I talked to Apolo at Dig Me Beach a couple days before the race, at the top of the steps just before you would get into the water. I asked him how many times he swam out at Dig Me Beach so far. He said he believed it was his third swim. When I asked him what he thought of all this craziness going on around Kona at that moment, his reply was..."Epic..."

He seemed very calm, soft spoken, friendly, shorter than I expected & really doesn't have as big of legs as it appears (optical illusion)...he's just not very tall. He was doing a lot of in water photo shoots with chocolate milk promo stuff. I maybe talked to him for like 45 seconds & nobody seemed to be flocking to him. Seemed like the Kona athletes were busy getting in the final swims themselves & didn't care too much. Lastly, he totally kicked my ass in the swim, bike and walk so kudos to him! Actually I think he did a run, so correction...I walked & pushed my bike. So almost the same! Either way, he rocked it & I totally respect him just for taking a stab at Kona, he's a stud.

My kids are fairly serious into short track speed skating and are coached by two ex Olympians ...........one of them medaled in a past Olympics for Canada.............anyway from what I'm hearing from people that know a lot more than I do on speedskating is the best athletes ...............at least in north American, can't speak for Europe.............are the short track athletes and many of those could switch over and very quickly become even better at long course. Kind of like triathlon, where the best athletes are in World Cup Racing versus wtc.............Which is funny from my take as I always thought the best were long course as I grew up watching gaetan boucher (sp?) .............I never quite was a fan of short track til my kids starting racing (pretty much short track is the only type of speedskating in Canada unless you live in two areas out west..........), but I have actually grown to love it almost as much as long track. You need to have a lot of tools to be a good short track speedskater, not just physical and I'm not surprised apolo did as well as he did

I bumped into him a couple of times during the week and he was just like any other nice but serious triathlete I run into.

The crazy thing I noticed was his vertical leap during the UPR silliness on thursday. I obviously didn't measure it but I'm pretty sure it was well north of 40 inches....dude has some explosive legs!

I'm really happy for him--he worked hard and kicked many long-time triathlete's asses!

---

Randy Christofferson(http://www.rcmioga.blogspot.com

Insert Doubt. Erase Hope. Crush Dreams.

http://blogs.seattletimes.com/...iis-famed-triathlon/

This part from his article is cool:

"Through this experience I took my body and my mental capacity to a place I didn’t think was possible. What I learned that day traveling through the lava fields on the Queen K highway is that triathlon is much more than a sport. The first 60 miles of this race is preparation and the last 80 is determination. Conquering the Ironman enriched me physically, emotionally and mentally and it will be a milestone in my life, among my eight Olympic medals, that I will always remember."

This quote in italics could be from anyone's Kona race report (minus the detail about the gold medals, but insert whatever personal/professional life accomplishments in place of the part in bold-underline).

Dev

Another celebrity Ironman finisher. BFD. Yaaawnnn...

No, just an active guy who did a few other sports who went from never doing a triathlon to sub 10 in Kona in less than a year. No big deal, so there is probably a Challenge thread or a Sutton thread around here that you'll find more interesting to spend time in.

Not that unique. Got a better argument of why anyone should care about this guy?

This is supposed to be in pink, right?

Great race for him. Hope he is not a 1-and-done like Hines Ward.

Another celebrity Ironman finisher.

It's the WTC's gig, and discretion what they do at their event. I was over this a long time ago.


Ohno's participation in this was different than other past ones in that they had often take the non-athlete, or the athletes with some significant physical challenges, or very different athletes ( Hines Ward). In each of these, completion, was the goal. Ohno was a whole different beast, and I've seen this personally, with other world class athletes and Olympians from other sports that have a bit of cross-over, that when they cross-over to triathlon they tend to do very well. Ohno's sub-10 time, on about a year of serious triathlon training is another example of this. He has the physical attributes, but perhaps more importantly he has the focus, the commitment, the determination, and discipline of a world class athlete to see things through.


Not sure where he will go from here, but another year of this and he could be a legit age-group qualifier and contender! That's a whole lot different message and outcome than previous "celebrity" entrants into Ironman Hawaii.

---

---

Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Geesch... doesn't anyone remember Eric and Beth Heiden? Eric won 5 gold medals at the '80 Olympics, i believe that was every speed skating event at the time, When he quit skating he was on what had to be one of the first 7-Eleven teams to race in Europe and completed the Giro and the Tour and he won the US Pro Championship. His sister, Beth Heiden won an Olympic Bronze in speedskating, a bunch of World Championship events, won the US and World Championship cycling road races, and i think won an NCAA title in cross country skiing. And what about Connie Carpenter, incredibly successful speed skater who went on to win tons of cycling races on road and track including the '84 Olympic road race (and has now foaled Taylor Phinney). Yea, there is definitely cross-over benefit between speed skating and cycling. I'm sure there would be more crossover to triathlon it just hasn't been as competitive as cycling in the past.

And Badgertri - all of the athletes listed above are from Madison.

An age group qualifier and contender?! How amazing!

Not really.

When he cracks the top 10 MPRO I'll pay attention.

Good grief. Just stop coming back to this thread and you won't have to pay attention at all.

LOL....guess what, by coming to this thread YOU ARE PAYING ATTENTION :-) You may think it is no big deal, but you're still paying attention to this thread about nothing.

Ok, let's make it about something. How much did Apolo earn from racing Kona? Likely noone knows, but I'm curious....

Awesome, but not surprising. World class athlete with a background in competitive swimming as a kid.....added to a lot of hard work.

We will need to find our from CEOIronman or CEOChocolateMilk. Where is Messick when we need him to answer the hard questions (pink).

Well we had Boardman on for a while until he got chased off, there might be some others who want to keep it quiet.

Gary Hall Sr. posts here and was not scared away, even when someone asked what his qualifications were for providing swimming instructions. That was pretty great.

Gary Hall, Sr.

Not in the Olympics (yet), but Dave Roche and his wife are doing quite well of late.

John

---

---

Top notch coaching: Francois and Accelerate3 | Follow on Twitter: LifetimeAthlete |

That was definitely an all time top 10 post. Here it is for those interested

Back to Apollo, I say he is a great guy. He happily posed for a pic with my brothers family after finishing Boise 70.3. I know that I sure didn't feel like taking pics with random strangers after my first half ironman.

Thank you for the link. That is the greatest ST exchange ever.