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A fourth place at Ironman Cozumel wasn’t exactly how he planned to go out, but for Germany’s Sebastian Kienle the race marked the climax to a final year of professional triathlon that not only took him around the world, but gave him the opportunity to – in the words of tennis great Serena Williams – “transition away” from the sport.
“I know a lot of people that didn’t handle retirement well,” Kienle says, explaining why he took a tapered approach to retirement. “It’s not always easy, and right now it still feels like a normal off-season. Putting the immense amount of stuff I’ve piled up over the years into the basement helps me realize this is actually real, but the biggest thing will be when I don’t have to start training again.”
Kienle, the 2014 Ironman world champion, turns 40 next year. With the milestone looming, he announced a “Discontinued” tour last November as a way to gradually call time on a stellar career that also witnessed another three podiums in Hawaii, two Ironman 70.3 world titles, and victory at Challenge Roth. The triathlon world moves fast, and it’s easy to overlook that such was his consistency at the top level that in eight consecutive years from 2013, he was never outside the top five in the world (according to the PTO rankings).
Why Kienle called time on his pro career
It has been quite the wind-down for one of triathlon’s most popular and ebullient characters of the past 12 years. In a little over 12 months, racing has taken him from Israel to New Zealand, one last flourish at Roth, on to the fabled Norseman Xtreme Triathlon in Norway and finally to the Mexican island of Cozumel.
“It wouldn’t have been good for me mentally or physically to just retire after one big race,” he explains. “Although when I had this idea, I was confident I would also be able to win a couple of races on the schedule. I dialed back my expectations quite a lot, but still fell short.”
A solitary win did come in a comparatively low-key half-iron distance in Spain’s Basque Country, but the farewell tour was never going to be judged solely on results. “All in all, it was an amazing year, and it’s crazy how fast time goes. Just a year ago I was doing Ironman Israel…” he says, with the inference about the radical change in the region all too clear. “The sport has allowed me to feel more linked to the world, let’s put it that way. It’s so much closer when you’ve been there. When I read in the news about a place I’ve visited, whether it’s the fires in Maui or war in Israel, in a way it helps me understand the world.”
While Kienle refuses to wholly blame the long-standing Achilles issue that plagued his later years in the sport for his decision to retire, he concedes the hand it played. “You realize how fragile you are,” he explains. “I lived my athletic life trying to convince myself that I was indestructible, and for more than a decade everything I experienced confirmed that impression. But when you wake up and can barely walk to the toilet yet have to think about getting ready for another marathon, it’s not something that gives you confidence. When you break a collarbone, you have surgery and know the timeline, more or less. With a problem like the Achilles, it takes so long. When I planned 2023, I already had in mind that I should make an appointment for July to get a cortisone shot to survive the year.”
Ironically, with the pressure of elite racing, if not the number of races, reduced, the tendon felt the best it had in eight years, and while its improvement remains something of a curiosity it’s a “super cool” feeling that Kienle is more than grateful for. “I can’t say I have done anything better in terms of rehab or prehab or nutrition,” he adds. “Sometimes it’s just a mystery and even the experts don’t understand, but I was afraid I would be kind of disabled by sport and wouldn’t be able to go for a run for a long time. It leaves more options for the next projects.”
Saying goodbye by jumping into a fjord
If there was one race to pick out from his travels it would be Norseman, the iron-distance challenge in Scandinavia that starts by jumping from the back of a ferry into a fjord at 4 a.m. and ends with a hike up the 1,883-meter Gaustatoppen mountain.
“It felt like triathlon of 20 or 30 years ago,” Kienle adds. “Of course, I wasn’t riding in shorts and stopping at McDonald’s, but it’s more man versus nature. It pushes you to the point where you hate yourself for every single decision you made in your life that led you to that point. But that’s what it’s all about, overcoming these things. If I would do one race again in my life, I would like to do another trip to Norseman.”
What’s next for Sebastian Kienle
As for his next projects, gravel racing is first on the agenda, and Kienle reels off a not insubstantial list of U.S. events he’d love to take part in, including Unbound in Kansa, Gravel World in Nebraska and the Oregon Trail Gravel Grinder stage race over five days, as well as a host more in Europe.
“I think it’s a good strategy to take two sports out of the equation, but not make a full stop in performance,” he explains. “I enjoy riding my gravel bike for the level of freedom that I took away from myself by riding indoors a lot and being controlled by a power meter. Now I can get lost for two hours and try to find my way home for two hours. Sometimes it ends up in hiking, but if I relax and don’t think about riding 222 average watts it becomes really nice.”
His other motivation is the rapidly-rising star of Hyrox, the multi-discipline crossfit-style challenge that mixes 1 kilometer runs with stations where you have to carry kettlebells or push and pull weighted sleds. Kienle is not the only triathlete whose attention has been piqued. Britain’s Joe Skipper, who finished one minute and one place above Kienle on the German’s final appearance in Hawaii last year, put his shoulder to the Hyrox sled in London two weeks ago.
