Sam Laidlow, the winner when the men’s IRONMAN World Championship was last held in Nice and one of the big favourites for this year’s edition, suffered a nightmare start in the swim.
The Frenchman went into the race on the back of two brilliant wins at Challenge Roth and IRONMAN Leeds.
And early in what was an incredibly fast swim as the likes of Jamie Riddle (RSA), Andrea Salvisberg (SUI), Jonas Schomburg (GER) and Marten Van Riel (BEL) set the pace, Laidlow was nicely positioned in the top 10.
In his previous three IRONMAN World Championship appearances Laidlow had never been more than four seconds off the pace coming out of the water but at the midway point of the 3.8km swim in the Mediterranean Sea he suddenly came to a virtual halt.
From top 10 to 29th
Laidlow had been on the feet of Antonio Benito Lopez (ESP) until then but he was now around 100 metres back and it was unclear what the issue was but he spent time treading water.
The pace up front was unrelenting though and Laidlow was quickly well over a minute adrift.
He did get going again but by the time they returned to the shore Laidlow was almost exactly two minutes behind first-out-of-the-water Salvisberg.
Compare that to Benito Lopez, whom Laidlow had been alongside. The Spaniard was still part of that 12-man front group, which was covered by just 14 seconds.
It should be pointed out that Salvisberg’s time of 45:11 was way inside the previous best in Nice of 47:46. And Laidlow clocked 47:11 compared to his 47:50 from his 2023 win – but on this occasion that was only good enough for 29th.
More time ebbs away
So all eyes were on Laidlow going into T1 and he didn’t look comfortable – and far from happy.
Whatever the problem – and it later emerged it was a cramping issue – the Frenchman lost another chunk of time in transition and starting the bike he was now two minutes and 41 seconds adrift.
And that was out to 3:18 by the first checkpoint at 10km into the scenic 180km bike loop which heads into the hills above Nice.
What followed was a remarkable recovery as the race played out and you can read all about that here.
