Along with Mark Allen, Dave Scott, Scott Molina and Scott Tinley, is Wolfgang Dietrich one of the greatest triathletes of all time?
He had an incredible Swim Bike combo, but was weak relative the aforementioned group on the run. As such, he could never close the deal at Kona. Having said that, I think you can say he was one of the really good ones especially for his era. No doubt about it he made the race intersting by pushing the swim and bike the way he did.
FYI: I interviewed Wolfgang for my podcast.
We talked about his race with Mark Allen and Dave Scott at Kona, and of course his swim career on the German National team and of course swimming the Ironman…as he’s a local masters coach here in Boulder.
You can listen to the interview below:
http://www.everymantri.com/everyman_triathlon/2006/09/swimming_your_w.html
I’ve had the chance to swim with him a few times as my coach. He’s pretty old school (you will swim 100 on 1:15 not 1:14 or 1:16 ;-), but in a really great way.
My view is no. He is not one of the best of all time, depending on your view of whether it is top 10 of all time, top 50, top 100. I don’t think he even gets into top 50 if you consider all the distances and formats (IM, ITU Olympic, draft legal Olympic, Half IM)…but Wolfgang was one of the most exciting guys to watch for sure arnd his presence shook up the rest of the race. PNF did on the women’s side what Wolfgang never succeeded at, which was to win the race from the front. It was not till Hellriegel 1997 that Wolfgang’s tactic finally succeeded on the men’s side (although you can argue that it worked for LVL in 1996)