Ironman World Championship 2007 - few interesting facts
October 15th, 2007 by nikola
Chrissie Wellington’s race at Ironman World Championship 2007 was her second Ironman race ever. Her first race was Ironman Korea which she won only seven weeks before Ironman World Championship.
Chris McCormack ran a 2:42:02 marathon - this is a 3:50 min/km pace! After a super hard bike! At horrible Hawaii heat!
First 28 competitors finished the Ironman World Championship race under 9 hours. Average time difference between these competitors was 1 minute 35 seconds. This is a hard race for sure: with so much talent such a small amount of people went under nine hours. For examle, Challenge Roth which is considered the fastest race in the world (world record course) had 32 athletes finish under nine hours. However Challenge Roth does not have so many professional competitors. Ironman World Championship had 70 PRO finishers and around 90 PRO competitors and Challenge Roth had approx. 50 PRO competitors, I am not aware how many of them finished.
291 competitors finished under 10 hours. Average time difference between them was 21 seconds. Average time between competitors who finished during the hour between nine and ten hours was 13 seconds. Super competitive! This means that if you gained one second every 3 km of the run you could climb one spot. So one second every kilometre would be three spots. Etc etc… It is surely a race with the most pressure ever!
Laurent Jalabert, ex Tour de France cyclist, exited the swim at 1145th spot and finished the bike after 4:45:49 in 105th spot. Laurent Jalabest passed a total of 1040 competitors which means he passed someone every 16 seconds! I imagine that if he did not have to do so much passing and avoiding other competitors he would surely have a better bike split.
Add your own interesting facts in comments…
October 17th, 2007 at 5:37 am
The Laurent Jalabert permuatation is not unlike the one he had in Austria where he was accused of drafting. Given that the drafting zone is 15sec, one can understand why it would appear as though he was drafting when in fact he was just constantly passing people.
Luckily the guys at Kona were a little more sensible when applying the rules. Either that or they didn’t care since he wasn’t in contention or about to break any records.
I think that Chrissie Wellington’s performance is probably one of the greatest ever. I must admit that prior to Ironman Korea I hadn’t even heard about her and I am an avid reader/follower of the British triathlon scene. Here’s hoping she can come back next year and take it to Michellie because I don’t believe that Natascha has many big performances left (although she continues to surprise me).