The reigning queen of Kona on what it takes to dominate on the Big Island

Dominant. Relentless. Devoid of weakness. Since her long-course debut in 2014, Daniela Ryf has become one of the greatest Ironman athletes in history. But what can we learn from the Swiss star? We met the Kona course record holder to find out…

From Flora Duffy in Cozumel to Jan Frodeno’s Challenge Roth record and Ali Brownlee on Copacabana Drive, 2016 was full of awesome examples of multisport prowess on the world stage. For us, perhaps the greatest feat of endurance, tenacity and recovery came largely away from the worldwide media’s gaze in Zurich, Switzerland, on Sunday 24 July.

Needing only to complete the race to validate her Ironman World Championship spot, the 29-year-old Swiss Daniela Ryf – having only signed up to the event four days prior – smashed the course record by more than eight minutes with an 8:51:50 time that, including the men, was the 10th fastest overall performance of the day.

“My strategy was to go easy,” said Ryf – who grew up in rural Rumisberg (pop. 484) 50 miles from Zurich – after the race. “But Celine [Scharer] was going so well on the swim, I just had to follow. On the bike I decided to go hard, and on the run you can’t go easy when there are so many competitors.”

What makes Ryf’s achievement so remarkable is that she’d raced the 226km Challenge Roth just a week before, obliterating the field with an 8:22:04 overall split. It was the third-fastest female iron time in history and came within touching distance of Chrissie Wellington’s 8:18:13 iron-distance world record.

Ryf’s performance in Zurich speaks volumes not just about her endurance capabilities, but her powers of recovery, her aggressive style of racing and a hardened mindset that seems incapable of racing easy.

CHRISSIE COMPARISONS

Just over two months after those central European performances, Ryf would enter the Ironman world championship record books in Kona, Hawaii. Displaying the unrelenting ferocity we were lucky enough to witness in Roth, she’d attack from the get-go to smash the course record and secure her second Kona victory. A true heir to Chrissie Wellington had risen.

And like Britain’s now retired four-time Ironman world champ, Ryf’s journey to Ironman began in short-course racing (the Olympian raced professional in ITU events from 2008-2012) before moving to long-course events in 2014 under the stewardship of the famed Australian coach Brett Sutton, the man who christened Ryf as the ‘Angry Bird’ due to the focussed face she makes in training and racing.

Go through Ironman history, says Sutton, and all of its legends had a chink in their armour, however miniscule, for their rivals to exploit. “Yet Ryf appears to have none,” he adds. Ryf exited the swim at Kona 2016 in seventh (52:50mins) before producing the best bike (4:52:26) and run (2:56:51) splits to lay siege to Mirinda Carfrae’s course record with a 8:46:46 finish.

“The women’s side of the sport has now seen the first athlete who’s phenomenal in the Chrissie sense across all three disciplines,” Sutton said after Hawaii. “The bar has been set for the next generation of champions.”

So how has Ryf, who also has two Ironman 70.3 world titles to her name, become the ultimate iron athlete just two years after her long-course debut? And what can us agegroupers glean from her training and racing? Let’s meet the Angry Bird to find out…

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