“It’s definitely not that I want to stop racing on Kona because I don’t like it anymore. I just can’t anymore. At some point, you have to accept that you’re not getting better… the others are getting better.” The countdown is on until Sebastian Kienle – the King of Kona 2014 – will return to the magical triathlon island for one last time, because the German announced his retirement. “It would be emotional for sure, but if I think about it right now, I think I’ve done everything right. The win in Kona definitely changed my life. I have so many good memories about the sport”, he says in the below interview with Zwift.
“The heat and the mental aspect and everything in this race is something… a lot of people come there and think ‘I’m going to win this thing on race day’ and they end up walking. But if I would finish top five, I would be super stoked.”
What I look most forward to is to have my family there. To have Nino there for the first time, my little son, to have the chance to show him a bit of what his father is doing for a living, is super nice. But it’s quite sad to not share my last Kona with Jan”, Kienle refers to Jan Frodeno, who misses Kona due to an injury. “For me, Jan is still the best athlete who has ever done the sport. I just hope he gets a chance next year to end the sport in a way he wants it to end.”
And, the final question, how would it feel to win Kona one last time? “It would be absolutely… that would be absolutely nuts… crazy. I think all the volcanoes will break out because I will be shaking. It would be absolutely crazy, but a lot of things would need to happen to make that happen.”
