windschatten wrote:
devashish_paul wrote:
In fairness to the Sanders overhype, Kienle under performed too as did did Frodo and so did Gomez.
In all fairness, saying Frodeno "underperformed" by being out with an injury is....well.
Frodo even alluded to it in his discussion when he was a guest on the live coverage during the race. He's seen all kind of people miss start lines for various reasons, and it's never really happened to him, but he said he went too hard in South Africa and just paid for that by the time he got over to Australia for his pre Kona camp. Sanders blew it in Tremblant, but maybe not to the same extent as Frodo. At least he made it to the start line but maybe in an under sharpened state from too much too close too often. There is no need for him to do race simulations constantly so close to the race because that's not the optimal way to prepare your physiology and he's not immune to what generally does not work for all of the population when getting ready for these events.
In any case, he performs well in the Hoala swim because there are others to swim around (age groupers, women etc). On the day of the pro men's swim, when the pace gets ratcheted up, the chord snaps, then he's in no man's land pulling water himself. I don't think he has developed the 25-50 meter surge when already swimming on the rivet to stay in contact, and being lighter probably did not help him since he's already swimming like a drag chute. Losing muscle works against him in a surgy swim....then the game is over and not having Wurf or Drietz around left him having to do everything on his own watts. He basically biked the same pace as the Drietz group on the same watts as he put down last year (which seems weird unless he was sitting up like a sail most of this year because everyone was riding faster). He needed to minimally be with the Drietz group to save his legs for the rest of the day like all the guys in that group minus Drietz were doing (kudos to Drietz for basically towing all those guys around the QueenK and then backing it up with a solid run. He was very impressive for a big guy in Kona.