The triathlon professional from DSW Darmstadt shows an impressive race to catch up with a sore shoulder at the Challenge in Roth. Jan Frodeno has to give up while in the lead.
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On the way to second place in the Triathlon Challenge in Roth, Patrick Lange (right) overtakes Robert Kallin from Sweden. Photo: dpa
ROTH – When Jan Frodeno was standing at the edge of the track with tears in his eyes, Patrick Lange stormed past and continued his race to catch up. The two-time Ironman World Champion, who started for DSW Darmstadt, finally finished the Challenge Roth in 7:44:52 hours and thus in a personal long-distance record time. The Dane Magnus Elbaek Ditlev was nine minutes faster, but it was also Lange’s first competition in nine months.
“Chapeau in front of him. Nobody in the world would have beaten him today,” acknowledged Lange without envy, after repeatedly touching his painful shoulder at the finish line, which had to be operated on after a wheel fall four months ago. “My shoulder hurts like hell, I fought every minute. That was a competition in which I lost a lot of life energy,” said the 35-year-old in an interview with Bavarian radio. “There were more downs than ups. But I think I reacted well. The task was to let everything go by the wayside, and that’s what I did.” But it was the hardest second place of his life. “But the spectators really carried me,” said Lange, who already had problems swimming (“The hip flexors closed”), but still managed to catch up furiously after going on the run almost 15 minutes behind.
The clear leader after cycling was Jan Frodeno, but his Achilles tendon soon forced him to retire. Instead of an acclaimed comeback after months of injury, the three-time Ironman World Champion experienced the next setback. Almost apologetically, Frodeno waved him off after getting out of the marathon. Then he fell into the arms of his team.
For more than two thirds of the competition everything looked like a comeback victory. Driven by tens of thousands of spectators on the banks of the Main-Danube Canal, the 40-year-old was the first to get out of the water. Despite a post-cycling mishap where Frodeno couldn’t find his bag of running shoes, he also led ahead of the marathon. But then the pain got too much. The veteran described his task as a “reasonable decision”. “Today was the day when the pain started on the bike and increased while running. Bitter, because I actually had a really good day,” said Frodeno.
Local hero Anne Haug, on the other hand, defended her title after swimming 3.86 kilometers, cycling 180.2 kilometers and running 42.2 kilometers. The Bayreuth native was more than seven minutes behind after swimming and a mishap in which she grabbed the wrong exchange bag. On the bike course, the 39-year-old then fought a bee in her helmet and was even stung. “It’s an Ironman. Things always happen that can’t be planned,” Haug commented on the adversities, which she mastered and crossed the finish line after 8:22:42 hours with a lead of nine minutes.
Now the focus of the pros is on the Ironman World Championship in October. Jan Frodeno also wants to attack again in Hawaii and promised: “I’m in the autumn of my career, but not in winter”.
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