Rewind 16 years to 2007 and Chrissie Wellington arrived in Kona for the IRONMAN World Championship in what was her first year on the pro circuit for just her second full-distance race.
She would sport a pair of borrowed shorts and a tankini from the race expo, and what happened next was extraordinary – and life-changing.
For she was first across the line in 9:08:45, more than five minutes ahead of her closest rival in what was described at the time as “the biggest upset in Ironman Hawaii history”, as she became the first British athlete to win the iconic event.
The sport of triathlon fell in love with her that day and she would go on to earn legendary status, winning every full-distance race she contested, including three more World Championships on the Big Island.
Chrissie Wellington on Knibb
So are there parallels with Taylor Knibb, who this week will attempt to win the IMWC at her very first attempt at the distance?
The American star of course has a incredible array of wins at shorter distances – she’s a former junior and U23 world champion, a winner of the WTCS Grand Final, an Olympic silver medallist in the relay, a two-time 70.3 world champion and the current PTO number two ranked athlete.
But this still represents a voyage into the unknown, and it was fascinating to get Chrissie’s view on the challenge ahead.
She told TRI247: “The context in which she’s coming to the race is very different to the path that I travelled.
“She’s got a wealth of experience in the sport that I simply didn’t have, not just in terms of training and all of the pillars of training, not the swim, bike and run, but just that depth of race experience.
“She’s a very smart athlete and a very smart racer and that comes with the experience that she’s had. And so, yes, although she’s a rookie on the Big Island, she’s definitely not green in terms of her experience in the sport and so that will stand her in good stead.
And she’s coming to it with a weight of expectation that’s probably unparalleled in terms of a newcomer to the Ironman distance.
“I certainly didn’t come into the race in 2007 with any expectation on my shoulders, either that I imposed on myself or that that was externally imposed.
“But it’s very different for her. I’m sure she has expectations about what she can achieve, including standing on top of the podium, but also others have that for her and with that comes pressure. But as I said, she’s no stranger to dealing with that.
“But it’s exciting. It’s exciting to have a range of different athletes that are not Ironman specialists putting themselves in the mix, and for us to be talking about them in a way that I don’t think we ever have before.”
Liberating mindset for Kona debut
Intrigued about Chrissie’s own mindset back in 2007, I asked her to talk in a bit more detail about that and she explained: “There’s this conventional wisdom that says you set a goal and you have to have self-belief and you’re more likely to achieve it.
“Well, I certainly didn’t have the belief that I could win the race, but yet I did. I had an outcome goal, which was top 10, but I was instructed by my coach to focus on the process and so that’s very much what I did.
“He said don’t defer to anyone, and by that he meant don’t have deference to all of the competitors that have so much more experience and don’t have deference to the race. It’s just another race.
“And so I just very much focused on execution and I think that’s how I was able to achieve an outcome goal that was beyond my own expectations. So, no, I didn’t have any expectation of victory, but for me that wasn’t necessary. And in fact, that was probably liberating because I could just focus on execution without any kind of expectation about what was but also what wasn’t possible.
“And I encourage all athletes to race like that because history did say then that this can’t be won by a first-timer. You have to have a depth of experience, and that’s simply not true. It helps, but it can also be a double-edged sword because I think once you’ve got the experience, you’re not racing in a kind of liberated naivety, which is how I raced.
“Because you can’t control what anyone else does. It’s just about executing the best race that you possibly can.”
