Ironman World Championship 2024: How being a “non-factor” can help Kieran Lindars conquer the Big Island

Kieran Lindars won’t be mentioned among the favourites for this Saturday’s Ironman World Championship in Hawaii – and it’s just the way the 27-year-old from Buckinghamshire likes it.

“I’m going to try to be a non-factor all day. There or thereabouts and never doing anything noticeable,” he says, as he prepares to fly to Kona from his warm weather training base in San Antonio, Texas.

It’s a similar mindset to the one that worked so well in Ironman Frankfurt in August, where Lindars secured an unlikely second place behind Norway’s Kristian Blummenfelt to clinch his qualification. 

“I’d love to get in the top 10, but this is the first time I’ve done something like this,” he continues. ”I have a feeling Magnus [Ditlev] and [Sam] Laidlow will want to go clear on the bike, and behind them there will be a pretty decent sized pack who will decide to chase, or be patient.

“I can see it unfolding on the run, where we’ll start to see big blow-ups. I feel like the race starts with 15km to go, so it will be a full send towards the end if I’ve made the correct decisions and I’m in contention.”

While Lindars was in the British Triathlon high-performance junior programme and has competed in big races before, including Frankfurt, a PTO Open in Singapore, and the European Long Course Championship in Challenge Almere in the Netherlands, which he won in 2022, he is candid about how this experience is markedly different from any other event.

From the higher profile to the uncertainty of tactics, and from the heat preparation to the eye-watering expense, it has been a valuable learning curve for a trip he wasn’t expecting to make at the start of 2024.

“Especially training in hot conditions,” he says of his base in San Antonio, where he exudes gratitude for the hospitality of Mark Saroni, head coach of Paragon Training, a local club that shares a link with Lindars through his trisuit sponsor Born Bound. 

“The temperature is similar to what it will be in Hawaii, but it’s dry here and without the humidity. I can tell I’ve been making the [physiological] adaptations and one of the biggest gains for me is to be able to go through my race nutrition and race pacing – testing how much fluid, electrolytes and sugar I need to take on, and learning the kind of pace I can sustain without the body overheating.”

While it might not result in the 2:37:05 marathon he clocked in Frankfurt, he’s confident the pace he’s sustained on his longer runs in Texas will make him competitive in Hawaii. But there isn’t any margin for error. “In other races you just slow down. There it will be quite drastic. You REALLY slow down and commonly find it a walk-run to the finish.”

While he won’t be dictating the pace, Lindars has faith in his abilities to swim with the front pack and stay in the race on the bike, and also in his equipment, including the all-white single-layer trisuit, which has both aero and cooling properties. 

He can’t control everything though, and while he’s never been issued a drafting penalty, he also recognises the greater risk of an infringement given the amount of jostling for position that takes place at the start of the 180km bike leg.

“I’m going to try to stay away from anything that can cause problems, but sometimes being aggressive is the safer option, and particularly early on if the race is messy and everyone is fresh.

“One area I’m unsure about is how RaceRanger integrates,” he says, referring to the range-finding anti-drafting technology that is mounted to each bike. “The reason I say this is because we have a blue light (12-14m), an orange light (14m-17m) and then no light (further back).  

“I’ve been advised previously not to go into the blue light if I’m not trying to make a pass because of the danger of going into the flashing red [draft zone]. The problem with that is it tells everyone there is a bigger gap than 12m so people can slot in.”

Grateful for the advice received from the other British male pro competing, David McNamee, who also started his Hawaii odyssey aged 27, in many ways the event represents a metaphorical free hit – albeit an expensive one – for Lindars. “Frankfurt was such an incredible result that anything else is a bonus,” he says. “The point was to try to prove I could be at a world championship level for the coming years. I’m a year ahead of where that’d be and it’s a bonus to see what it’s like at this level and how I stack up when everyone is fresh.”

Traditionally, Ironman athletes who proved competitive on the Big Island achieved their qualification much earlier in the cycle. While the sport has evolved in recent times – and Blummenfelt only validated his spot for Kona in Frankfurt too – Lindars still thinks he would have benefited from a longer build-up. 

“I was never planning on doing this race, so a lot of my preparation has been trying to recover from Frankfurt. I’m in good shape, but whether it is optimised is debatable. I would have liked to have more time to get the last bit out of myself.”

But doesn’t Blummenfelt face the same challenge? “Yes, but he’s a generational talent. I got a good result, but being at the best level is being able to do it consistently. The main thing for me to be able to match that level is to do the results over and again and also the turnaround.

“I don’t know whether it’s that they can win races without having given maximum effort, or whether they’ve got considerably better protocols than me. It’s also the area where they’ve got team doctors and physios, which I don’t have – the last percent where, as I make a name for myself, that gap closes.”