Kristian Høgenhaug has earned himself a Kona qualification after taking home 4th place at IM Frankfurt. The BMC athlete took the lead of the race early on the bike, pushed through on the run to cross the finish line in an astonishing time of 7:35:32. Kristian Blummenfelt (NOR; 7:27:21) won the race, with Kieran Lindars (GBR; 4:32:14) and Gregory Barnaby (ITA; 7:33:44) claiming second and third.
After just falling short of a Kona slot at IM Vitoria, one month ago, Kristian Høgenhaug toed the line in Frankfurt with one clear goal: to secure his Kona qualification. The day started with a more than solid swim for Kristian. He exited the water battling for 14th place, 2 minutes back of the big lead group. On the bike, he made quick work of the chase towards that front group and had moved up to 2nd place after 30k already. The BMC athlete still had to close down a one-minute gap over solo leader Hirsch at that moment in the race. But, 15k later, Høgenhaug bridged that gap to co-lead the race. Managing his efforts, he used the next kilometers to settle down, before taking full control of the race. Around the 70k mark, Kristian started to break away and open up a gap over Hirsch. A small crash on the wet roads around Frankfurt couldn’t prevent the strong biker form building a lead of 40 seconds over first chaser Hirsch and 1’45 over the rest of the field halfway through the bike. During the second lap of the bike course, Høgenhaug kept extending that lead progressively. After posting the fastest bike split of the day (3:57:09), Kristian started the closing marathon with an advantage of nearly 3 minutes over Zepuntke in second and nearly 5 minutes over the big chase group including Blummenfelt.
Although Høgenhaug took off on a more than solid pace of 3:50min/k, he couldn’t prevent the others from cutting down his lead. Within the first of four laps, Kristian had to settle for 3rd place. As he kept running his own strong pace, Barnaby pushed him back to 4th though around the 18k mark. Just as in the first part of marathon, Høgenhaugs pace didn’t drop at all in the second half of the run. He just kept ticking off the kilometers on his own even tempo around 3:50min/k to bring home that 4th position towards the line. Crossing the finish in a time of 7:35:32 resulting in a 4th place, but more importantly a Kona qualification in the bag.
His BMC teammate Clément Mignon toed the line at IM Frankfurt as well, looking to score some solid points in the Ironman Pro Series. Unfortunately, the Frenchman was forced to withdraw from the race after suffering from a double puncture in the first part of the bike.
