Marten Van Riel Runs Away With IRONMAN Lake Placid: Shatters Course Record

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Marten Van Riel competes at IRONMAN Texas. Photo: Kevin Mackinnon

Marten Van Riel went 7:41:57 after running a 2:34:39 marathon to shatter the course record at IRONMAN Lake Placid today to set a new course record by eight minutes, while also breaking Trevor Foley’s run course record to dominate the day at the latest event in the IRONMAN Pro Series. That puts the Belgian star very much in contention to take the Pro Series title this year – he’s now in second place behind Kristian Blummenfelt and has a 70.3 performance to add to his points total. (Van Riel finished second to Blummenfelt at IRONMAN Texas earlier this year, but has today’s win and a win at IRONMAN 70.3 Elsinore to go along with that runner-up finish.)

It wasn’t quite a wire-to wire win for Van Riel, but it was close. Fraser Minnican (GBR) would lead the way out of the swim in 47:04, but Van Riel had done much of the leading through the first leg and was right with him as Americans Thomas Gorden and Ben Kanute trailed by roughly a minute. Three of the other potential favourites – Matthew Marquardt, Rudy Von Berg and Jason West – all hit T2 roughly three minutes behind the leader. Foley, who won in New Zealand earlier this year, finished the swim well behind – heading up to the transition area in the Lake Placid’s speed skating oval after a 55:21 swim split in the non-wetsuit swim.

Once on the bike Van Riel quickly made it clear that he wasn’t going to be holding back, steadily pulling clear of the rest of the field. Defending champion Marquardt found himself 2:24 back by the half way point of the ride, with Kanute at 4:38, while Foley and Von Berg were roughly six minutes down.

By the end of the ride Marquardt was able to gain back a bit of time, reaching the speed skating oval 1:18 back of Van Riel, with Foley at 7:24, Kanute at 7:32 and Von Berg sitting in fifth at 10:48 back.

Out on the run course Marquardt managed to keep the gap roughly the same through the first seven miles of the challenging Lake Placid run course, but then the elastic snapped and Van Riel started to pull clear – by the halfway point of the run he was a shade under three minutes ahead, and would hold steady to finally cross the line with just over a four minute cushion. Marquardt had an excellent performance – besting his previous course record of 7:50:08 with his 7:46:11 finish – it just wasn’t enough to compete with Van Riel on this day.

The race for the final spot on the podium turned into an interesting duel between Kanute and West, who had come off the bike in eighth place, 16 minutes behind Van Riel. While Foley was in third halfway through the run (but still 11:07 behind), he would fade dramatically over the last six miles the run. Kanute (@13:14) and West (@15:21) were fourth and fifth at that halfway point. By the 20 mile point Foley was still in third, but was just over 15 minutes behind, with West just 17 seconds back and Kanute sitting about a minute behind. Three miles later, though, Foley had cracked and found himself in sixth as Von Berg had also passed, with West in third, but suddenly starting to lose steam and only a few seconds ahead of Kanute. West would end up stopping for a short time, which allowed Kanute to make the pass and, within a mile, was 40 seconds up. Kanute would hang tough, running a 2:43:48 marathon to take third, while West, despite the stop, would put together the day’s second-fastest marathon to finish fourth. Von Berg would nail fifth, with Germany’s Frederic Funk bouncing back from Challenge Roth a couple of weeks ago to take sixth and get himself Kona qualifying slot.

“Matthew really made me work for it,” Van Riel said after the race. “I had a really rough patch at the end of the bike and then at the start of the run. And I started running quite fast. And Matthew was catching a bit, and I was thinking, ‘what am I going to have to do today to beat this guy?’ But. then on the uphill, he started losing a little bit of time again, and that was obviously a confidence boost for me to keep pushing.”

After the race, Marquardt was asked what it was like to find himself chasing all day.

“It’s frustrating in a good way, in that I knew that I was having a really good performance and still not really able to bring very much time back on Martin,” the American said. “So. I knew that he was racing really well too, and, you know, hoped that he would crack, but that didn’t quite happen. But I am super happy overall with how the day went, because I was faster than I was last year … Martin had an incredible day.”

In terms of Kona Qualifiers, it looks like those slots will go to West, Funk, Sowieja and Hogenhaug – who grabs the last spot after also competing at Challenge Roth.

Place Name Country Overall Time Swim Bike Run
1 Marten Van Riel BEL 07:41:57 47:05 4:14:46 02:34:49
2 Matthew Marquardt USA 07:46:11 49:49 4:13:56 02:37:24
3 Ben Kanute USA 07:58:23 48:05 4:21:44 02:43:48
4 Jason West USA 08:00:44 50:11 4:28:11 02:37:19
5 Rudy Von Berg USA 08:03:02 50:10 4:22:51 02:44:54
6 Frederic Funk GER 08:04:29 51:27 4:27:53 02:39:00
7 Cameron Wurf AUS 08:07:24 55:22 4:17:59 02:49:21
8 Trevor Foley USA 08:09:52 55:21 4:14:06 02:55:34
9 Dominik Sowieta GER 08:14:30 55:23 4:30:14 02:43:21
10 Kristian Hogenhaug DEN 08:16:21 53:28 4:23:33 02:53:42

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Finally Ben! Good job

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Happy to see Funk going to Kona - great vlogs and podcasts.

