“It’s not going to end this year. It’s not going to end next year… I’m going to do another two years in the sport and then… that’s it.” Sebastian Kienle just announced that he plans to retire at the end of 2023. He’s still working hard towards some big goal for next year: winning another world title at either the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in St. George or the Ironman World Championship in Kona.
“It feels kind of strange to actually announce this,” Kienle said in a video that he just released. “Obviously in the last couple of weeks I thought a lot about it and talked to friends, family and sponsors. In the last two years I quite often had the feeling: fuck it, this is it, I’m going to retire after this session or just right now and not do anything again in this sport. Of course, you have stretches like this over such a long career, and you learn to ignore these voices, because there are other voices and those are telling you ‘it’s an absolutely great life, and you love what you do’. But in the last two years these thoughts have definitely been growing, and I have to admit that after I decided to drop out of Challenge Roth, I needed some sort of finish line. I’m not going to criticize any other athlete, but I always wanted to retire with a clear finish line, and this finish line will be at the end of 2023. Next year I’m going to try to win another World title on the long course, in either St. George or Kona. And 2023 is going to be a farewell world tour. I’m going to do a couple of races that I have never been able to do before.”
