I’ll put my predictions out from the start of the article First Place: Gustav Iden, Second Place Kristian Blummenfelt, Third Place Braden Currie!!! That’s who I think, but what about the experts?
Well Thorsten Radde of TriRating.com predicts Kristian Blummenfelt for first, Gustav Iden for second and Magnus Elbaek Ditlev for third. Interestingly he predicts a time of 7 hours, 56 minutes and 6 seconds for all three of these athletes. It’s gonna be tight 😃 Check out his 2022 Kona Rating Report here for an extremely in depth analysis. Thorsten is legendary with the accuracy of his Kona predictions and goes to a lot of effort analysing all the professional Ironman results throughout a session and making predictions for all races, but let’s be honest everything builds towards Kona.
Read Thorsten’s article here.
In his article for Triathlete.com Thorston gives Kristian* a 30% chance of winning the race. It is hard to bet against someone who has done pretty much everything in the last season and a bit. Tokyo Olympic Triathlon Gold, World Triathlon Champion and Ironman World Champion at St George running a 2:38 marathon, four minutes faster than the next fastest run split. He rates Magnus Ditlev* a 15% chance of winning, coming hot off winning Challenge Roth. He also gives Gustav* a 15% chance of winning predominantly because he won Ironman Florida with a 2:34 marathon!!! But also because he has been Ironman 70.3 champion in 2019 and 2021. Patrick Lange has a 10% chance of victory, with previous victories in 2017 & 2018 both with the fastest run-split of the day and he also ran the fastest marathon in Kona being the first to go under 2:40 in 2016.
* All three athletes are Kona rookies.
Craig Alexander picks Kristian for first and Gustav for second based on their recent race results, with both running sub-2:40, maybe in a shoulder to shoulder battle reminiscent of Iron War. Mark Allen like myself has Gustav slightly ahead of Kristian. Craig picks Braden Currie for the final podium spot continuing his momentum from St George.
The Team at Global Triathlon Network also predict Kristian Blummenfelt as a clear favourite due to his history at Kona and amazing race results across all distance. They also rate Lionel Sanders for his second place in 2019 and also at St George earlier in the year. Patrick Lange is dropped into third place based on him being a previous winner on the Big Island.
Matt LeGrand has also gone with Lionel Sanders to finish third based on his performance at St George and the fact he is training smarter these days, he believes Kristian will finish 2nd, with Gustav Iden in first as he can handle the environment a bit better than Kristian.
Link to his video here.
Who do you think will win? Add your picks to the comments below…..