The sprint finish between Von Berg and Canada´s Lionel Sanders was a rare spectacle over the middle distance event, a race where competitors are more often separated by minutes and not milliseconds. Throughout the history of triathlon, very few down-to-the-wire sprints have been seen and now this one at Ironman® 70.3 Oceanside 2022 will be added to that minority list.
We take a look behind the scenes with the man himself and get all the insights into that historical and perhaps controversial end to the race.
Firstly, here is a quick look at the numbers: the sprint lasted 19 seconds, they went abruptly from running at 3:17/km to 2:32/km. In the end they peaked at 2:12/km.
First race of the season and I wasn’t the most confident leading into it because I didn’t have very good race pace sessions in the leading weeks into it. But I was well rested and ready to go nonetheless!
I had a good swim start and quickly settled into the lead group of eight. We exited the water together and went to work onto the bike. After 15km, I surged at the front of the group for a solid 5-10min to try to create gaps. Three guys got dropped and five remained. Lionel Sanders was 2min back at the time and he kept that gap all the way to T2.
Onto the run, I was running well with Alistair Brownlee and Jackson Laundry for most of the run. Lionel was running a very fast pace but wasn’t catching us, or definitely not enough to catch us before the finish line. However, in the last 5km, everything started exploding and he ran extremely fast. It came down to the wire.
Yes I never finished in a real sprint like this in a 70.3. I did beat Javier Gomez by 11sec at the 2019 70.3 European Championships and got beaten by Ben Kanute in 2019 as well by 12sec in Oceanside, but those weren’t sprint finishes.
I don’t train specifically for sprints, but at that point, at the end of a 70.3, it’s not the sprint ability that really counts, it is the athlete who is the freshest muscularly.
Not really because I was all in to catch Alistair which I did with 600m to go, and I was going pretty much as fast as I could go. But it would have been nice to know a little earlier (either by looking back, or by people on the sidelines telling me) that Lionel got so close. I had no idea he came back so quickly in the last few kilometers.
The main problem is that there wasn’t any finish line. Just the thick finish arch. So my thing is where do you even decide who was ahead? The referee with his Iphone was at the exit of the arch which doesn’t make much sense. However, Lionel said that he did feel he was very slightly ahead of me and maybe he was (I had no idea who got it, for me we were pretty much dead tie) but the problem is there wasn’t the technology to accurately decide the outcome. But I have to say, this sprint was for second and Jackson Laundry left no doubt as to who won the race!
This is just the beginning for Rudy who has big goals planned for 2022. We look forward especially to seeing him line up in his first long distance race at Ironman® France, followed by the PTO Tour and Ironman 70.3 World Championships to conclude a busy year!
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