The man is heartbroken. Jan Frodeno hides his eyes behind his sunglasses. Even so, he can’t keep his voice from breaking. “It’s been a tough couple of hours,” he says. It was actually almost eight difficult hours – not because of the terrible heat, the oppressive humidity and the aggressive competition. What made the Ironman World Cup a year ago in Kona, Hawaii so exhausting for the two-time world champion, was watching.
He wanted to be there on a historic day, on which all records fell due to the calm and the relatively moderate temperatures. “For 40 years everyone has been waiting for a day like this,” says Frodeno in the video that he published on his Instagram account just a few days ago.
It’s been three years since Jan Frodeno crossed the finish line first in Kona. Last year he had to cure a fatigue fracture in his hip; the year before he came 69th due to back pain. This Saturday (6.15 p.m. / live stream on ARD.de) he is finally back again. 38 years is a great age for ambitions on the route, which consists of 3.8 kilometers of swimming, 180 kilometers of cycling and a marathon. Only the Australian Craig Alexander achieved the same when he won in Hawaii in 2011 at the age of 38.
Frodeno is the old elephant that the young triathletes get on with. There is Sebastian Kienle, who is three years his junior and who changed coach for the last few years of his career. Patrick Lange, however, did not grow into a competitor this time, the 33-year-old champion of the past two years got down on the bike course after two and a half hours because of a fever and had to give up. On the Olympic distance, British World Cup star Alistair Brownlee and Spaniard Xavier Gomez, with whom Frodeno had an exciting neck-and-neck race over the Ironman half-distance at the 2018 World Cup, have been pushing for the Olympic distance. It turned out well for the German. Yet.
But anyone who thinks Frodeno is getting tired doesn’t know the Cologne native well. Frodeno is obsessed, an engineer of his own high-performance machine. It consists of his 1.94 meters tall and 77 kilogram light body, on which tendons and ribs protrude and which he eats gluten-free. It builds on carefully organized framework conditions with alternating centers of life in Girona and Noosa in Australia, with a physiotherapist and training plans from Luxembourg native Dan Lorang, sporting director of a racing bike team and trainer of the Kona third party Anne Haug.
But Frodeno’s control center is his head. In his autobiography “A Question of Passion” he describes how he cracked his mental block with the help of a motivation tape produced especially for him: “I heard the motivation tape late at night in bed and suddenly – I couldn’t believe it – I have the race won in my subconscious, for the first time in my mind I didn’t have to let anyone pass me on the home straight. ”Two weeks later he won the triathlon at the Olympic Games in Beijing.
Frodeno has mastered the art of friendly mind games
It is this mental strength that makes Frodeno a popular, but also a feared athlete, that keeps him standing up. He has mastered the art of friendly mind games. In an interview with Triathlon magazine he listed the strengths of his opponents from the Olympic distance, but then added: “I won’t cry when Alistair goes up after 30 kilometers (on the marathon route, editor’s note).” On the one hand, he is the hunted – on the other hand, he already won the Ironman European Championship in Frankfurt this year, in a heat of 38 degrees.
Frodeno has not only caught himself, he is burning – for his sport and for a possible third title in Hawaii. You could tell that a year ago, in one of the darkest moments of his career. The Instagram video wasn’t just about the lament of the injured person on the sidelines. “Another 52 weeks,” he said, turning his gaze to the 2019 World Cup. “I can’t wait to start training again. I just hope my hip holds and that I can try again: return to Hawaii, walk down Ali’i Drive, be the first to tear off the finish tape – one more time. “
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