The turnaround of the triathlon year has the video it deserves.
‘Heartbreak to World Champion in 4 Weeks’ follows Lucy Charles-Barclay‘s journey from devastating DNF at the IRONMAN World Championship in Kona through to winning the 70.3 Worlds in Marbella less than a month later.
The film, which is embedded below, has been shot and produced by Lucy’s sister Holly Charles and provides lots of fascinating insights into first exactly what happened on the Big Island before the contrasting scenes which unfolded on the Costa del Sol.
Team Charles-Barclay’s YouTube and social media output has raised the bar for the sport in recent years and this continues that trend.
Warning signs
Charles-Barclay of course put a run of four successive second places in Kona behind her with that record-breaking wire-to-wire win in 2023 and she returned to Hawaii full of confidence in October.
Talking about that build-up in the video, she says: “It was the smoothest preparation I’ve ever had. I was lining up healthy, injury-free and it felt like the stars were aligning for an incredible performance.
“I was the last person to win on the Big Island and I had a lot of anticipation to deliver an even better performance.”
Everything went to plan in the swim as LCB again led the field out, exiting the water nearly a minute in front of Taylor Knibb before the two of them settled down to an epic battle on the bike.
But looking back, Charles-Barclay revealed: “I definitely didn’t feel as good as 2023 at the beginning of the bike but I wasn’t too concerned.
“I felt extremely thirsty but I thought maybe I’d swallowed some salt water. I drank a lot of water very quickly, got through my first two bottles and then used the aid station but nothing was getting on top of that thirst.”
Alarm bells
She was then handed a one-minute penalty for unintentional littering on the bike and explained: “I was able to use that minute to try and hydrate even more – but even then I couldn’t get on top of it. It should have been ‘alarm bells’ but it wasn’t. In the moment I felt fine and my energy levels felt good.”
And that pattern continued early on the run in the searing heat and humidity as she first closed the gap on Knibb and then went past her and back into the lead.
She added: “Now when I look back, nothing was really working how it normally would but I was still running incredibly well. And when I made the pass I was thinking this is it, I’m going to win.
“Then I started to just not feel right. I felt absolutely freezing. I was thinking this is not good. I know I’m warm but I’m feeling cold.
“And once I was deep into the Energy Lab I knew I was in trouble. I didn’t know how I could fix it. I was trying to use everything in the aid stations but it wasn’t working.
‘Smart, informed decision’
“And it was on the uphill out of the Energy Lab that I saw [husband] Reece and I just knew he’s here because he also knows I’m in trouble.”
That was one of the iconic images of the day as he made the call that her race was over and hearing his thoughts and reflections is another reason for watching the video in full.
Lucy continued: “I wasn’t in a rational headspace anymore, I wasn’t quite with it. Even my memory of the Energy Lab was a little bit wishy-washy. I’m really grateful that Reece was there to make that smart, informed decision to pull me off the course.”
‘Kona is brutal’
Knibb herself would exit the race when leading just a few kilometres from the finish line and she revealed afterwards that her core body temperature had rocketed.
But Lucy explains in the video that her own core temperature “was completely in the range which would be fine” and her heart rate “wasn’t rising in the way it would if you were getting heat exhaustion”.
Obviously both women were pushing each other to the limits in the toughest and most important race in the calendar but it would appear that both were battling different issues.
For LCB explained: “At this point we don’t really have a definitive answer. We have expert opinions. All of it is still speculation… [but] it’s pointing more to hypernatremia [a condition where the concentration of sodium in the blood is too high] or something along those lines.
“Kona is brutal, we all know that. And I think this is just a reminder that anything can happen in that race. The favourite doesn’t always win.
“Regardless of what happened to me and Taylor, the best athlete won on the day. Solveig [Løvseth] paced her race to perfection. She pretty much rode the entire race solo and then paced the run to get the win. So a huge congratulations to her and I look forward to having another battle next year on the Big Island.”
At the time it looked to many like the 70.3 Worlds in Marbella would come way too soon – but Lucy and Reece had other ideas!
