Marten Van Riel finishes seventh in Ironman debut after bike crash
Despite a mishap on the bike course, the T100 champion still managed to clock a sub-eight-hour finish in Cozumel on Sunday
Just a week after claiming the T100 world title in Dubai, Belgium’s Marten Van Riel made his full-distance debut at Ironman Cozumel on Sunday. The 31-year-old Belgian Olympian didn’t seem fazed by the jump to Ironman racing at all, as he led out of the water and for most of the bike. He looked poised to fight for the win, but a crash late in the bike leg ruined his chances and he had to settle for seventh. Van Riel’s compatriot Bart Aernouts won the men’s race in 7:39:24, while Germany’s Anne Reischmann took the women’s win in 8:38:08.
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In 2021, Norwegian triathlon star Kristian Blummenfelt soared to a mind-boggling 7:21:12 finish in Cozumel, shattering Jan Frodeno’s full-distance record of 7:27:53. However, the time wasn’t recognized as an official record due to Cozumel’s down-current swim, which helped Blummenfelt fly to a 39-minute split in the water.
Van Riel saw a similar time in the swim leg on Sunday, exiting the water in 39:48. Even with a strong current, this is a remarkable time (it works out to just over one minute per 100m), and it gave the Belgian a lead of a minute and a half as he entered T1. The rest of the other eventual top-10 finishers were all at least five minutes back of Van Riel after the swim.
Van Riel had a stellar ride, and he almost made it to T2 without any issues. Unfortunately, at around the 175-kilometre mark, he lost control of his bike. As he wrote on Instagram after the race, he hit a hole in the road while riding around 50 kilometres per hour. He swerved off the course and hit a young girl who was spectating with her family.
“Luckily the girl had her family there and she looked relatively OK except for a cut in her finger,” Van Riel wrote. “The ambulance was quickly there and provided first aid to both of us.” After making sure that the young fan was OK, Van Riel carried on toward T2, but by that point, any advantage he’d had was gone after a 20-minute break. Many athletes would have called it a day right there, but Van Riel soldiered on, riding into transition and setting out on the marathon course to officially become an Ironman.
Despite his accident, Van Riel still managed to post the fastest run of the day with an impressive 2:39:38 marathon. He used this quick run split to climb to seventh place, and he stopped the clock in 7:56:35 for an unfortunate—but still stellar—Ironman debut.
After a solid race across the board, Aernouts took the win. He had the second-fastest marathon of the day, which lifted him to the victory. In the women’s race, Reischmann laid down the fastest bike and run splits to cruise to the win, beating second place by more than six minutes.