Having come perilously close to pulling out of the IRONMAN World Championship due to injury, Belgian athlete Marten Van Riel admitted he was proud to be “the first non-Norwegian across the line” as he recorded an impressive fourth-placed finish.
For a man who, only a matter of weeks ago, seemed destined to miss out on the Nice showdown after suffering a ‘serious ankle sprain’, the fact that he had narrowly missed out on a podium finish was no mean feat – particularly after realising early in the marathon that his body was in no real condition to mount a sustained challenge.
‘I can only be happy with it’
Struggling to keep up with the fierce pace of the leaders, Van Riel settled back into his own pre-race gameplan and pretty much clung on for dear life as he came home almost six minutes behind the Scandinavian trio of Kristian Blummenfelt, Gustav Iden and champion Casper Stornes… but crucially, one minute and 37 seconds ahead of fifth-placed Sam Laidlow.
“It’s actually pretty incredible that I could turn that around,” he admitted. “I was really doubting if I would even be a part of this race. So to finish fourth, I can only be happy with it.
“We made a plan to make the swim quite hard; we really took it by the horns and didn’t make it easy for some of the other competitors.
“And then on the bike, I found myself in not the best possible position because I had to push the whole time being up there. Unfortunately, I got caught with like 20 kilometres to go.”
Lack of training proves costly
All of which meant Van Riel was still very much in contention as he came through T2 and would normally have been thinking of making a sustained push for the title, had it not been for his lack of pre-race training.
Unable to prepare as he would have liked for the key final discipline, he knew almost immediately that winning the IRONMAN World Championship would not be possible… at least not this year.
“Maybe that wasn’t the ideal plan to push so hard, but I also knew that my run wasn’t 100% up there right now, so I knew I had to try and force something on the swimming and the bike,” he said. “The run wasn’t very much fun, actually, now my legs are hurting a lot.
“I knew pretty quickly it wasn’t going to happen because Casper wanted me to take turns at the front, and he’s like, yeah, let’s just continue at 3.30 (minutes per kilometre). And I was like, my pre-race plan with my coach was only 3.45! So I knew there and then that it wasn’t going to be today.
“Knowing that, it was very tough to carry on. I just backed off to that 3.45 pace and just tried to get home without really dying, because after one lap, I really felt that these guys were out of this world today.
“But I’m still proud to be the first non-Norwegian across the line.”
