- What's up Trainiacs, with 20-
Oh, I need -- oh, brutal hair.
Terrible salad!
That's better, Trainiacs.
With 2018 coming to an end, we start thinking
about the past year and how it went.
So today, just for giggles, we are going to go through
some random awards of best performances,
best runs, best comeback stories,
best breakouts of all the pro triathletes.
Actually there are some amateur performances out there.
And it's gonna be very unofficial.
(upbeat dance music)
So what is up, triathletes out there?
Here, we are going to be giving away
the annual 2018 awards for best
things that happened over the course of 2018 in triathlon.
Now of course, this is top of my head.
This is my opinion, this isn't official.
I haven't run polls or statistical analyses here,
so it's just top of my head answers.
And what I want to hear from you
is if you agree with these, or if you disagree,
if you've got a better answer for any of these categories,
I want to hear your answer in the comments below.
Let's chat it up and start off with
the best performance of the year.
I've gotta give it to Jan Frodeno
in the half Ironman World Championships.
People who didn't race that course,
I don't think they realize how good a performance
a 3:36 with a 1:06 half-marathon was,
going toe-to-toe against two of
the best racers the triathlon has ever seen
in Alistair Brownlee and Javier Gómez.
The road surface on the bike was quite slick,
also very bumpy, and there were some hills
at every single turnaround on the run.
So to run a 1:06, which if you go and look at most
of your local half-marathons, that would be a winning time.
Do that after a bike that takes the snot out of you,
I think that that's probably one of the best performances
that we've seen all year, if not ever.
We do have to give an honorable mention, however,
to Daniela Ryf for her performance
in Ironman Frankfurt, which got her seventh place.
Overall, even amongst the men!
Crazy.
Now let's get into best swimmer, best cyclist, best runner.
And what we are looking at here is best in their categories
relative to the rest of the field,
not most talented or fastest average time.
We are talking about who beats up on the field consistently.
Starting with the swim, gotta give it to Lucy Charles.
Every single race that she enters,
she is coming out perhaps minutes ahead
of the rest of her competition.
And this is against former ITU athletes.
She is going up against some of the fastest swimmers
in triathlon already and gapping them by a lot.
So it has to go to Lucy Charles, that's no question.
We don't see that anywhere in the men's with anyone
doing that consistently time after time after time.
We also don't even see that in ITU.
So, Lucy Charles: best swimmer of 2018.
Also, Lucy Charles is teaching a how-to-swim
master class with us, and all of the early
spots for Lucy's course are sold out.
But you can get access to all the courses
for half off every single year, $90.
Go to triathlontaren.com/earlymasterclass.
Best biker: I think we've gotta give it to Daniela Ryf.
Daniela Ryf, she has proven that it doesn't matter
how far ahead of her Lucy Charles comes out of the water,
but Daniela Ryf is easily able to charge up,
and she is able to try to break her.
She wasn't quite able to do that in half Ironman World.
But she is breaking course records all over
the place, and she's not beating herself up doing it.
We saw in 2017 that when she basically
time-trialed the last 40 kilometers
in the Ironman World Championships,
risking blowing herself up, she was still
able to get off the bike and run
one of the few fastest marathons of the day.
Strongest biker, hands down: Daniela Ryf.
Strongest runner?
Well, this is more podium contenders
from Ironman ranks in the women.
I gotta say Annie Haug.
Annie Haug has been putting out just drop-dead fast runs.
Still going up against fast ITU running athletes,
athletes who own course records,
and she is minutes ahead of them.
She put out the fastest run in
Ironman World's, she put out the
fastest run in half Ironman World's,
and it was by a matter of minutes.
And this is all in just her one and a half years into
long-distance racing, so I think she has a ton of potential.
She's coming off the bike and able to run that fast?
I think that she is probably going
to be the fastest runner, which,
you bike for show, you run for dough.
Daniela Ryf is doing both.
So let's go with the top age group performance.
And I wouldn't say that this was the top
age group performance overall.
That might go to Dan Plews for his time
breaking the record time at Kona.
But
it's hard to suss out
if that's actually a record-breaking time
overall because the conditions were so good that day.
I do think that a performance that
we can look at and confidently say
that is the best performance of all time
is a discipline, and it is the swim that Jan Sibbersen,
an age grouper, did in the water in Kona,
breaking the all-time swim course record
that has stood for years and years.
He came out and he hammered it.
Coincidentally, he is the agent
for Patrick Lange, and he is the owner
of sailfish, and over the course of his
triathlon career, he's made a point
of being first out of the water.
So congratulations to Jan, that was very impressive.
Gutsiest performance, sticking with Kona,
I think we gotta go with Sarah True
for how hard she went out in that run
in her first time in Kona with everyone
talking about, "Be careful in Kona, pace yourself in Kona."