“Without knowing anything, I can tell you what Skipper did wrong,” Kienle says laughing and quickly throwing down the gauntlet for the two to swap the Ironman marathon for sandbag lunges. “I would 100 percent believe he ran way too fast at the beginning, and went to the first exercise with 12 millimoles of lactate [in his blood] and then completely blew up. I think that would be a Skipper problem: overconfidence!” (A quick check of the results and Skipper’s YouTube recap does suggest the Brit might have been a bit gung-ho from the get-go).
Joking aside, Kienle believes he has the attributes to be competitive at an event that will cut his usual eight-hour output to just over 60 minutes. “In general, I think the strong boys with the big biceps underestimate a little bit how much of an endurance sport it is,” he explains. “In the last week, I really enjoyed being in the gym. I just thought I’d test myself a bit and see what I can do in half of the disciplines, and I get a lot of bang for my buck when I do these exercises.
“Progress in strength training is a natural talent for me. I had to be super careful in triathlon because I could gain two-to-three kilos of mass. Now it doesn’t really matter and it’s a cool feeling from a sporting perspective to have this white paper to be able to try something no matter what it is. Even if I completely fail, I can still be valuable to my partners: ‘Triathlete tries Hyrox and gets his arse handed to him!’ But actually, I think I would be way faster than Skipper.”
Kienle’s other ventures include his coaching company, KickAss Sports, with former coach Philip Seipp and continuing his triathlon commentary for German TV. “I really enjoy it and from a spectator perspective it’s a golden age in our sport. I’ve not seen as many exciting races packed within one year for a very long time.”
Regrets, missed opportunities, and advice for Sam Laidlow
There are few regrets in a career where Kienle was always widely admired not just for his speed on two wheels, but his attention to detail with regard to equipment choice and aerodynamics. However, he would have loved to have won another Kona title to add to the victory in 2014, and while he had to cede to countrymen Jan Frodeno and Patrick Lange on the Big Island, he believes there were times he could have made smarter choices.
“Almost every year I had the opportunity to be a contender for the win,” he reflects. “Especially from 2015 to 2018. In 2015, I know exactly what I did wrong. I told myself that maybe I’d never win again so would have to enjoy it. I said ‘yes’ way too many times and felt obligated to a lot of things that I later realized I shouldn’t have done.
“I was in the best swim shape of my career and caught Jan 50 kilometers into the bike but just ran out of energy. It wasn’t because I wasn’t fit or hadn’t done enough training. I can still remember the feeling of relief to finally be able to start the race and not have other things to do. But I wasn’t aggressive with my mindset and was just happy it was going to be over. That’s the reason it’s so tough to defend.”
It sparks the question of whether the current Ironman world champion, Sam Laidlow – who won in Nice in September – will be able to defend his title in Hawaii next year. Laidlow was second in Kona last year and has been clear that it is the one title he craves more than any other. Having seen Laidlow as a fellow guest at a recent Sailfish party in Germany, Kienle isn’t shy to offer an opinion.
“I saw him this weekend, and I would not say he’s about to make the same mistakes, but that was definitely saying yes to something that comes with some effort. I think Laidlow is unpredictable and doesn’t even know whether he will be willing to get himself into the shape to have a chance, or whether he will have a completely different year where he races just PTO events, or doesn’t race at all. He is still so young.
“Not a lot of people had him very high on the favorites’ list before Nice – me included. I knew that everything is possible, but I was relatively sure that he was not in the mental shape to win that race. But then he was able to give this extra 10% that not a lot of people are able to. That puts him in the situation where he can win a race like that, but also where he completely destroys himself mentally. It’s not balanced. It’s a lot of ups and downs from a physical and mental standpoint. A lot of the younger guys underestimate the impact winning a race like that has and also how to handle everything that happens with it.”
It’s not balanced. It’s a lot of ups and downs from a physical and mental standpoint. A lot of the younger guys underestimate the impact winning a race like that has and also how to handle everything that happens with it.
He continues: “At the beginning you think it’s easy and nothing will change, but it’s not quite true. Sometimes it’s like a time bomb ticking, and three months later you realize how tired you really are. You’re on such a high and keep going and going, and you have these super strong emotions that cover everything up until at one point you burn out.
“It’s easy to say from the outside, but I was really surprised that Gustav [Iden] even tried to go to the Ironman 70.3 World Championship after Kona [last year. Iden pulled out of the 70.3 race in Utah on the run, kicking off a disappointing year of performances]. I thought: Dude, enjoy the win and enjoy a nice long off season and relax. A lot of people say that careers like Jan’s, that last for two decades, are not possible any more and I probably agree.”
Kienle’s take on the next generation of pro triathlon
If careers are to be shorter, Kienle also believes that athletes are turning up to the start of races more prepared than ever before. An example is that in 2022, during his final Hawaii appearance, he finished in sixth place in 7:55:39, his fastest race on the Big Island by seven minutes, but with four Ironman debutants ahead.
