Photos: Korupt Vision for Ironman
By Kent Gray/Triathlon.kiwi
At 38, Braden Currie knows he doesn’t have much runway left at the top level of long-distance triathlon. That only makes results at highly anticipated races that don’t match all the training effort even tougher to “stomach”.
That was again, frustratingly, the case at the VinFast Ironman World Championships on Sunday with Currie finishing an “unfulfilled’ 28th in Kailua-Kona, last of the Kiwis behind Mike Phillips and 17th and debutant Ben Hamilton in 25th.
It was not the performance the Wanaka father-of-two had meticulously planned for, a training effort fuelled by the disappointment of his DNF in Kona two years and a drafting penalty impacted 16th in Nice last year.
Currie conceded on social media that he had “cooked myself” early on the bike trying to get back into a race blown apart by defending champion Sam Laidlow who slashed nearly seven minutes off his own 180km bike record with a scarcely believable 3:57:22 split.
The Frenchman sensationally faded to 18th and wasn’t the only one who found the marathon a grind after all the pedal exertion.
“Only one guy ran under 2.45 in the top 10 this year and that guy won [German Patrick Lange],” Currie wrote.
“He raced a great race and deserved it. But no one expected there not to be a running battle in this years race. In the end this year’s race was a ‘who survived the bike’ and could still run.”
Ironman World Championships 2024…”
Currie knew his chance of a top finish was gone long before he entered the marathon course and admitted he had to dig deep mentally to finish with a 2:54:25 split.
“You get one chance a year at world champs and only one every two years at Kona. And you have to stomach your downfall until you can make it better,” he wrote.
“Under performance is the hardest thing to accept. You know you have done all the work to be in the race but for small reasons you end up not in the race.”
Currie was pleased with a “great swim” but then paid a heavy tax for a sloppy transition.
“… fumbled my T1, lost the group that resulted in me breaking all my bike power records in the first 20 minutes in town to bridge the insignificant but significant 19 second gap. I had to make a choice to risk it or let the race ride away into the distance and join the chasers.
“I know the swim and run is my strength and my bike can be on if I’ve done the work and ride smart. I had done the work but in the end, I cooked myself early on with too much excess.
“Plenty of others found themselves in the same position at some point in the bike but it was the massive spikes in power and therefore lactate early on that I didn’t recover from.
“You can feel like you have learnt every lesson you had to and you are due a smooth race. But the racing now is never as you predicted.”
As ever, Currie intends turning the disappointment into a positive as he eyes the December 14-15 Ironman 70.3 World Championships in Taupo.
“For me now, I want to have a race that represents the work and dedication I have applied to the sport,” he said.
“I haven’t had that all year. That’s my goal now.”
