Jan Frodeno will not be able to defend his title. The 2015, 2016 and 2019 Ironman champion is injured. Frodeno doesn’t want to let that get him down.
Jan Frodeno even had a little joke ready for his video message with the bad news.
“Update on my first race, because nobody asks about it,” he wrote about the moving images from the passenger seat of a moving car. What followed was sobering: no start at the Ironman World Championship next month in St. George.
For the second time after 2018, Frodeno missed the showdown for the crown over 3.86 kilometers of swimming, 180.2 kilometers of cycling and 42.2 kilometers of running. The 40-year-old three-time Ironman champion was recently diagnosed with a partial tear in his Achilles tendon. “Now it’s time to play it safe,” emphasized Frodeno.
Rescheduled 2021 World Cup
And that means no race on May 7th for the triathlon star. In the US state of Utah, the 2021 World Cup will then be made up for by Hawaii. The World Cup on Big Island had been canceled in the past two years due to the corona pandemic. It shouldn’t be that far until this October. Three years after Frodeno’s famous third victory at the classic in the Pacific.
“For me, Hawaii is still the highest of feelings,” said Frodeno in an interview with the German Press Agency. Patrick Lange also wants to be there again in the triathlon place of longing. The 2017 and 2018 champion also has to pass in Utah, he suffered a shoulder injury in a bike accident at the training camp in the Canary Islands. In the women’s race, three-time Hawaii silver medalist Lucy Charles-Barclay will be missing with a stress fracture in her hip.
Because of hip problems, Frodeno had to pass in Hawaii in 2018. The year before he had tormented himself to the finish with back problems. But it’s not just the experience of such setbacks that allows the native of the Rhineland, who lives with his family in Girona, Spain, to cope better with the current situation. “The last two years have always been characterized by cancellations,” he said of the effects of the corona pandemic of the dpa: “So it’s perhaps no longer such a deep emotional valley.”
Too much self-pity
In addition, there is the realization that there is absolutely no point in throwing yourself into a deep hole, but rather in seeing what you can make of it. An attitude that he himself had to learn first, “because then I was too much in my self-pity,” he said in retrospect.
Frodeno has been unbeaten since his comeback after missing the 2018 World Cup. He bridged the Corona period with a solo race in his own four walls – pool, roller trainer, treadmill – over the Ironman distance or with a spectacular duel race against Lionel Sanders in the Allgäu. He had prepared for the World Championships in Utah at a winter training camp in Andorra. Everything went according to plan until the diagnosis.
“The good thing is that I can do everything except run,” he said. Theoretically, he could even walk for up to an hour. “The problems are the pain and the evasive movements and the fact that it doesn’t heal either,” explained Frodeno, who already has a very precise plan for the coming weeks. “In the very best case” the first treadmill appointment is on May 6th. The goal remains the World Cup on the Big Island in October.
© dpa-infocom, dpa:220415-99-927717/3 (Von Jens Marx and Claas Hennigdpa)