From firstoffthebike.com.
vous pouvez aussi lire son entrevue complète ici.
Voici un court extrait de cette entrevue très complète et à lire absolument.
It seems weird though doesn’t it? This whole idea of an ‘individual sport’, and recruiting people, and getting people on your team so to speak? Is that a new thing that you’ve seen coming out, or is it just because you’re got a two-time winner fronting up?
I don’t think it’s new. Chris (McCormack) has always been – one of his strengths is that he’s very strategic, and he’s always – very rarely we see him make a tactical mistake in a race, and I don’t think it’s a new phenomenon. I think it’s human nature as well. Sometimes it can be planned, but other times it doesn’t have to be planned. I think you see it in triathlon’s all the time, little allegiances form within the race, and that can be discussed beforehand.
A lot of times I think it’s the way a race plays out. People make a move, and you get together, and it’s in your mutual interests now to work to share the heavy lifting and work together, and that’s perhaps what happened in Kona. The group of seventeen split into a group of eight and a group of nine, and the group of eight at the front thought, “We’ve cut away a lot of the driftwood here, let’s all work together. Let’s shoulder the load together.” Whereas the second group were saying, “Well we’ve still got the defending champion here, and he’s probably the best runner here so we are not going to help.” That’s just the dynamic in a race. I mean you can sit around and ponder it, and cry about it. That’s the way racing is I think.
But to answer your question, I don’t think it is a new phenomen and I think if you watch races closely enough, and you know I watch the tactics within all races. Little allegiances, and that may be planned as I said, and it might not be. It’s hard to pre-ordain how you think a race is going to play out, but sometimes it plays out the way it does, and it’s in your interest to work with someone. That’s just the strategy of racing. It’s another dynamic of racing. Particularly Ironman racing.
It’s not just a physical endeavour. It’s also the mental side of it, and the strategy, the tactics, and you know Kona was what it was last year. I look back on it with fond memories to be honest. My preparation was great. My year was very good. It was consistent. And the honest truth is I fell a little short on October 10th. You can dissect a million different ways but I think the three guys who beat me deserved to be on the podium. So maybe I could have done – I’m not going to put my hand and say, “I couldn’t have done things differently.” But, it’s definitely hard as a two-time champion, you are presented with problems that, unless you have been in that position, you cannot even foresee. So I guess there was a little bit of a fall out.
I read some of the criticism about my tactics, and it’s not that I let the group go. I was doing everything in my power to try and keep it together and I kept it together for 100kms but there is seventeen world class athletes together, something had to give, and at the end of the day it was me. Yeah. I would have loved the results to have been different but it is what it is, as they say, and what I can do now is just look forward to this year, and Port Macquarie, and I legitimately think, and maybe I’m kidding myself, people tell me I kid myself al the time, but I believe my best time in racing Kona is still ahead of me. I have only raced there four times.
It’s amazing to me to think that I’ve had a second two wins and a fourth. It’s a record that I’m very proud of, just the consistency to be able to turn up every year with a very competitive game, but I still feel like there’s – each race has had it’s inadequacies, I think I could improve. I feel like I’m a still a relative newcomer to Ironman racing, and I think that’s the thing you saw the race this past year, Chris (McCormack) and a lot of those guys, Normann (Stadler), they’ve been racing there for a decade, or longer some of them. Norman over a decade. And Tim DeBoom they’ve seen the race unfold in a number of different ways in a number of different conditions. Every race I’ve done has been different so far. And every year I’ve walked away thinking, “That didn’t happen last year.” Or, “didn’t expect that to happen..” So I think as I accumulate more of this experience hopefully I’ll be better to make better decisions within the race.