There wasn’t much missing from the really big Patrick Lange show. At the Ironman World Championship, which took place this year not in Hawaii but in Nice, the German triathlete and Hawaii champion from 2017 and 2018 got off the bike in thirteenth place and went onto the running track, more than ten minutes behind him leading Frenchman Sam Laidlow and six minutes behind his second-placed compatriot Clément Mignon.
And then he ran and ran, literally flew, from 13th place to second place. In the end it wasn’t enough to make a big splash, but Lange left a big mark on this World Cup with his spectacular running performance. An almost perfect race for him, which remained exciting until the end, even though Laidlow defended his ever-shrinking lead until the finish on the Promenade des Anglais. His winning time: 8:06:22 hours. Lange needed around four minutes more. He ran the marathon in an amazing time of 2:32:41 hours.
Frodeno’s lap of honor instead of the moon landing
And Jan Frodeno in his last Ironman race? It was supposed to be a “moonshot”, that’s what the three-time Hawaii winner called his mission in Nice. A moon landing to end a great career. At the age of 42, Frodeno had once again set the greatest possible goal. He wanted to win his fourth world title. Wanted to show it to the youth again. But the landing went wrong and the “Mission Moonshot” became “Mission Impossible”. The old master impressed in the swim, on the 3.8 kilometers in the open sea, but on the 180 kilometer long, difficult bike course he never really got going, struggled kilometer after kilometer and came to the running course 13 minutes behind Sam Laidlow.
That was only half a minute behind Patrick Lange, but while his German competitor set off in pursuit, Frodeno had already finished the race. “The gladiator dies in his arena” – that was the comment he made to the camera ten kilometers before switching to running. A final martial greeting. And when he slipped into his running shoes and came out of the changing tent, for the first few meters he no longer did so as a runner, but as a walker. He greeted his wife, his children and his parents, hugged them and then ran off. What he was left with at the end was a victory lap before the curtain fell. Although the 2008 Olympic champion over the short distance in Nice did not manage to gild his career again at the end, he is still assured of the respect of the competition. “For me he is and remains the greatest who has ever done this sport,” said Sebastian Kienle, the 2014 Ironman champion, at the ARD microphone.
The heart of this world championship was the cycling course, which ran over 180 kilometers through difficult terrain. Everything was different than in Hawaii, where the bike route was like a highway in front of the professionals, always straight to the turning point and then back again. The World Cup route in Nice, on the other hand, is not only a different challenge because of its 2500 meters of altitude, it is a constant up and down. If you want to put it drastically, you could say: In Nice you have to be able to cycle properly. This is also why you hardly saw any Americans at the start other than Rudy von Berg, who lives and trains in France half the year. They are said to be able to drive straight ahead or on the rollers, but they are unable to cope with steep climbs and demanding descents, with curves and braking points.
In the first 60 kilometers, the athletes faced an 18-kilometer climb, not overly steep, but certainly selective. Two Frenchmen, Sam Laidlow and Clément Mignon, were in the lead, while Frodeno, who was one of the first out of the water as an outstanding swimmer, was already having problems. Seven minutes behind, that wasn’t what he had planned. His trainer Dan Lorang looked quite perplexed on the side of the track, while Frodeno continued to lose time and soon had to greet Patrick Lange, who caught up with him. For a stretch, the German stars and Hawaii winners drove together with the specified and required distance of twelve meters, but when the crux of the route came at kilometer 130, a steep climb of almost eight kilometers long with an average gradient of seven or eight percent, Lange moved away.
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The race went according to plan for him. The fifty seconds behind he had gotten while swimming were long forgotten. And the steep section after 130 kilometers was made for him. With a body weight of barely 65 kilograms, he weighs ten kilos less than Frodeno and 15 kilos less than the Dane Magnus Ditlev, one of the strongest cyclists in the field and winner of the classic in Roth this and last year. Things literally got easier for Lange. At the top, a few kilometers on a plateau, and then a long, technically difficult descent down to Nice. Then put on your running shoes and first play the piano. Lange started the race, which he started in thirteenth place, cautiously – and then got faster and faster. He plodded through Nice with small steps, from thirteen to two. When he stood on the podium with Laidlow and Ditlev, Frodeno greeted the spectators on the running track.
