Teams are fairly common in tris, in fact I’ve done a couple myself as the bike portion. If we were to pick the three person ultimate team to go to IM Kona it could get quite interesting.
The running part is a no brainer. Which Kenyan do you want. I’d go with Paul Tergat since he set a new marathon record in Berlin at 2:04:55.
For the bike I’ll go with David Millar because I think he is perhaps the best individual TT’er in the world. Lance, Ulrich or Botero would also make good choices.
I’m a bit confused for a swimmer. Don’t know how relevant shorter distance Olympic record holders are to open water swimming. Unfortunately i also don’t know enough about individual open water record holders to chose, so I’ll ask someone else to help pick a swimmer for the dream team.
Any guesses how fast this team could knock off IM Kona?
I think a sub 7 hrs. would be quite possible. The Kenyan(s) could knock forty minutes of the marathon. For sure Millar could beat Hellreigals top 4:24:50 bike time. I would guess by at least twenty minutes and going under four hours wouldn’t be an impossibility I would think. So already we’ve shaved an hour off LVL’s top overall time of 8:04:08. Surely the world’s top swimmer, whoever that might be, can find that extra four minutes.
Sub seven for the “dream team” is not unrealistic.
FINA open water world championship winning times for 5K in recent years range from 51-55 minutes, which translates to about 39-42 minutes for 3800M/2.4M, so certainly sub 3 hours for the swim+run is very possible. Sub 4 on the bike…the GP des Nations winning time this year (70K) equates to 3:51 Ironman pace, but that’s only over about 1/3 the distance, and the Kona weather is obviously a factor. I do think the total could be under 7 for the right team on the right day, but not by a lot, and to me what that really is, is a supreme accolade for the individual athletes who have been anywhere close to 8 (in Kona, or sub-8 elsewhere)…amazing. That’s along the same lines as doing a 1:40 Olympic distance race (on a flat, windless, but accurate course…alone)…(8/7)*(15+44+28).
In England long distance TT are very popular. This year the 100 mile TT record was broken twice and currently stands at 3:22 and change. The two guys who have set the record have both done road races and while very good would get their lunch eaten at the top international level. I suspect that Ullrich, Armstrong, Botero, Millar, etc. could probably do 3:40 for IM if motivated.