Kristian Blummenfelt won the title at the Ironman World Championships in St. George, ending the German run of successes. The Olympic champion and short-distance world champion from 2021 prevailed on Saturday at last year’s catch-up world championship over 3.86 kilometers of swimming, 180.2 kilometers of cycling and 42.2 kilometers of running. The 28-year-old Norwegian won in the unofficial time of 7:49:16 hours ahead of Lionel Sanders from Canada and Braden Currie from New Zealand. The best German was Florian Angert from Weinheim in fifth place at his World Cup premiere.
With the triumph of Blummenfelt, who took the lead in the final marathon for the first time and stayed under 2:40 hours, the era of German title successes that had begun in 2014 ended.
However, at the first World Championships outside of Hawaii, Jan Frodeno, the champion of 2015, 2016 and 2019, as well as Patrick Lange, the world champion of 2017 and 2018, were missing Suffered a shoulder injury during winter training camp.
St. George’s world title is officially held for the year 2021. In 2020 and last year, the World Cup could not take place in Hawaii due to the corona pandemic. In October of this year, however, the Mecca of triathletes will again be about the World Championship medals.
Podium for the defending champion
In the women’s race, defending champion Anne Haug won the bronze medal. With a strong race to catch up in the marathon, the 39-year-old moved up from fifth to third place, ultimately missing her second triumph after 2019 by 12:04 minutes. The outstanding Swiss Daniela Ryf won her fifth world championship title after 3.86 kilometers of swimming, 180.2 kilometers of cycling and 42.195 kilometers of running, second was the British Kat Matthews (+8:50 minutes).
For Haug it was the third World Cup medal, in addition to winning the last edition 938 days ago, she had already won bronze in 2018. The second German hopeful Laura Philipp had failed at short notice due to a corona disease. Haug lost too much time on the mountainous bike course, and despite a furious start, she was unable to close the gap of more than 15 minutes in the marathon.
The Bayreuth resident had already expressed her skepticism about a successful defense of her title. “It’s always easier to start the race with a clean sheet and just do it than if you’ve been carrying a rucksack around with you for three years, have the target on your back and everyone wants to wrestle the title from you,” said Haug. Ryf achieved this impressively, above all thanks to an outstanding bike performance.
