When I competed in this race, there were less than 1,000 who showed up, Yesterday there were 1,700. I have never see a race start this intimidating.
Craig Alexander repeats as Kona Ironman but Andy Potts (TYR Sayonara), John Flanagan (TYR Sayonara) and Pete Jacobs (bueseventy) won the swim!
The swim times were a bit slow this year: 49:42.0. I could not swim it that fast but I could have been within 5-minutes of that time. I suspect the swim course may have been unwittingly extended and the athletes swam farther than 2.4-miles
From the Examiner:
Flanagan led Potts, churning through the water like he was fleeing a shark as Potts loped along on his tail, looking relaxed. In the last several hundred meters of the swim, Flanagan decided that he had had enough of Potts swimming on his toes and turned up the heat. Potts fell a body length behind, but ultimately caught up and passed Flanagan to collect the day's swim prime with a time of 49:42. Two minutes later the follow pair emerged and their identities were revealed: Pete Jacobs from Australia and the 20-year-old dark horse Philip Graves who some have compared to a male Chrissie Wellington.
[Link]
For a larger version of the video here is the YouTube [Link]
2 comments:
The commentators on Ironman Live indicated that there were significant swells (I think they said from the south) that slowed the swim.
I see, thank you for that bit of info. The swim is an out and back so the first part was directly in the swell. Ouch!
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