You have top athletes, you have world-class athletes, and then you have athletes who grow into something that is actually bigger than the sport itself: Kristian Blummenfelt belongs to that last category, as the Norwegian has delivered yet another almost superhuman performance by winning Ironman Texas in a new world record: 7:21:24. With that time, he dives exactly two minutes under the former world record of Ditlev, who recorded 7:23:24 at Challenge Roth two years ago.
There was already a lot of buzz surrounding Ironman Texas, because with a field that would not look out of place at an Ironman World Championship and the debut of Jelle Geens at the Full Distance, there was plenty of fodder for speculation. The race also lived up to all the suspense, as the battle remained exciting between several men for a long time and the pace was higher than ever.
After 3.8 kilometers of swimming, the Swiss Andrea Salvisberg was in the lead, but he was immediately followed by no fewer than eighteen athletes, including the Belgians Geens and Marten van Riel. It was that same Van Riel who was the first to come out of T1 and took the lead for the first few kilometers on the bike, but in the lead group of what was then twelve men, names like Geens, Jonas Schomburg, Ben Kanute, Vincent Luis, and Kieran Lindars also established themselves. In this phase, Blummenfelt faced a deficit of nearly a minute, with fellow countryman Casper Stornes right behind him. Other favorites like Rudy von Berg (+1:44), Gustav Iden (+2:28), Kristian Hogenhaug (+2:57), Matt Hanson (+3:55), Sam Long (+5:33), and Lionel Sanders (+6:14) followed at a greater distance.
During the bike, Van Riel took a lot of the lead work upon himself, but it was actually Kristian Hogenhaug who stole the show, making up a significant deficit and even managing to take a small lead in the final phase. Meanwhile, Blummenfelt dealt with a flat tire in the closing stages, but after help from a mechanic, he chose not to change the tire, but to continue riding. He lost about a minute, but stayed close to where the decisions would ultimately be made.
During the marathon, the lead group thinned out further and it was quickly Jonas Schomburg and Geens who took the initiative. For Geens, the race was gray territory – he had never done a Long Distance before – and he would have to pay for that after 30 kilometers with significant cramping and ultimately a DNF. Van Riel, on the other hand, seemed to draw from a different source even before that, when he managed to close the gap to Geens and Schomburg after fifteen kilometers in the marathon and took the lead in the race. While the top five ran within half a minute of each other, Van Riel felt Blummenfelt approaching to within ten seconds, followed by Schomburg, Geens, and Antonio Benito Lopez.
Van Riel remained in the lead for a long time, with Blummenfelt constantly in second position and only ten seconds behind. Only in the final phase, with about nine kilometers to go, did he finally have to bow to the Norwegian. Blummenfelt, for his part, kept steaming ahead as if he had only just begun, clocking a 2:30:47 marathon and a world best time of 7:21:24. Van Riel also recorded a time faster than Ditlev’s former world record and finished second in 7:22:56. Stornes, moving up during the marathon as he often does, finished third in 7:23:50.
