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Hey can you ease off with all those stats and facts as it messes with all the outrage against AB...I am looking forward to watching this years Kona more than I have for a very long time..
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I don't think I've ever seen record bike times in pouring rain and 99% humidity before.

Riding on soaking wet tarmac is slower than dry tarmac. Add to that driving rain and a wind chill factor making it about 5°C (40°F) on the bike, and it must have been really tough.

Imho the conditions were terrible. In my own races, the slowest have always been in the wet.


Well, it's the internet. Expectations are always high.

I have never been a LS fan until yesterday, but hearing his story and watching his performance yesterday I am a total convert.

Jan enjoys racing in the heat. Kona, Roth, Frankfurt are all hot.

With regard to AB I hope he learns to behave like a professional rather than repeat the antics. he has proved he is capable of. I can’t see him making the podium at Kona any time soon due to the heat.

Sorry :-)

I really enjoyed the Tir Battle yesterday - watched about 2/3 of it on YouTube. I really would like to see more one off's like this - but agreed its nothing compared to Kona and this year anything could happen on the big island! Bring it on :-)

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He who understands the WHY, will understand the HOW.

I have not had the chance to read every comment in the thread as I spent the better part of 8 hours on my couch watching this event.

I was enthralled. Minus the ability to have better coverage of Lionel on the bike, it was excellent coverage. The guest interviews were a nice touch. There are so many cues here to keep making tri coverage even better.

Two athletes took a very public risk that could have been calamity for either, or for the race. Jan was Jan...pure class; he is untouchable. Lionel...what can you say? How many of us could have hung in there while getting crushed as we are riding our best bike split either but the other guy is just going faster? A lot of people would have cracked. 7:43 after 5 bad Ironmans is huge in my book. The nerves and pressure on Lionel to not get embarrassed by the effort and extent of the production, racing his hero who he has absolute deference for, it could not have been easy.

Sponsor friendly event that I found entertaining and fortunately no one got killed by the Canyon Corner although Lionel's first trip scared the crap out of pretty much everyone I'm sure!

Evidence is all over the place, come on! They'd have gone 10-15 minutes slower on the bike, without the moto's, which is still pretty fast, but sub 4h is just unreal

Did you watch the coverage? It was quite different to other events with the timer car behind, Motos behind and to the side....and if the camera bike went in front it was in a lane to the side
- no hills
- no slowing for any drinkstation or special needs all day
- race day tactics where Lionel surged to bridge gap to Jan and Jan surging to prevent contact
- good road surface
- not too hot
- no wind because of day but also surrounding mountains
- no slowing for turns
- minimal time counted running with bike in transitions

Hello everybody. I think the show yesterday was a bit long considering that watching a regular IM is kind of boring itself, so just watching two guys on the course....
However, hats off for both of them. Jan is the perfect triathlete, too perfect maybe...thats why LS gets so much love. I think the broadcast was not that good as they did not focus in Lionel ..just 15% of the time....
Nothing to add to that ridiculous time by Jan, but Lionel did a great job despite struggling in the 2nd part of the marathon. It was never toe to toe but he tried and did not give up. His face at the end was severe discompoused.
Still I think this cannot be considered WR given the conditions (motorbikes supplying the bottles, just two guys at the race, etc). I think Roth is still the legitime WR, IMO. Kind of the same think with the INEOS challenge....it was not considered WR, though that was even more artificial....

If we think in a legitime and balanced head to head right now I would pick Jan vs Alistair Brownlee once the guy is healthy again. And for the women, I would go with Ryf vs Lucy

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Spaniard. Sorry for my english for the sensitive ones :P

Lionel's 2:50 marathon wasn't that fast for a guy on his level either. I mean Cam Wurf has run a 2:50, and we had three guys (including one age grouper) running a 2:52 or faster on a slow course in the Polish full distance championship in 2020, the fastest run of the day being a 2:46 and Poland generally being a pro triathlon shithole (sad but true). As a matter of fact Lionel bettered his full distance PB (from IM Arizona 2016) by just a minute, losing 8 minutes on the run vs. Arizona.

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"FTP is a bit 2015, don't you think?" - Gustav Iden

I think Lionel can qualify for Kona...this race should have been a huge boost for him in terms of confidence, nutrition plan and motivation. He will have 2/3 guys to contend in Copenhagen: Blummenfelt, Stornes and maybe McNamee and no idea about Magnus Ditlev. The norwegians have 0 experience in IM, so even they can seem the strongest guys, I would put my money in LS....

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Spaniard. Sorry for my english for the sensitive ones :P

Lionel said that at one point he was on track to beat 7'35 and pacing for 7'40 would have ended up faster overall but didn't regret going all in

Load of rubbish... But with so much evidence all over the place it will be easy for you to reference a time stamp where this happened in the feed..?

took Jan 7 years to win Kona after the Olympics - give AB a few years to work it out and he has every chance of becoming the GOAT - well and truly trouncing Jan's stats.


Everyone thought Gomez was just going to walk on to the podium at Kona, too.

