Pain and gain, jaw-dropping athletic spectacle and the toughest one-day event on the planet… it was most definitely the Ironman World Championships, then, only not as we know it. But if the floral Hawaiian leis looked out of place in the desert landscapes of Utah at the 2021 Ironman Worlds (held in May 2022), the racing in St. George was certainly worthy of Kona.
Long-course queen Daniela Ryf returned with a vengeance, Olympic champ Kristian Blummenfelt proved that he’s already an all-time great, while a total of five elite Brits secured top-10 finishes. And yet it wasn’t all plain sailing for the elites in America. A raft of Did Not Start (DNS) notices deprived us of seeing Ali Brownlee, Lucy Charles-Barclay, Javier Gomez, Gustav Iden, Jan Frodeno and more, while the evident strain in the faces and bodies of racers showed that everyone hurts when racing Ironman.
So here’s what you can learn from the Utah saints for your first – or next – 226km adventure…
LESSON 01
THERE WILL ALWAYS BE ANOTHER RACE
Previous champs Jan Frodeno and Patrick Lange, Brit contenders Lucy Charles-Barclay and Ali Brownlee, Ironman 70.3 king Gustav Iden and many more. By the time the Ironman