Hello team Brent .. thank you so much for supporting Brent this past week and sending him so much great energy and support. Brent was a champion all day in the way he composed himself, dealt with the curveballs of racing and finished what he started in spite of not racing to his potential. You will hear from Brent directly but here is my little summation!
Brent was amazing all week with his sponsor and media commitments and represented each of you so well! You can be proud to be associated with not only a fast, talented athlete but an authentic spokesperson and “good bloke!”. On race day, Brent was right there out of the swim and treated T1 like an Olympic distance race sprinting aggressively through transition and exiting toward the lead of the lead pack of contenders. There were moments on the bike course where Brent exerted his presence in 2nd place. That spoke volumes about his race readiness and confidence. But then, we got word that he and a few others were penalized for drafting. As an honest and savvy bike rider, this surprised me. As one of the best cyclists in our sport, Brent doesn’t need to draft. He served a 5 minute penalty on the course and then resumed his pursuit of the leaders. Five minutes in this event is huge! He exited T2 outside of the top 20 but he managed to claw his way up to 7th place. When I saw him run up Palani at mile 9, I thought he looked better than in 2015. He had great rhythm and he looked effortless. But, somewhere in the Energy Lab, things started to unravel and Brent was vomiting. Many pros said that there wasn’t enough water on the course and they started to drink the water out of the sponges. The challenge with that is that the sponges are soaked in disinfectant prior to being soaked in water. So perhaps that led to becoming ill. Regardless, Brent fell off his pace, was sick but then tried so hard to re-find his rhythm and pace for the remainder of the marathon. I saw him from mile 22-24 and he tried everything. He treated each aid station like a buffet trying to find the magic fuel for his muscles. He never gave up! I wanted to grab the baton and finish the race for him – my heart was breaking watching him try to wake up his 2:46 marathon legs.
I know you will agree that that one day changes nothing. We all would have loved to have seen Brent on the podium but he still remains a 2-time IRONMAN Champion, owner of 3 sub 8-hour IRONMANs and the fastest IRONMAN athlete of 2016 and almost of all time. We’d like to thank Specialized for their amazing photography and videography throughout the event.
Watch Brent’s Video in Kona
