Sebastian Kienle Wins European Championships

With big points available for the Kona Ranking and the European Title attracted a world-class field in Frankfurt including current World Champion Luc van Lierde, Olympic Champion Jan Frodeno, former European Champion Andreas Raelert and many others. Despite his win at Challenge Kraichgau some weeks ago, Sebastian Kienle knew that a perfect race from his side was required in order to beat the illustrious starting field.

Solid Swim
It was mainly the talented swimmers that worried Kienle before the race. "After the first swim lap, I heard that I had a deficit of 3 minutes on the leaders. I was pretty shocked and expected that I would be almost 6 minutes back after the swim," said Kienle after the race. However, he managed to keep the gap between him and the fastest swimmers at 3min 30sec after the 3.8k swim in the Langener Waldsee.

Lightning Fast Bike Split
On the bike the German immediately went to work and chased down the athletes in front of him. Once at the front of the race, Kienle waited for a steep hill to attack and from there continuously gained time on his competitors. With a sizzling fast bike split time of 4:12:14 Kienle broke the existing course record by over 8 minutes. Van Lierdes bike time was the second fastest of the day but almost 10 minutes slower than Kienle's time. "The new bike is just damn fast," Kienle concluded after the race. "I can't say more about it today but in 10 days we'll let media and fans know what makes this bike the fastest one out there!"

A Marathon to be Proud of
During the closing marathon, Kienle kept the fastest runners at bay. Thanks to a fast 2:49:35 run split Kienle managed to win the race in less than 8 hours and to break the existing record. "I just saw my run split time and I'm very proud of the performance I showed on the closing 42 kilometers today," Kienle stated post-race. "I knew that I had the ability to run that fast off the bike but I was never able to actually prove it," summed up a visibly happy Kienle.