Kristian Blummenfelt saw his IRONMAN World Championship derailed in Kona as he lost both chunks of time as well as his nutrition early on the bike with a repeated bout of vomiting.
The former Olympic champion started the race as one of the big three favourites for a second IMWC title to add to his triumph in the rescheduled 2021 race in St George.
And as the Kona race developed, he’d moved up into third place behind the other two market leaders – Sam Laidlow and Magnus Ditlev – before things started to go wrong.
Previous history for ‘Big Blu’
After 31 of the 112-mile bike section a big effort had moved ‘Big Blu’ to one minute and 58 seconds behind Laidlow and right on the tail of Ditlev.
But then a sequence of projectile vomiting on the bike saw most of the nutrition he’d take on board up to that point end up on the Hawaii roads. In total the Norwegian great threw up eight times in quick succession.
We’ve seen this before with Blummenfelt – including when he won in St George and then last time out on the run at IRONMAN Frankfurt – and on both of those occasions he still ran out the winner.
But this looked a more violent episode and after 41 miles he’d lost nearly a minute on Ditlev.
Brave battle
However things looked to have settled down slightly and he was starting to take on board some more fuel.
Before the vomiting he had appeared to be struggling to negotiate moving through what was a huge chase group behind Laidlow.
With nearly 20 men in close proximity, drafting penalties were a real threat and Blummenfelt’s stop-start progress was in stark contrast to the power-packed surge into second of uber-biker Ditlev.
Blummenfelt then found himself back in that bike chase pack after the vomiting episode, though that did allow him to regroup with more than half the race still to go.
And he would still clock an impressive 4:05:47 on the bike – not much more than a minute outside the previous course record – despite his problems.
However the run proved even more of a challenge and a 3:32:04 marathon would see him cross the line in 35th place.
He wasn’t the only one to suffer though – defending champ Laidlow would blow up on the run as Patrick Lange overcame a nine-minute deficit to cruise past him before halfway en route to a third title.
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