He may have ultimately missed out on what would have been an historic three-peat of titles at last weekend’s IRONMAN 70.3 World Championships, but for just a few exhilarating kilometres, Jelle Geens believed the dream victory might just be on.
The Belgian endured a roller-coaster of a morning on the French Riviera, which at one point saw him struggle so badly with a bike mechanical that he thought his race was over, before then powering his way through the field so impressively that hopes of a third 70.3 Worlds crown were swiftly resurrected.
An issue with the steering of his TT bike resulted in him losing valuable time on the crucial descent at Col de Vence, as at one stage he very nearly ploughed into a wall at high speed.
Bike and nutrition issues on Col de Vence
It also didn’t help that he lost one of his nutrition bottles on the way down, leaving him short of his carbs and sodium target for this crucial sector of the race.
However, he was able to compose himself, and after following the wheel of Norway’s Gustav Iden down some of the more technical sections of the downhill, he was able to enter T2 in touch with the lead pack.
Coming off the bike in 12th place, he was almost two minutes behind eventual winner Hayden Wilde (NZL) and around a minute adrift of Iden, but such was his incredible pace over the opening six kilometres of the half-marathon that he was soon back in podium contention.
In a race debrief on his All In Triathlon podcast with host Aaron Royle, Geens revealed that his run splits per kilometre during that incredible start were 3:07, 3:02, 3:06, 3:04, 3:05 and 3:05 – an average pace of approximately 3:05/km – as he swiftly moved into gear and started to threaten the front runners.
‘Closing a two-minute gap on Hayden is mission impossible’
“I heard that I was two minutes behind the front, which I assumed meant Hayden. I also heard that I was one minute behind Gustaf, so I went for it,” he said. “At the start, I didn’t think I could win, because closing a two-minute gap to Hayden is mission impossible. It’s very hard to do, and I’ve been in that situation a few times.
“But when the gap came down so quickly, I started to believe. It only really slipped away when Kristian overtook me. There was still a small chance if something like Taupō happened again because things can happen. But that was when my mindset really switched to securing third place.
“Mentally, I was just trying to catch people without thinking too far ahead or making too many calculations. I could see that third place was possible because Lasse (Nygaard Priester) and Hayden were running together, but I didn’t yet know that KB was on a mission. It was only a small chance (of winning), but at one point I believed.”
Geens, of course, was not the only athlete putting together a storming run, as Norwegian powerhouse Kristian Blummenfelt – starting even farther back in 16th and almost two-and-a-half minutes adrift – was also making time and ground on the leaders.
‘I need to make sure I finish third’
For a matter of seconds, Geens did take second place, as he overtook a clearly flagging Nygaard Priester, but with the shadow of KB looming, it was not long before the Belgian was back in third – a position he immediately decided to protect.
“It took a while before I knew where Kristian was,” he said. “I saw at the first U-turn that he was actually quite close because, until then, I’d had no idea where he was.
“That was when I started asking people because everyone was only telling me the gap to the front. I asked, ‘Where’s KB?’ and they said he was about 36 seconds behind but running more slowly.
“I thought, ‘Okay,’ but then I had to slow down, and he sped up. I mentally switched to thinking, ‘I need to make sure I finish third.’
“You know what he said to me? ‘Let’s go and catch Hayden.’ He said something like, ‘You and me are going to win. Let’s go and catch Hayden’. I wasn’t able to say anything, but I thought, ‘I’ll try. I’ll try’.”
You can watch the full podcast below.
