I haven’t followed his entire season, but I do know he was still going good earlier this year at France with a 2:42 run and 2nd place to Bart Aernouts. After Kona, which had an unbelievably poor swim, I just chalked it up to an off day, or maybe he was injured leading up to the race and still went because the race is so important. However, after yesterday’s Cozumel performance I don’t get it. I saw he tweeted something about a niggle in his foot, but this time last year we were talking about him as a god-like figure after Florida and Arizona and even talking about him as a Kona threat. After all, he ran down Starky’s huge lead at Florida, and then ran down Rapp at Arizona and cruised in for the win.
So what happened? It starts with the swim, he is way off personally where he was last year at Florida at Arizona. I would have thought that knowing that was his weakness that he would have had a plan to improve further. Any one having an insight?
No insight…as a fan from the outside, I just assumed something was wrong at Kona and he wanted to get on the points train for this year and whatever was wrong he needed to wait a bit later to straighten out so chose Cozumel, but it was “still there”. As a fellow athlete even though not a pro, I can sympathize when something is not right with your body for your A event and you feel the urge to jump back in only to find out that it’s still a problem and only really gets magnified in racing (he would not be the first one to say to himself…“yeah, it’s not great, but I can overcome that”…until he/we can’t).
If someone in triathlon were to go on a round of doping, absolutely dominate for a time, and then get off the dope and come back down to normal, would they get caught? I’m not blaming or accusing anyone of doing this; just a hypothetical scenario, and wondering on the legitimacy of successfully employing such technique.
Maybe a training crash and some broken body parts still mending…if that is the case he would not be the first whose swim was affected by collarbone/shoulder mobility post crashing.
That scenario had occurred to me but wouldn’t normally explain such a discrepancy in swim times. //
Ok, before we start to compare his swim times, what were his times vs the winner/lead group times in the races. All his times have to be taken into context first, like someone else pointed out, two were wetsuit(faster ones i guess) and two were not(slower ones i presume). That alone could be the reason if there is in fact a discrepancy to begin with. But we need the entire swim in context to even know if he in fact did swim slower…
I haven’t followed his entire season, but I do know he was still going good earlier this year at France with a 2:42 run and 2nd place to Bart Aernouts. After Kona, which had an unbelievably poor swim, I just chalked it up to an off day, or maybe he was injured leading up to the race and still went because the race is so important. However, after yesterday’s Cozumel performance I don’t get it. I saw he tweeted something about a niggle in his foot, but this time last year we were talking about him as a god-like figure after Florida and Arizona and even talking about him as a Kona threat. After all, he ran down Starky’s huge lead at Florida, and then ran down Rapp at Arizona and cruised in for the win.
So what happened? It starts with the swim, he is way off personally where he was last year at Florida at Arizona. I would have thought that knowing that was his weakness that he would have had a plan to improve further. Any one having an insight?
From his blog it sounds like he’s had a tough year personally/emotionally.
With a weak swim and an average bike, Victor de Corral will often find himself “out of contention” for the win.
An ironman with a fast run is also a lot harder to do than one with a strong bike/swim and a “moderated” run.
Victor probably will not want to deploy the fast run for a 5th place
I raced him a few weeks back out in Lanzarote at the Ocean Lava Tri, they had an elite wave there with about 30 people in it. It was wetsuit legal and he put about 3:30 into me in 3K, and was in the 2nd main pack about 6mins off the fastest swim time of the day, and 4mins off the 2nd fastest swim time. He then overheated on the run while leading the race and pulled out, spent over an hour in the medical tent after the race. Not sure if he went to the hospital after that or not. So maybe the effects of that were still lingering in his body??
Of note, different start times in Kona and different “race” but I swam 45secs faster than him there…
As someone else mentioned I also heard that he has a new baby as well. But yes, I found it very interesting how well he went at the end of last year and then kind of died off as the year went on. Will be interesting to see if he bounces back next year.
I raced him a few weeks back out in Lanzarote at the Ocean Lava Tri, they had an elite wave there with about 30 people in it. It was wetsuit legal and he put about 3:30 into me in 3K, and was in the 2nd main pack about 6mins off the fastest swim time of the day, and 4mins off the 2nd fastest swim time. He then overheated on the run while leading the race and pulled out, spent over an hour in the medical tent after the race. Not sure if he went to the hospital after that or not. So maybe the effects of that were still lingering in his body??
Of note, different start times in Kona and different “race” but I swam 45secs faster than him there…
As someone else mentioned I also heard that he has a new baby as well. But yes, I found it very interesting how well he went at the end of last year and then kind of died off as the year went on. Will be interesting to see if he bounces back next year.
Thanks for insight. Maybe he has just been cooked in general and hasn’t be able to put in the swim training that is required for non-swimmers to keep what swim they do have.
That scenario had occurred to me but wouldn’t normally explain such a discrepancy in swim times. //
Ok, before we start to compare his swim times, what were his times vs the winner/lead group times in the races. All his times have to be taken into context first, like someone else pointed out, two were wetsuit(faster ones i guess) and two were not(slower ones i presume). That alone could be the reason if there is in fact a discrepancy to begin with. But we need the entire swim in context to even know if he in fact did swim slower…
His 1:06 in Kona was horrendous and IMCOZ is apparently current aided or at least advertised that way. Obviously different swims are going to suit different athletes slightly but I think from looking at his peers in similar races that his performances this year on swims have been very sub-par.
Victor Del Corral (IMAZ 54:03) (IMFL 55:23) (IMCOZ 54:42) (Kona 1:06:14)
Trevor Delsaut (IMFL 55:26) (IMCOZ 50:17)
Matt Russell (IMAZ 59:19) (IMCOZ 52:13) (Kona 1:00:52)
Jon Shearon (IMAZ 53:52) (IMAZ 50:20)
Matt Charbot (IMAZ 48:36) (IMCOZ 44:27)
Jordan Bryden (IMAZ 49:05) (IMCOZ 47:57)
Dan Mcintosh (IMAZ 52:47) (IMCOZ 48:42)
Andrey Lyatskiy (IMFL 50:06) (IMCOZ 45:29)
Tom-
Question: It seems that the dynamics of legal drafting is very important in the pro-race. The pro-race has a smaller group of people who often know each other. It thus seem possible to find an appropriate pair of feet (a goldilocks draft) and get on them during the swim. When this happens, a weak swimmer might get pulled along to a much faster time. When it doesn’t happen the swim might be much weaker. Couldn’t this explain 4-5 minutes?
The same is also true on the bike. (Maybe to a lesser extent?).
Being a weak swimmer and an average rider, I can’t see Victor bridging up if he is in a slower group. If his group is moving backwards won’t he he powerless to save his race? (Especially if there is wind).