Kristian Blummenfelt may have only placed 35th of 42 finishers in the 2024 IRONMAN World Championship in Kona – but he was still a huge factor in how an epic race played out.
The Norwegian superstar went into the big showdown on the Big Island as favourite to claim his first victory on the most iconic course in triathlon. But things went very wrong for the 30-year-old from Bergen on a day of epic risk-taking and blowups.
All appeared to be going well in the early stages with Blummenfelt chasing defending champion Sam Laidlow and Magnus Ditlev on the bike, but his plans started to fall apart when he vomited eight times in quick succession.
Blummenfelt was still in contention as he arrived in T2 just ahead of eventual winner Patrick Lange, but he had little left to give on the run and eventually trailed home 54 minutes behind the German great.
It was a spectacular race worthy of the event, one in which Laidlow’s blistering course record bike leg set the scene for a string of athletes to fall apart on the run. British star Joe Skipper believes that ultimately Blummenfelt was the root cause.
Skipper on the Blummfenfelt factor
Speaking on his Triathlon Mockery podcast (watch the full episode at the bottom of this page), he reasoned: “What caused how the race panned out was people getting into each others heads. I think Kristian got in people’s heads, they knew they needed a buffer on Kristian starting the run – that’s what they all thought and that made them [Sam Laidlow, Magnus Ditlev] race a bit erratically, trying to drop him so early on the bike, and put in a big surge.”
“Then Sam got in his [Magnus] head knowing he was pulling away and that he didn’t want to give Sam four or five minutes start on the run because he knew he wouldn’t win.
“But then Sam was riding hard because he was also worried about Kristian, thinking that Kristian was the big threat and he didn’t want Kristian to get back into the race and also Sam probably didn’t want Magnus to start the run with him because he wouldn’t have been confident he could have outrun him.”
“It was almost like they were getting into each other’s heads and it forced them to race each other rather than playing it a bit more patient, whereas I feel Patrick was prepared to lose the race by letting people go up the road, in order to win it. That kind of meant he was able to save his energy in the group, people didn’t really get into his head.”
Skipper on Lange supershow
Lange of course was completing a hat-trick of Kona victories, six years on from his last Big Island success in 2018. Skipper admitted he was surprised by the 38-year-old German’s brilliant win.
“I didn’t think he was going to do it after the amount of races he has done this year – I just felt he was going to lose a lot of time on the bike – I just didn’t think he was going to get the podium! I would rate his race and 9 or 10 out of 10, like a course record, no one picked him to win.”
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