Blummenfelt in Dubai after 10th-place finish: “Not the day I was looking for”
Despite flat Olympic champion says he was "too far back to fight for the win."
Photo by:
Kevin Mackinnon
All eyes were on Kristian Blummenfelt and Daniela Ryf heading into Ironman 70.3 Dubai last weekend, but neither ended up winning the race. While Ryf had a solid performance, taking second behind rising German long-distance star Laura Philipp, things went awry for Olympic champion Blummenfelt right from the gun.
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According to various reports and Blummenfelt’s Instagram page, he stumbled at the start of the swim and wasn’t able to recover in time to get onto the feet of the lead group of swimmers. He would end up hitting T1 about 70 seconds down, and despite pushing hard through the first half of the bike, found himself two minutes behind the leaders. Then, to add to his woes, he flatted at 60 km.
Blummenfelt doesn’t appear to be trying to make any excuses for his performance – when one of his fans commented that it appeared he had spent eight minutes on the side of the road, Blummenfelt made it clear that even before the flat he was “too far back to fight for the win.”
As he told us in an exclusive interview in December, Blummenfelt’s big goals for 2022 include the two Ironman World Championships and also the Sub7/ Sub8 Project, so he’ll have lots more opportunity to get his season back on track.
