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(don’t see a dedicated thread)
Is this the deepest/fastest Kona field ever?
KB
Gustav
Laidlow
Lange
Magnus
RVB
Chevalier
Currie
Foley
Marquardt
Who would you add as someone who will push the pace?
Nick, are you just trolling the Sanders fanboys?
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did you mean 2024?
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I have no doubt this year will be the fastest overall as far as the times required to be top 5, 10, 15 etc. will be much higher than years past. But that’s not just depth of field but also how the sport continues to evolve and get faster. On paper, the field is insane, but there’s a LOT of time for things to happen and DNS to be announced.
The interesting thing is that I think there’s so many guys that can podium- I’d even say half the field could get 2nd or 3rd! But barring injury/illness, I’ll be SHOCKED if anyone wins besides Laidlow or KB. I just don’t see anyone who can get off the bike with Laidlow/in front of KB that can outrun Laidlow and hold off KB. Same thing actually in the women’s race, you knew the winner could only be LCB, Haug, Phillip, or Matthews, and once LCB pulled out and Haug had the flat, there was 0 chance anyone else would get close to a win.
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Gustav is a personal favorite and I’m not sure anyone (other than KB) knows what he really has right now! I can’t wait 'til race day (even though I will never see them)!
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Stacked field, the only two big names missing I seen was Brownlee and Skipper.
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I apologise for my bad taste but
Poland tends to better in running to the pool swim and then cycle home
Shoot, posted my Kona thread after using the new search tool and not seeing anything.
There’s a reason more people believe in fairies than in German sense of humor…
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Semi serious question. How fast do you think Mark Allen and Dave Scott would have gone on today’s bike tech and shoes. They swam a longer course in Kona too than today’s course. I would say Mark would have swam 49 on today’s course, biked 4:10 on today’s tech and run 2:35 due to lower bike TSS and better shoes. @monty what do you think?
In swim where there are no tech advancement, the times are not much better than 35 years ago.
But back to Nick’s question, I remember 2019 when we had Frodeno go 2019 and Tim O’Donnel go 7:59 (pre heart attack Tim) and Sebi went 8:02 and Ben Hoffman went 8:02 and that was literally the “greatest field of all time”.
Do we get 20 people going sub 8:02 this time?
General thread reply – attempted to merge @Nick_wovebike’s thread into this existing one, sorry if it got slightly weird.
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Awesome and appreciate you doing that
Other than Alistair’s win at IM Western Australia in 2019 (I think he went 7:45) did he even do a good ironman performance? I think he’s 5 years away from peak Alistair even at 70.3 ?
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Another pre Kona vlog for you call,this one from just up the road from me.
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One for the aero-geeks
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I didn’t say I think he’d win the race or anything, just that he’s a big name missing (responding to another post)
He’s actually in quite decent shape recently, his run is better than its been for years, hopefully he stays injury free and im sure he can do some damage on that Nice course next year!
Every year we say this is the deepest/fastest field. And every year a few big names drop out during race week or a day before the race. And then folks get disappointed saying the race isn’t the same. This year will be no different.
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To be fair, he asked who will be pushing the pace.
Lionel ain’t pushing the pace. He’ll be chasing from the time the gun goes off.
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In that case we gotta mention Høgenhaug who will be absolutely ripping the bike after a good swim.
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