Race Conditions

As expected, the swim this year was as quick as in 2016 – an adjustment of -1:04 was almost the same as -1:01 as last year and an indication that the fast swim times from last year weren’t just a fluke. Josh Amberger was pretty close to breaking the 1998 swim record (his 47:09 was 28 seconds off Lars Jorgensen’s time), and Lucy Charles was even closer: She needed another five seconds to equal the 1999 time by Jodi Jackson.

The bike was really fast – the adjustment of 5:16 is one of the quickest ever in Kona and roughly three minutes quicker than the average in Kona. Cameron Wurf was able to set a new bike course record, his 4:12:54 finally broke the 2006 4:18 by Normann Stadler. Lionel Sanders and Sebastian Kienle were also under the old record.

Run conditions were pretty normal for Kona, still Patrick Lange was able to get very close to his own run course record, he missed it by 14 seconds. Patrick also set a new overall course record, his winning time of 8:01:40 was better than 2:16 than Crowie’s time from 2011.

Male Race Results

Female Race Results

The Ho’ala swim is held exactly one week before the Kona race on the swim course. It is used by a lot of athletes as an excellent open-water training session, the table below shows just the Kona Pros that I have been able to identify in the results, comparing their times in this year’s swim, their expected swim times for this years Ironman race (plus the difference, usually faster) and the same results (as long as they are available) for last year’s Ho’ala swim and Ironman Hawaii swim.

Some observations:

• Last year’s swim times were considerably faster than what was normal for Kona, apparently because the buoys marking the turnaround point have been re-positioned. This year’s Ho’ala swim times are comparable to those we have seen last year, so we can expect some fast swim times again for this year.
• While most athletes swam faster than their seeding times (not surprising for the shorter event), some went considerably quicker: Lionel Sanders, Patrick Evoe, Heather Jackson, Astrid Stienen, Mareen Hufe, Dimity-Lee Duke and Sarah Piampiano were more five minutes quicker than their seed times – great confidence boost for their Kona race!
• Eneko Llanos, Camilla Pedersen, Michi Herlbauer and Dimity-Lee Duke were more than one minute quicker than last year’s Ho’ala swim – certainly a good indicator for their swim form!
• A number of athletes also swam faster than in their Kona race last year – most notably Lionel Sanders who was four minutes quicker and Dimity-Lee Duke who was three minutes quicker. But some of the female favorites (Heather Jackson, Kaisa Sali, Sarah Piampiano) also put up great times .. lots of new fodder for speculations!

I’m using a five-level system to show an athlete’s strength and weaknesses compared to the best athletes in the field. Here is compact way to look at the data, showing the whole field in a “heatmap”. In these graphs, a darker red corresponds to more stars (faster/better chances), white is equal to no stars. This post contains three different heat maps each for the men and women: Sorted by bib numbers, sorted by expected swim and sorted by expected time in T2. This gives you a quick look at where the favorites are expected at the different points in the race and if swim or T2 leaders are likely to play a big role in the final results.

Each of the heatmaps is “clickable”, this will give you access to higher-res version of the heatmaps.

Men

Sorted by Bib Number:

Sorted by Expected Swim:

Sorted by Expected T2 Time:

Women

Sorted by Bib Number:

Sorted by Expected Swim:

Sorted by Expected T2 Time: