2007–2008: life with teamTBB under Brett Sutton Ironman After winning the world amateur title, Wellington began to consider taking the risk of giving up her job in order to become a professional triathlete. In January 2007, on the recommendation of a friend, she travelled to Switzerland to ask the opinion of the Australian triathlon coach,
Brett Sutton. Within 5 days she had handed in her notice at
DEFRA, and in February flew out to
Thailand to join Sutton's
teamTBB at their base in
Phuket. She turned professional with the intention of racing standard-distance events, and enjoyed early success, winning Olympic-distance events in
Bangkok and
Subic Bay, then returned to the UK where she won the sprint-distance event at
Bleinheim. Later the same month she entered her first longer-distance event, the UK half-Ironman race at
Wimbleball, but suffered mechanical problems with her bicycle (forcing her to climb the steep
Exmoor hills in too high a gear) and finished in 5th place. She returned to winning form only six days later, at the shorter
Zürich triathlon. On 1 August 2007, Wellington took on her toughest challenge to date, the long-distance
Alpe d'Huez Triathlon, known for its difficult summer heat, its altitude, and its hard climbs on both the bike and running stages. Despite a puncture and being forced off the road by an oncoming vehicle during a fast descent, she finished the bike stage 19 mins 30 sec in front of her nearest rival,
Sione Jongstra, and extended her lead on the running stage to win the race by over 29 minutes, in 9th place overall. Towards the end of July, her coach had suggested that she was ready for an Ironman, despite the relatively low volume of her training. She said of Sutton, "my training was more geared to standard distance, with not much high volume. I don't seem to need high-volume work like three-hour runs. I've done none of these since I've been with Brett. Some of the other girls will. This is why he is so special: he has an ability to spot potential even if the athlete can't. He said I was ready even on the training I was doing." After 10 days of acclimatisation at her team's base in Thailand, Wellington won Ironman Korea, in very hot conditions, finishing over 50 minutes ahead of 2nd placed
Yasuko Miyazaki, in 7th place overall. By winning this race, she earned a slot to race at the Ironman world championships in Hawaii.
First Ironman world championship win On 13 October 2007 (14 October
UTC), Wellington won the Ironman
world championship title at
Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, together with US$110,000 prize money. She finished in 9:08:45, five minutes ahead of
Samantha McGlone, running the marathon leg in 2:59:58, the second-fastest time recorded to date by a woman on the Hawaii course. Her victory was described as the "biggest upset in Ironman Hawaii history", "a remarkable feat, deemed to be a near impossible task for any athlete racing as a rookie at their first Ironman World Championships" and "one of the biggest shocks in the sport's history."
2008: a new season At the Ironman Australia Triathlon in April 2008, her first Ironman since Hawaii, Wellington again won by a margin of five minutes, finishing 9th overall. Her marathon time of 3:01:53 was beaten by only two men. Only twenty days later, she attempted her first
World Cup race, the Tongyeong BG Triathlon in Korea, but could only finish in 22nd place. She wrote, "If I judged every day by whether I win or lose, yesterday would be considered a 'bad day' [...] But I need to have these days – because the 'defeats' expose my weaknesses, and enable me to grow, learn and develop as an athlete."
European champion At the Ironman European Championship race held in
Frankfurt, Germany on 6 July 2008, in perfect weather conditions, Wellington recorded the second-fastest time to date by a woman over the Ironman distance, just 32 seconds outside
Paula Newby-Fraser's world record of 8:50:53 set in the 1994 Ironman Europe race, which was then held in
Roth. Spectators were aware throughout the race that Wellington was close to breaking the world record, but she did not know exactly what it was, and in any case preferred to slow down to celebrate her victory over the last few kilometres, exchanging greetings and hi-fives with the crowd. Her coach said that her plan was "to do it as easy as possible" once she had got to the front. Other factors affecting her time were that she lost some of her nutrition on the bike (having to rely on the aid stations instead) and that the bike course was 2 km too long.
Beating all but one of the men at Alpe d'Huez Later that month, she retained her title at the long-distance
Alpe d'Huez Triathlon, finishing second overall, more than 25 minutes ahead of second-placed
Aléxandra Louison and only 1 minute 23 seconds behind the winning man,
Marcus Ornellas. She recorded the fastest overall time for the ascent of
les 21 virages (pictured, right).
First half-Ironman win At her previous two attempts on the half-Ironman distance, Wellington had finished 5th (Wimbleball, mechanical difficulties) and 3rd (Singapore, less than three weeks after her first Ironman). On 17 August 2008 she achieved her first win at the half-Ironman distance at the Timberman 70.3 triathlon in
Gilford, New Hampshire, placing sixth overall, 18 minutes ahead of runner-up
Amanda Stevens.
ITU long distance world champion and second Ironman world championship win Two weeks after her Timberman win, Wellington met the ironman-distance world record holder,
Yvonne van Vlerken on the latter's home ground at
Almere in an eagerly-awaited clash for the
ITU long distance World Championship title. Wellington won with a "dominating performance", more than 17 minutes in front of Denmark's
Charlotte Kolters. Van Vlerken finished in third place, 19 minutes behind Wellington. In October Wellington returned to Kona as defending champion and
retained her title, setting a new Hawaii marathon course record of 2:57:44. Despite losing around 10 minutes because of a flat tyre – a delay which would have been greater if fellow competitor
Rebekah Keat had not given her a spare CO2 cartridge – she finished some 15 minutes ahead of second-placed Yvonne van Vlerken.
Leaving teamTBB On 27 October, Wellington announced that, together with
Hilary Biscay and
Belinda Granger, she would be leaving teamTBB and their coach
Brett Sutton to train under new coach Cliff English. She said: I owe so much to Brett, and teamTBB. It was Brett that advised me to turn pro, he told me to do an Ironman and he trained me to win two World Ironman Championships. Not only that, the Team framework enabled me to train with some of the best athletes in the world; to grow and develop as a person and to learn some incredibly important lessons. With the Team I reached heights that I never thought possible, and for that I am truly grateful. teamTBB is focused on helping "development athletes" who might otherwise not have the opportunity to succeed in professional triathlon. I no longer fit into their framework, and hence the time has come for me to move on. Two weeks later, Wellington announced that, instead of Cliff English (fiancé and coach of her rival
Samantha McGlone) her new coach would be
Simon Lessing.
2009–2011: life after teamTBB First world record at Roth Despite suffering from
shingles, Wellington set a new record for ironman-distance triathlon races of 8:31:59 on 12 July 2009 at the
Quelle Challenge Roth, beating
Yvonne van Vlerken's record set a year earlier over the same course by 13 minutes and 49 seconds.
Rebekah Keat, who finished second, 7 minutes 25 seconds behind Wellington, also beat van Vlerken's time. Wellington's bike split (4:40:28) was a new world record. Commentator Timothy Carlson wrote, "Superwoman Chrissie Wellington didn't just break it, she obliterated the one-year-old women's Iron-distance world record today." In August, Wellington dropped her coach
Simon Lessing to become self-coached.
Third Ironman world championship win and new Hawaii course record In October, Wellington won the
world championship for the third time with a new course record of 8:54:02, beating
Paula Newby-Fraser's record of 8:55:28 which had stood since 1992. She finished 19 mins 57 secs ahead of second-place
Mirinda Carfrae, the 2007
Ironman 70.3 World Champion who, in her first Ironman race, ran a marathon time of 2:56:51, fifty-three seconds faster than Wellington's record of the previous year. Wellington's victory was described as "stunning" and "even more dominant" than usual. Only 22 men were faster than Wellington. Commenting on Wellington's record, Newby-Fraser said, "But the revelation I had was watching how hard she worked for it ... and it was clear she was going to the wall. And I am certain she had to leave a little bit of herself out there to get it done. She didn't take a moment to enjoy until she crossed the line. Part of me was gratified by that. I know what she had to do to get it and I hope she realizes it's not that easy. I know it wasn't that easy for her. A race like that takes a piece of herself out there." A year later her coach
Dave Scott revealed that she had an upper
hamstring injury and that, "Deep down inside, she had a bit of a struggle in 2009." Even though she had broken the long-standing course record, Scott said, "But I knew, and she knew, and I told her in my ever-candid, callous style, that she didn't have her best day."
2010: New Year bike crash, surgery and recovery On Saturday 2 January, during an intended 5-hour training ride in the
Surrey Hills with her boyfriend and two other friends, Wellington fell from her bicycle when it slipped on
black ice. She fractured her
radius, two
metacarpals and two fingers in her right arm and hand. She required surgery under
general anaesthetic to insert wires (later removed) into her arm and wrist and had to wear a
cast on her arm for six weeks. The injury severely limited her training, but once the cast was removed she was able to train intensively with her friend
Catriona Morrison near
Águilas in south-east Spain. She later acknowledged that the crash had a positive outcome, enforcing a mental and physical break and enabling her to focus on other areas of improvement such as her strength and to properly resolve her hamstring problems, which had been hampering her running. Wellington returned to competition on 6 June, when she defended her title at Ironman 70.3 Kansas. She won in a time of 4:07:49, more than 16 minutes in front of
Pip Taylor, placing 11th overall (10th among the pro men).
More world records at Challenge Roth On 18 July 2010 Wellington defended her
Challenge Roth title in Germany in a new ironman-distance world record time of 8:19:13, placing seventh overall and bettering her own record by more than 12 minutes. In so doing, she set a new women's record for the bike split of 4:36:33, and then finished the race with a "stunning" 2:48:54 for the marathon, beating
Erin Baker's record of 2:49:53 which had stood since 1990. Only three men recorded a faster marathon run, two of whom were less than a minute faster. Her winning margin (32:57) over second-placed
Rebekah Keat was greater than her time (26:37) behind the winning man. After this race, her former coach
Brett Sutton wrote, "The triathlon world should be rejoicing. For the first time in the women's sport and second time in this sport they have a true champion not just a champion of the sport like Erin Baker and Paula Newby Fraser, but also a champion on the level of a
Kieren Perkins, a '
Thorpedo' or a
Michael Phelps if we look at swimming. If we take a look at running, a
Haile Gebrselassie, a
Paula Radcliffe." He added, "You have in Chrissie a person of true international sporting excellence that is overshadowed by no one in any other sport."
Disappointment at Kona In August Wellington set a new course record in her third consecutive victory at Timberman 70.3, but at the last minute on the day of the
Ironman World Championship, 9 October 2010 she decided not to start the race because of illness, describing it as "the hardest decision of her life to date." Subsequent blood tests, which also included an
anti-doping control, showed that she had, or had had,
bacterial strep throat, bacterial
pneumonia and
West Nile virus.
First official Ironman world record On 21 November, having allowed herself six weeks to recover from her illness, Wellington set a new world record for an Ironman-branded race over the full Ironman distance in
Tempe, