Anne Haug has raced in the IRONMAN World Championship four times since stepping up to long-course racing after the Rio Olympics in 2016 – and she’s finished on the podium every time, including that memorable win in Kona in 2019.
Her consistency overall is astonishing – only once in 26 individual middle or long-distance individual events since that switch has she been outside the first three. That was a fourth place on her IRONMAN debut in Frankfurt in 2018.
So no wonder she goes into this year’s IMWC renewal as one of the favourites after a season which has seen her add three more victories to the tally, including the PTO European Open in Ibiza in May.
She ran a 1:02 for the 18km that day, exactly three minutes quicker than runner-up Ashleigh Gentle, and her coach Dan Lorang reckons we might be about to see something similarly special during the marathon in Kona.
‘She’s still hungry’
Throughout her career, Haug has been coached by Lorang and he told TRI247: “I think she always delivers world-class performances, no matter if it was a win or a podium.
“I think sometimes we forget this because even if you have not won several times at the World Championship, to always be there on the podium, that’s already in my opinion a great success.”
Haug may have turned 40 this year but there is absolutely no indication that age has diminished her performances, with Lorang pointing out: “She’s still hungry, she still aims for more and wants to compete and get the best out of herself.”
Looking ahead to Saturday’s race from a tactical point of view, Lorang is hoping that the incredible strength in depth – especially in the swim and bike – doesn’t leave Haug with too much ground to make up before her strongest discipline of the run.
He said: “She has had a good preparation. Looking at the swim dynamic, that could be quite a decisive part of this week’s race – if we have more girls in front out there, that makes it quite hard.
“So probably she has to get a good swim and then be quite offensive on the bike to not have a big gap.”
More to come on the run from Haug
And switching focus to the run, he revealed: “For sure the run is at a good place at the moment, but also we probably haven’t yet seen the full potential in the run from Anne in Kona. Just delivering everything on the run that she’s capable of. So that’s a big goal and then we see about the result for sure.”
Haug is ranked #1 in the PTO run standings but her marathon times in Hawaii (2:57 in 2022, 2:51 in 2019 and 2:55 in 2018) haven’t quite hit the heights of, say, Challenge Roth – where she clocked a 2:44 earlier this year.
Lorang added: “Basically, when you look at her runs in Kona, they have been good. But compared to many of her other runs, there is still a gap. And also when you look at her half-marathon pace compared to marathon pace, you can make your calculation and you can think, okay, probably she can run a little bit faster.
“But that’s not all. When I go back to last year, for example, when we’re sitting there after the race, analysing it and wondering why was the run not as good as she wanted to it to be, she then mentioned to me, ‘yeah, when I took out my bike from the transition zone after the race, I saw that half of the energy supplies were still on it’.
“So I said okay, we can stop the discussion here because if you don’t get all the energy in, it’s not possible to do the ideal run. You were just running out of energy.
All to play for
“So that is just what we have going into this weekend, just to come to the run fully fuelled in a good state and then see what there is.
“That is why we think there is potential [for improvement]. If everything goes perfect up to the start of the run, probably she should run faster than she has in the years before.”
But equally Lorang is mindful that this is arguably the deepest start list there’s ever been at Kona.
He added: “She aims high and she’s prepared, but it will be a really hard day out there for every woman, it’s an incredibly tough field. And sometimes all you can do is your own performance. You can have one of the women have one of these days, then you can do whatever you want.
But if you yourself have that day, then you can win the race.
“It’s a really great field and across the age ranges too so it’s not just the experienced women.
“I still would like to have men and women at the same place. I’m quite fond of this, but it’s good that they have their own race, that they get the full focus on their performances, the density of the field in the women’s race is so high now.”
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