Kristian Blummenfelt: The big Norwegian engine that could
Norway's Kristian Blummenfelt overcame sweltering conditions and a quality field to claim his nation's first Olympic triathlon gold medal, proving, once and for all, that he is a big engine that can.
Triathlon
Blummenfelt often speaks about how he uses his 'strong engine' to work his way up the field to move past his competitors when they run out of steam.
That is precisely what Blummenfelt did in Tokyo 2020 over three brutal legs – a 1.5km swim, 40km cycle and a 10km – in the Japanese capital city.
He worked his way to the front of the field in the run leg, where he had the younger and leaner Alex Yee of Great Britain and New Zealand's Hayden Wilde for company.
The Norwegian looked laboured compared to Yee and Wilde trotting along before kicking his engine into gear to leave the duo in the lurch.
"Well, it's quite the same tactic as I did in Yokohama [World Series event in May] and eight weeks ago in Lisbon (World Cup)," Blummenfelt said afterwards.
"I don't really have the leg speed if we came down to the blue carpet to get it with Alex and Hayden, so I knew that I had to drag it like five minutes away from the finish line and just go really, really hard for five, six minutes all out, and hopefully that would be enough to break them."
As Blummenfelt stepped onto the blue carpet with the finish in sight, he looked back in disbelief. He began his celebration before collapsing on the other side of the line after pushing his engine into the red.
Breaking the mould
Norway has won more than double the number of medals in the Winter Olympics than in the Summer Games, highlighting the magnitude of Blummenfelt's achievement.
Considered one of the hardest working athletes on the triathlon circuit, Blummenfelt has been fine-tuning his body, like an expert mechanic, from a young age.
He initially started out swimming, taking inspiration from national Olympic swimming hero Alexander Dale Oen, before discovering his strength as a runner.
Dale Oen broke the mould winning Norway's first-ever world title in swimming and claimed the 100m breaststroke silver medal in Beijing 2008.
The triathlete trained at the same swimming club as Dale Oen and saw him progress in a relatively small sport – for Norwegian standards – to the global stage, becoming a national hero.
Neither chose winter sport which comes naturally for the majority of Norwegians and, instead, they carved out a niche for themselves in the summer sports.
Return on investment
His swimming coach suggested Blummenfelt take up triathlon where he joined the local club in Bergen. Blummenfelt’s talent was soon recognised and he was recruited into Norway's junior programme.
His 'big engine' is fuelled by up to eight hours of training each day, often in cold conditions in his native Bergen. The programme started to bear fruit with Blummenfelt making his Olympic debut in Rio 2016, where he finished 13th.
But it is the next Olympic cycle that would see him bloom into one of the world's top triathletes.
Blummenfelt made his first breakthrough in 2017, winning the silver medal at the Rotterdam World Triathlon Series Grand Final. A year later, the Norwegian programme would see a return on their investment with Casper Stornes, Gustav Iden and Blummenfelt sweeping the podium at the inaugural Bermuda World Triathlon Series. Blummenfelt finished second behind Stornes.
He started making regular forays onto the podium, including a victory at the World Triathlon Grand Final in Lausanne in 2019.
His build-up to Tokyo 2020 was equally impressive, winning the season-opening World Triathlon Championship Series in Yokohama, which served as a preview to his Olympic gold-medal performance.
What heat?
Blummenfelt's performance in the heat and humidity was no fluke. It was the culmination of years of planning, testing and probing into the best way to handle the conditions.
Arild Tveiten, the architect behind Norway's triathlon success, arranged training camps, including heat acclimatisation in Thailand.
The experiment proved to be a resounding success. While the rest of the field was wilting away in the Tokyo race, Blummenfelt kept going like a trusty diesel engine to claim the greatest result of his career.
"It was actually quite comfortable [the conditions]," Blummenfelt said nonchalantly. "We've been preparing for the heat for so many years, I have a really good team around me.
"We were actually a little bit disappointed when we came to Miyazaki (pre-race camp), and the temperature was not as warm as we were hoping for," he added. "Coming from Norway, like Bergen, a country where it's raining two-thirds of the year and 10 degrees [Celsius], having heat [conditioning] as a strength in the group, it just shows the strength of the team around me."