
Lange’s spectacular performance saw him breaking the overall Kona course record with a lung-bursting 7:35:53 – almost five minutes faster than the previous best set by Norway’s Gustav Iden in 2022.
The bike course best time also fell in spectacular fashion as France’s Sam Laidlow took almost seven minutes off the record he had set in 2022 – clocking a quite incredible 3:57:22. It may have been too fast of course, judging by the way the defending champ then blew up on the marathon.
Those performances rightly drew plenty of headlines, but before that there was another spectacular new course record set on Saturday – and this time it came courtesy of an AGE GROUPER, the Australian Sam Askey-Doran.
Aussie star blitzes swim record
Askey-Doran had already shown his swim prowess in Ironman combat this year with a blistering 44:43 at Cairns. And on Saturday in Hawaii – racing in the 18-24 category – he cut through the ocean faster than any Pro or Age Grouper in Kona history.
The previous Kona swim course record had been set by Germany’s Jan Sibbersen in 2018 when he clocked a sensational 46:29. But that was easy meat on Saturday for Askey-Doran, as he destroyed that mark with a quite incredible 45:43.
That opening leg was undoubtedly the highlight of Sam’s day as he added a 4:40:29 bike leg and then a 3:47:03 marathon to finish 17th in his Age Group and 275th overall with a time of 9:26:29.
The key point there though is finish – unless you cross the line to finish the race that record does stick. So Askey-Doran does now go into the Kona record books as the fastest swimmer ever in the history of the iconic race.
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