“It’s not that I didn’t improve, but the others improved faster,” he says. “It’s not easy to compare but look at the race in Cozumel [in November]. I rode 4:02, and while it’s completely flat there’s wind and rough asphalt. But the set-up is super fast. That’s one of the biggest changes over the years. I still have one of the fastest set-ups most of the time, but the top-20 guys are all absolutely dialed. Between 2011 and 2017 there were still a lot of guys leaving 40-50 watts out there by not looking at every aspect. When I look at the young guys today, they are all of the same mindset I had in 2010 – looking at all the details and knowing all the little things you can do.”
What also wasn’t as readily available in 2010 was the variety of opportunities for long-course professionals to earn decent prize money, now boosted further for 2024 with the new Ironman Pro Series alongside the proposed PTO Tour.
“I’d have loved to have had a chance to compete on the PTO Tour when I was 22-23. That would have been amazing for me,” Kienle says. “And I was lobbying to have something like the Ironman Pro Series for a long time. I would go further and say we only give prize money to five or six Ironman races, but in those we’ll pay 30 deep and big money for everybody.”
Kienle agrees that it’s confusing for new fans of the sport to follow professional racing, but says competition between organizers remains vital. “If there were no Challenge and PTO it would be a catastrophe for non-drafting athletes. Ironman would not pay any prize money any more because they wouldn’t have to.”
On doping
With more prize money comes more incentive to cheat. It was witnessed with the high-profile doping conviction and admission of Collin Chartier in April, and with Kienle a vocal advocate of clean sport, he remains concerned about its future. “Until 2019, if you’d asked me if the top 10 at the world championships are clean I’d have said I’m 99% sure this is the case. The problem now is that there are so many rumors and mistrust.
“I have friends and athletes who I trust and they are 100% convinced that there is a big doping problem in the professional side of triathlon. I’ve not seen anything first-hand that makes me believe this, but it’s not only rumors because we had the Collin case that confirms part of the story. What I definitely know is that money is a big incentive to cheat.
“If you look at the Chartier case, it’s so hard for me to believe him that he did it all on his own and that nobody knew. He was a nice dude, and I was incredibly happy for Collin when he won the PTO U.S. Open. It definitely made me think about a lot of things.”
Kienle suggests a percentage tax on prize money to help fund anti-doping efforts, but argues the most important thing is to create enough trust among the athletes so they believe it’s possible to win clean.
“That’s the biggest problem with Collin. When he says: ‘I did it because I didn’t believe it was possible to win the biggest races in the sport clean,’ he needs to answer what made him believe that.
“I think triathlon is better than a lot of other sports when it comes to testing, but is it good enough? We can always do better, and that’s also where I want to see the PTO stepping up its game. When you look at how PTO handles races, it’s really good. It’s not perfect, but we have Race Ranger, the same referees, and if you have a question, you can get a legit answer which is not always the case when you do Ironman races. When it comes to situations where it’s unclear, PTO learns fast, but I think they can do a better job when it comes to drug testing.”
Should triathletes distance themselves from locations and individuals shrouded in suspicion? “I’ve been in the same clinic where the same doctors as [former professional cyclist and convicted doper] Jan Ullrich and Team Telekom worked, but I didn’t know it at that time. There’s not a sign outside saying EPO Shots Walk In. It doesn’t work like that, but sometimes you really question decisions from athletes where you know a coach, for example, had a past with drugs. That’s something I wouldn’t like to see. Not just for the integrity of those athletes but also because you give the sign that a former doper is always welcome back in our sport.
“That’s the only thing that makes me believe that we don’t have a big problem. When you look at the 100-meter sprint, Justin Gatlin walks on the track and everybody says: ‘Hey dude, welcome back, great to see you!’ In our sport, honestly, this would not be the case. If there is a caught doper coming back, nobody will welcome this dude any more.
“The most important thing is that when you do something that destroys the sport there is no way back. That’s the biggest problem with cycling. All the former dopers work as bus drivers, physiotherapists, mechanics, coaches, even director sportifs. How do you want to change a sport like that if that is always the case? It’s not that easy, but in some ways it is that easy.”
“It’s a very good time to have more time.”
For now, Kienle will focus on the world he can change. Retirement from professional triathlon will allow him to spend more time with wife Christine and two-and-a-half-year-old son Nino, and immediate plans are for a first proper family holiday in a long while.
“This last week we had a Christmas market here and just being able to spend the whole day taking care of him is a good feeling,” he says. “So there is definitely no emptiness or time to get bored.”
Though Kienle has called time on his professional triathlon career, there’s little doubt he’ll be back on the race course soon – in a different capacity, of course, be it coach or announcer or bona-fide legend welcoming the newest victor across the finish line. Time marches on, and so does Kienle.
“It’s a very good time to have more time,” he says.