Germany’s Lars Wichert, who holds the record as the fastest Ironman age-grouper thanks to his record-setting performance at Ironman Hamburg earlier this year, says that it appears his bike was tampered with in transition at last weekend’s Ironman World Championship in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. Wichert says others in his age group also reported having issues with their bikes.
After checking his bike into transition on Friday afternoon, Wichert, 38, was doing some final checks on race morning and noticed that the bolt on his seat post had been loosened, so the saddle was moving around. He tightened the bolt, then checked the rest of his bike to ensure everything was OK.
When the two-time Olympic rower exited the water and hit T1, he was surprised to find that his rear tire was completely flat. After the race he would learn that countryman Fritz Ferner also found the bolt that held his saddle had been loosened, while 2022 Kona 35 to 39 age-group world champ, Tom De Bruyn, also arrived in T1 to find there was no air in one of his tires.
All three men have reported the issue to Ironman, who are reportedly looking into the matter and plan to review video footage from the transition area. (We reached out to Ironman but had not heard back as we published this story.) There are reports that other age group athletes in the men’s 35-39 age group also had issues on race day.
Fastest age-group bike split
About an hour into his race Wichert got another flat, which he fixed on the side of the road. Despite losing between two and three minutes, the German was able to get back on his bike and charge to Hawi and back with the day’s fastest age-group bike split, 4:21:13. That was the 37th fastest bike on the day and got him to T2 with a 32-second lead over Great Britain’s Neil Eddy and 35 seconds ahead of the eventual champion in the age group, China’s Miao Hao.
Eddy and Hao would quickly move ahead of the German, but he was able to remain in third place until he was coming out of the famous Energy Lab, where American Andrew Hall ran past. Wichert was able to stay with the American, though, and would surge back to the top-three over the last few kilometres of the race. His 3:07 marathon split got him to the line in 8:36:17. (Hao won the age group in 8:30:10, with Eddy taking second in…
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