What a day! For about 5 hours it looked like the pre race predictions were going to come true. Then Chrissie got a flat, Macca had bike mechanic issues and suddenly everything changed.
While Macca was forced to drop out, Chrissie had an enforced stop of 11 minutes until Rebecca Keat stopped to lend her a Co2 canister. While most athletes might have lost their cool (remember the Stadler wheel throwing incident from 2005) CW took advantage of the break to lower her heart rate, take a pit stop and then refocus on getting her lead back… which she did with a vengeance.
Ironman World Champion 2008 Chrissie Wellington with 400m to the line
It is all ifs, what’s & maybes but she was only 11 minutes outside the all time fastest Kona time of Paula Newby Fraser from 1992 (8:55:28). Even after her stop she beat Yvonne van Vlerken by almost 15 minutes (remember that this was the woman who set the fastest ever IM distance time at Roth this year (8:45:48). How fast can this woman go?
At the moment she reminds me of Usain Bolt in the Olympic 100m. She seems to be enjoying the moment more than the chance to break any records. How long it will be like this only Chrissie and her coach Brett Sutton know but on recent performances it would seem that she is definitely capable of going much, much faster.
In the next few posts I’ll have more stuff from Kona including updates to “Silly Mistakes”.
Stay tuned!
