Gustav Iden won the Ironman Kona World Championship in a course record time, becoming the second consecutive Norwegian to win the men’s world title and the first to do so in Kona.
Iden, 26, clocked an unofficial 7 hours, 40 minutes, 24 seconds for the 140.6-mile race (2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike, 26.2-mile run) with temperatures in the 80s on the Big Island of Hawaii. “That was so freakin’ hard,” Iden said. “The last 10K, I was worried about the legend of the island killing me. … The island really, really tried to put me down, but I think my heart must be stronger than the legend of the island.
That was so, so epic.” He crushed the course record of 7:51:13 set by German Jan Frodeno the last time Kona held the event in 2019.
The race was canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic. The 2021 edition was postponed to this past May and moved to St. George, Utah, where another Norwegian, Kristian Blummenfelt, prevailed.