Last weekend the European Ironman Championship took place in Frankfurt. Ironman Frankfurt is another race which draws a big crowd to a fast and competitive course. As with all championship events there are 80 Kona slots on offer. This year road works forced a 5km extension of the bike course which naturally impacts on race times for all competitors.
Unsurprisingly, the race trends slower this year than in the combined results of the previous ten years. This is mostly due to the much slower bike times, with the median bike split being about 25-30 minutes slower this year. Both swim and bike medians also come in slower this year, but not to a significant degree.
For further comparisons I’ve produced a chart with adjusted bike and overall times – using the average speed of each athlete to calculate the time 180km would have taken them. This bike distribution is still slower than the amalgamated results. However, I’d be wary of reading too much into such a simplistic correction of times, it will come down to more than just the change in distance.
DNF numbers look to fall within reasonable range of previous races. Nothing exceptional in the levels seen and certainly not on the scale of the heat wave of 2015.
Age group medians again show the impact of the longer bike giving bike medians at least 20 minutes slower for this year’s race.
Big races always draw a field from around the world and there looks to have been a wide spread of potential qualifiers at this years race.
for most age groups and positions the extra distance pushed this years race towards the slowest for Frankfurt. 2015 remains the stand out there thanks to exceptionally hot conditions that outweighed an additional 5K.
Based on start numbers I’ve estimated the slot allocation and from that the automatic qualification times at this year’s race. Exact numbers may vary and roll down will impact on final qualifying times. You can find out more and compare with other race on my Kona qualification page.
For most of the large age groups this was a slow yearn the top twenty age groupers, well behind the averages for the course. In some of the smaller age groups – older men, some of the women’s categories though times are closer or better than usual. It wasn’t an even hit to performance among the top twenty in each group. The major trend though is towards slower than average times though.
You can access a spreadsheet of the full results from Ironman Frankfurt 2018 on my Google Drive.
