lacticturkey wrote:
I dont know who Bentus is, but Lange did win German Athlete Of The Year last year, so he must be liked by some people there
Most of the german contenders had really long careers with either gold medals, 70.3 championships, Roth wins, Frankfurt wins, Triathlete mag cover etc, so were already fan favorites before they won. Lange won the German duathlon champs 4 times and raced euro cup so was flying under the radar while getting faster.
bentus wrote:
He isn´t a fan favorite in germany either. Actually the most disliked german hawaii winner.
Good point.
And in fact he really won that one that award while he missed the Triathlon Award which is kind of a people choice award in Germany. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (one of the largest German Newspapers) usually doesn´t write much about trithlon but they also picked up on Langes story and asked the question why really no one likes him back in his homecountry. Further they even called his quite short yet very successful career a riddle which is not really explicable. Name of the article: Patrick Lange - The Triathlon Riddle (
https://www.faz.net/...aetsel-15943892.html)
Anyhow, back to the topic.
First of all is the question if he really switched to adidas or not. Was there any announcement yet? Maybe he got rid of New Balance because he wants to improve his running skills without a shoe sponsor to make him free choice when it comes to his material.
I think that adidas is not yet really into triathlon and they might also not to sell their products specifically only to triathletes but they rather want to show their customers that ALL "good" athletes wear adidas. Doesn´t matter if runners, triathletes, football players or what ever. So for them the titel and fame that Lange currently has are more important to them than his PR since many of their customers don´t know how triathletes think about him. And maybe since adidas is still quite new to triathlon sponsoring maybe they were also not very well aware of this "situation". :D
Anyhow, I hope Lange keeps up the good results despite what the world thinks about him and that he helps to create a fair and clean sport.
Enjoy your Sunday rides