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Thank you for the article.
Attempting to quantify just how good MvR’s performance was, in anticipation of his next full distance, against the big boys, I reached for Thorsten’s trirating ‘Course Ratings’ because IMLP is the hardest course of the top tier events.

With Kona roughly at zero, he lists IMLP as 4:05 minutes slower (ie +4), normally, but 6 yesterday (+6). Compare that with Challenge Roth at -20:10 (which we’ve just seen Laidlow win in 7:21, working hard as): a differential of 26 minutes.
We need to make an adjustment to that for a base race taking 7:40 not 9 hours: x 0.85 - so statistic differential is 22.
Applying that differential offers the opportunity to compare MvR’s time (7:42, adjusts to 7:20) with Laidlow’s Roth one (7:21).
Prefer another reference? Blummenfelt’s IM Texas win? Differential = 15
KB’s time = 7:22
MvR factored time = 7:27
Final reference(Men) Kona 2024, won by Lange
Differential = 5
Lange’s time = 7:36
MvR factored time = 7:37

MvR’s unpressured win yesterday merely confirmed he is on track for a Kona win. How?

  • Swimming with Laidlow and the rest of the WhatsApp group plus the excluded Stornes
  • Riding with Laidlow away from Stornes and not caught by Blummenfelt (see Roth) even if the latter benefits from the Norge train.
  • Laidlow will work, even with MvR, because he knows he has to get a gap on the Norges
  • MvR will work likewise because he will reckon he can run faster than Laidlow (as well as wanting 4 minutes on Blummenfelt/Stornes/Iden).
  • Anyone else coming to the party? Marquardt in the Norge train but minutes slower on the run. Koolhaas swim FP before dropping back to the train on the Queen K. Luis in the same ‘boat’. Sorry not to have Geens there. will Wilde really wait till 2029 before racing Kona? Tempus fugit.
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Some refreshing honesty from Jason West. I don’t follow him normally so maybe this is just his usual level of candidness (commendable). In short: he doesn’t really enjoy racing the full distance nearly as much as shorter ones, and he finds the training boring; still trying to figure it out (subtext: and find his “why”).

https://www.instagram.com/p/Da_UE-1uAUr/

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Oddly, the presence of MVR both helps and hurts Laidlow. Helps in the sense that he’s another strong swim/biker who has equal incentive to gap the Norges. Hurts in the sense that MVR out runs Laidlow on paper.

So then the the playbook for Laidlow has to be:

-Work with the WhatsApp group to get what whatever swim gap you can get

-Work with MVR and whomever else can keep pace (Riddle? Schomberg) or catch up (Kalinn, Ditlev, etc), and then also drop the guys he knows he can’t beat on the run, likely halfway back from Hawi where he made his move in 2022

-Hope he gets enough of a gap on the guys he needs gaps on and that Ditlev/Kalinn don’t drag the faster runners back up to him.

So he has to thread the needle between gapping the Norges and working with but also gapping MVR. Maybe hope that Kallin comes screaming through and he can get on his wheel but MVR can’t.

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Here’s the thing, when you are in the front select few, and put down the fastest bike split, no one is riding or dragging folks up to you. I think by now we know his strategy, burn off the what’s app group(or not if they overbike) and then run 2;3mid/high to hold off the 2;30 flat crowd. Now of course not every race goes like this, remembering the cramps in the swim at Nice, but all things equal and on his day, this is the plan. And he has executed it perfectly many times now, the formula for cracking the Norgs on their good days too..

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The trouble is that a healthy Ditlev’s path to victory also hinges on having the fastest bike split. My guess is that Kalinn’s bonus structure does as well.

Whether that happens or not we’ll see

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The trouble is for those guys, all of which I think now realize they are not the fastest bikers in a race with Sam. Like the Norg’s strategy with him, it all hinges with him blowing up. Trying to ride up to him would be a disaster, and even trying to ride even back with their swim deficits could put their overall races in jeopardy. I think Sam has earned the “best” biker in the sport award, and he has had enough 2;30+ runs after those rides that we can say he is a real threat off the front with some minutes of lead on the best runners..

There have been riders in the past just go all in on a bike split though(for bonus money), do you think this fits with either of those two you mentioned?

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Just my opinion but I thought the YouTube coverage was excellent. I thought the commentators were great.

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Yeah I thought they were fun and 9hrs was an easy watch for me.

Will and Dede were funny and with Hayley in transition it was like getting commentary from a group of mates. I find Rinny and Crowie too stiff and dull.

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Ditlev no, Kalinn yes. Ditlev hopes to win this one day (not this year by the looks of it) and so will need to save something in the legs.

Kalinn knows he’s not a top contender (runs too slow) and so if he can get some air time for his bike sponsor, it’s in his interest.

Though Sam hasn’t had many 2:3x runs - outside of his Roth wins (2:36, 2:37) he hasn’t gone under 2:40. His previous best was 2:41 when he won the WC in Nice. However he gets there, he still needs 7 mins on the Norges off the bike, and probably 4-5 mins on van Riel

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IMO Sam’s biggest threat at Kona is the heat and humidity. Has he ever had a good run off of a typical bike in warm weather?

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Did you not see his first time racing there, where he nearly won the race with the Norg’s chasing him the whole way??

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