She goes out and everyone on Ali'i Drive
is going, "Go Sarah, go!"
And she's like, "Okay, I'll go.
"You want me to go? I'll go."
And she was charging up the hill
so fast on Palani when I was following her
that I had a hard time just keeping up
to her getting footage, and I hadn't
biked 180 kilometers before then.
That was intense.
Didn't work out very well for her
in the last 10K, but the fact that
she laid it on the line I think shows
that she's got a lot of guts, a lot of desire.
She's willing to hurt and take that
knowledge and combine it with the talent
that she's got, she could be very dangerous
in Kona over the next few years.
Breakout season, I think we gotta give it to Vincent Luis.
In 2017, 2016, he was starting
to get his way onto the podium.
But this year in 2018, he just dropkicked
the Super League Triathlon, and he beat
Mario Mola, who was hands-down the best
athlete on the ITU circuit in 2018.
Beat him in the Grand Final.
I think that that's showing that
Vincent Luis is still getting faster,
and he's going to be a top podium contender,
if not the top podium contender in ITU racing going forward.
Disappointing years.
Can we say that Javier Gómez had
a disappointing year when it was
his first time doing full-distance racing?
He won a full-distance challenge race,
placed second in Ironman Cannes.
You didn't have a great
half Ironman World's or a great Kona.
I think given the expectations that were put upon Javier
Gómez, I have to say that he probably did underperform.
There were some people leading into
Ironman Kona that were saying,
"He's the hands-down favorite.
"He is absolutely the hands-down favorite."
And what I saw from him was actually
little bit of uncertainty, a little bit
of discomfort with the longer-distance race.
I think he is still searching.
And because, in my opinion, he's probably
the most well-rounded triathlete that has ever
walked the face of the earth, that, from being up here
to searching for how to actually race the full
Ironman distance, probably going to be fairly disappointing.
Honorable mention, I'd say, to Lionel Sanders.
Given his expectations, his preparation,
given how many tens of thousands of Lionel Sanders
fans expected him to win Ironman Kona,
and to have him place where he did,
yeah, honorable mention, I'm sorry Lionel.
You'll get there, you'll figure it out.
Now, best comeback.
We had an amazing year for comeback stories.
We had Tim Don going from crashing out just before Kona
and having to wear a halo throughout six months of his life.
We had Terenzo Bozzone going from a hospital bed
to winning two races in two weeks shortly after.
But I think that the best comeback story
has to be Matt Russell going from
near death, the surgeon having to put his finger
on his jugular to make sure he didn't die,
his head nearly being ripped off
after crashing through and into a car at
60 kilometers an hour, 36 miles an hour, during Kona 2017.
Nearly dying, having brain damage to the point
that on our podcast, he admitted that
he was losing his place while we were talking,
to having to race week after week
after week after week to even just
qualify for Kona, and then coming
across the finish line in Kona in sixth?
That I think is going from the basement
to the top, and it awards Matt Russell
the best comeback story of 2018.
Very happy for you, Matt.
That, of all things, really got me
crying at the finish line in Kona.
Now, two final ones.
Let's go with best statement of the year.
I think we gotta go with Cody Beals.
I believe that Cody Beals has been
on the rise over the last few years, obviously.
Didn't have a great 2017, but in 2018
I think he made a statement that he is here,
he is established, and he is probably
one of the favorites that is going to be
coming up in the ranks over the next few years.
He started off the year with half Ironman
wins in Taiwan, Victoria, Eagleman.
Then he stepped up to the full distance,
winning full Ironman Mont-Tremblant
in his first kick at the full-distance race,
beating none other than Lionel Sanders quite convincingly.
Then he followed that up with a
full Ironman, no swim, distance race
in Ironman Chattanooga against our buddy Matt Russell.
I think these are some dominating performances
and show that even against very stiff competition,
Cody Beals is probably one of the favorites out there.
And then finally, gotta give a hometown shoutout
to Tyler Mislawchuk for, I would say,
having the best finish line photos of anyone this year.
Whether it was getting third at the Super League Equalizer,
whether it was winning the Italian Grand Prix
or coming in fourth in Yokohama,
the man knows how to take a finish line photo.
And what's more than that, he knows
how to represent Canada like the
sauce-tanks we are, and absolutely
hammers some finish-line champagne showers.
Very proud of you, very happy for you Tyler.
You grew up just 20 minutes that way,
and you're representing Canada and Winnipeg very well.
Everyone, congratulations for all
their performances this year.
It has been a fantastic 2018.
It's been fun to watch, and I'm
looking forward to a great 2019.
Later, Trainiacs.
Make sure you're subscribed
for 2019 goodness if you aren't already.