Defending Olympic Champion Kristian Blummenfelt has made some staggering steps forward in his fitness over the initial phases of winter training says coach Olav Aleksander Bu.
The Norwegian, who is gunning for a second consecutive Olympic title this summer, was producing such insane data that Bu says he has been forced to reconsider how to step things up in the next block of training.
Revealing the gains made by the PTO World #1 in the most recent iteration of the “Norwegian Method” YouTube series by Santara Tech, Coach Bu and Blummenfelt appears to be leaving no stone unturned in the journey to Paris.
“Numbers I’ve never seen before”
Reflecting on his past season and how he would evaluate if it had been successful or not, Blummenfelt says it all hinges on the result in Paris this summer.
“I came into last year with the understanding that this is a pre-Olympic year and the main task is to get the job done in order to win the Paris Olympic Games next year in 2024.
“Of course I wanted to perform a little better than I did in short course this past year. I didn’t get on any podiums in short course, but I was quite close in Hamburg with a fourth place over the super sprint distance.
“I’ve been up there in training with some numbers I’ve never seen before, especially on the bike. My bike strength has really gone up this summer but I currently have the mindset that in order to be happy with the 2023 season I have to wait until Paris 2024.”
“I didn’t believe the numbers”
After taking some time off following the end of the season, Blummenfelt then headed up to altitude in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco for a training camp with training partner Gustav Iden, before returning home to Bergen for testing.
Back in his hometown over the Christmas period, Blummenfelt underwent a series of tests designed to assess his fitness across swim, bike and run. According to Coach Bu, the results surpassed even what they thought was previously possible.
“The swim and the bike are higher than ever before and on the run, he is outputting numbers that are so high, so ridiculously much higher than I didn’t believe the numbers and I said nobody could publish them because I needed to verify them to be sure.”
Having recalibrated all of his testing apparatus to be absolutely certain that the readings were correct, with the results standing the test, Bu now says that he will have to take time to absorb the magnitude of what was recorded and reconfigure Blummenfelt’s training plan going forward.
“I have to sit down and absorb and decide what consequences this will have for the next block of training, because Kristian has truly reacted exceptionally to the last block of training. You see where things are now heading and I have to absorb it and see the consequences it will have on the plan.”
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