Marten van Riel pulled off an amazing race last Saturday as he ran towards the win of Ironman 70.3 Dubai. He did that in an incredible finish time of 3:26:06 hours. While that first turned out to be just a minute too slow for setting a new world record, Ironman later decided to officially recognize the world record.
The world record was previously in the hands of Olympic champion Kristian Blummenfelt. However, the bike course during the race where he sat that record (Ironman 70.3 Bahrain 2019) was a few kilometers too short, which makes Van Riel actually faster.
For a little while after his finish, Van Riel already thought he had broken the record. That’s because announcers started to call out the new world record based on incorrect information. Van Riel followed their lead, but later it turned out he had just missed the record. Some fellow pro triathletes, like Vincent Luis (FRA) joked about it on social media, saying Van Riel should check Wikipedia before his next event.
While Van Riel already claimed the world record a little himself, Ironman has now confirmed the record.