Gomez will focus in Kona after the olympics. He has tried once so never discard the guy. I am spanish and sure I tell you this under some subjetivity, but despite poor performances in the bike in IM and some 70.3s he is relentless. Nobody mentioned he was the 2nd fastest run in Daytona...and IMO, despite losing against Jan in SouthAfrica in 2018 in the 70.3 worlds he is the fastest runner in 70.3 if he is in top shape (I remind he beat Jan in the 70.3 worlds in 2014 easily).
He´s done a couple of sub 8´s so I dont get why everybody is burying the guy. He is 38, he´s trained one year just for IM, have done 3-4 IMs and still have 2-3 years to try... he will not win 3 or 4 konas like Jan, but let him improve his bike and we´ll see what he can show off

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Spaniard. Sorry for my english for the sensitive ones :P

An interview with Frodo (in English). Worth a watch despite the annoying background noise.

https://tri-today.com/2021/07/jan-frodeno-on-world-record-race-tri-battle-royale-video/

Says he didn’t have a power reading half the time because the head unit kept losing signal from the crank-based power meter.

It’s a known, almost famous issue with Stages. Assuming that that’s what he’s using. Did nobody tell Jan? He is so detail-oriented.

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"FTP is a bit 2015, don't you think?" - Gustav Iden

Maybe I chose the wrong wording saying the conditions were tough. For a 110 lbs age group woman generating hardly any heat, the conditions would be tough. For Lionel and Jan generating a world of heat, the temps were good, but the temp minus rain would make for faster times given everything else that your brain has to contend with when racing in the rain.

Lange at 140 lbs in the cold rain without a draft? Hard to say. I thought he rode a legit ride at Tulsa (I was previously in the camp of "lange only performs in races where he gets a tow")

2014 70.3 Worlds Gomez was a different athlete. Today he is closing in on 40 and not quite the same guy at least this is what it appears like from the outside. Maybe Jan got off the ITU treadmill early enough where he did not have to race as often at the redline and could preserve his body better with less hard efforts and less bouncing all over the world on the schedule of others. All of that adds up to more wear and tear and maybe Javier is more worn out than Jan is at this stage of life than when he beat Jan at Tremblant 70.3 Worlds. I also think the 2014 70.3 Worlds was the last worlds with a reasonably hilly run where Jan's overall mass was more of a disadvantage on the run. Since then, the 70.3 Worlds to my knowledge have had kind of flat run courses.

I also thought that and I too changed my mind: after this year's Challenge Gran Canaria, a 70.3 with a super tough bike course, where Lange finished 104 seconds behind a completely wasted Frodeno, having lost only 30 seconds on the bike.

(Yes, I know that was only good enough for 4th place, but still. Brutal bike.)

Lange changed coaches recently. Faris Al-Sultan was replaced by Björn Geesmann, a cycling-focused tri coach.

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"FTP is a bit 2015, don't you think?" - Gustav Iden

Very hilly course though, could favor smaller riders

Jan said a local athlete was rudely on his wheel
even in front of the marshalls so he put in some angry monster surges, efforts which came back to haunt him on the run

very clearly a quarq, not a stages.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Kudos to Jan for an incredible world record and Lionel for a blistering PR finish time coming off of several disappointing full distance IM races. The performances of these guys was pretty amazing, especially given the rain which absolutely slowed the bike and created miserable conditions.

The primary asterisk in my opinion was the swim. There were no other swimmers to contend with and it was guided by the rope.

In terms of coverage, it was long and boring even for someone that lives for this sport. I couldn't watch it all. The male commentators repeated reference to the Kings was incredibly annoying. I also found Helle Frederickson to be like nails on a chalkboard. I guess after 9 hours it would he hard to listen to anyone. Plus they were really not giving anywhere near equal coverage to Lionel.

Finally, I don't see AB doing much in full course IM. He's battled a lot of injuries and full distance can bring even more injuries especially for guys that are of slight build like AB. That being said AB is already a legend based on the Olympics and ITU. He doesn't need IM to validate his unbelievable achievements in triathlon.

As far as him being a bad sport, I'd say that's not the case. I originally said it was a major issue dunking Chase McQueen. I've had time to revisit the issue after a recent race where I did the same to someone that entered my space, despite swimming a perfect line. This stuff can happen and I know he is cut throat but I kind of like it. He's a competitor and he's not trying to ruin anyone's race. Sometimes this stuff just happens.

I think as far as equal coverage during the race - this was Jan's show. He put it together, it was being broadcast in Europe, it was to showcase his talents. Lionel was more of a control test to show how much faster Jan is than the competition and as has been mentioned elsewhere, to add a bit more legitimacy. So the fact that Lionel was only 15% of the coverage was kind of my expectation.

One other thing that surprised me from the data was that Jan was able to average over 45km/h on a little over 300 watts. He's a tall guy, that position must be dialed.

I’m also pretty sure I heard the commentator note towards the end of the run that they’d had camera/technical issues with Lionels feed. I don’t know if they were receiving comments but they did specifically address it. To your point though, it still would have been 70/30 split at best, which is fine.

this was the jan frodeno advertorial show and he delivered, i guess this is all that needs to be said .
at the end of the day it was a new benchmark what a top triathlete with a top manager can do .

i think you misread this. my understanding, they couldn't get the aircraft up, which was required in order to generate a split screen image of both athletes. weather related. you're right, this was a jan/felix show. for sure. their production, their sponsors, their german media contacts, their everything. but i don't think lionel was there to show how fast jan is. lionel was there because it added a second colorful dimension, and because lionel brings his own media interest that lionel doesn't have. also, i don't know that zwift comes in absent lionel. i don't have inside info on this, but lionel + jan means more to zwift than just jan (they each have 30,000 zwift followers, way more than whomever is in 3rd on zwift); and lionel's youtube livestream of this dual meet has north fo 300,000 views. zwift and canyon are both happier than they would have been had this been the jan-only show.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman