There is another thread where the talent/potential of Lionel Sanders is discussed at length, with the typical blind allegiance by his deluded apologists for what has long been inexcusable intransigence by this athlete. Bold = tl;dr version.
I just truly think the field is so stacked this year that if he continues to make the same mistakes there’s a real chance he’s not where he should be talent-wise.
Not to pick on Fishbum, but this is exactly wrong. In fact, I think **Sanders is the world’s most talented triathlete, now or ever. **
By comparison, Jan Frodeno is a lifelong endurance athlete with a choice swimming pedigree – he is the world’s finest long-course triathlete because he was born with gifts of nature and subsequently nurtured to be just that. Moreover, Jan has the morphology of a Konie, Dr. Frankenstein’s Kona Monster, gifted the body to win that race outright, and he trains well, listens to coaches, avails himself of his resources, and he does win that race outright, time and again.
Lionel Sanders is the diametric opposite of Frodo and the sport’s most obvious outlier from many perspectives. **That he is so successful despite what he lacks with respect to his background, his morphology, his resources, his form, and his general experience – all of which pale in comparison to a Frodeno or a Cam Brown or Crowie – coupled with what this guy lacks in between the ears (everything), is the strongest testament that he is the world’s best triathlete now or ever. **
Sanders is an adult onset swimmer in an era where making the front pack at Kona (which is almost without exception a privilege inculcated during youth, not earned during adulthood) is becoming a quid pro quo for a top ten finish for all but the most exceptional of humidity-impervious runners – rappstar once stated that not being born Australian was the death knell for his hopes of a top finish on the island. The guy hails from Alberta, which is possibly the world’s worst location for triathlon training, and he was never moneyed like the Germans and Australians who were sculpted for the sport with dad’s resources.
Born with a body that ought to cripple in the Energy lab; beset by the most horrendous natural run and bike form in the pro field, with a Quasimodo hunchback that would make Hugo blush; and beleaguered by a hideous drug addiction (he was poisoning his body for years while Frodo was gearing up to win an Olympic gold medal), he finished, in spite of all that, as runner up with the world’s worst coach: Lionel Sanders.
Despite all of this, he could and should still win the race outright year after year, and my opinion is that he could and would do so if it weren’t for the problem in between his ears. That performance last year in Kona was the strongest testament for him being among the or the best ever, given how stacked the deck against him was by both nature and nurture and given the incompetence and intellectual bankruptcy so evident in his coach. His physiology is a miracle – he can boast world’s best power to weight, a running ability surpassed by maybe a half dozen long-course triathletes, and he has become a competent swimmer by any standard through sheer force of will.
Lionel was self coached to second place last year and he is coaching himself off the podium this year. Since jettisoning his “advisor” (not coach) in 2016 – by the way, it is unclear why he is not embarrassed of his cook/manager/wife, and yet he downplayed and all but discredited his former coach – **Coach Lionel has decided that weaving through stollers and soccer moms, in aero, on a walking path, is the antidote to his technical TT bike handling inadequacy; that he should fit himself (and ignore advice from Steinmetz et al) with the most embarrassing of results; that he should get sucked out like a wrestler before weigh in during the final hours and days before a 140.6; that a self-labeled eating disorder is a trenchant strategy for optimal Ironman racing; that his pedal choice was a material disadvantage vis-a-vis Frodeno; that…I could go on. I can’t even stand to watch the waste perpetrated by this guy on himself. **
**I do not personally give a shit how likable he is, or outgoing. Don’t care about his heart on his sleeve, his behavior is a travesty to the heart and body with the most uncommon of abilities to convert oxygen into energy over the course of an 4 or 8 hour day on the rivet. He’s wasting his talent. He’s a wastrel, and it pisses me off because he was given a gift and he’s pissing on it. **He’s Prefontaine without Bowerman, Michael Johnson without Hart, Lewis without Tellez, Cram without Hendley; or any one of a dozen other of the greatest triathletes without the benefit of Sutton’s *gifts *in his coaching regime (okay, different story).
**But yet Sanders persists in the self coaching – after all, he was second at Kona, right? – with a brand of stubbornness and incompetence that does nothing positive for anything or anybody but talbotcox’s instagag / YouVom views and the legion of idiots who live vicariously through these mind blowing mistakes. Most baffling is that these are the same idiots who think that Lionel Sanders is successful because of what he does. This person excels in spite of what he does, which is in spite of his own self. **
**Discuss. **
(with popcorn!)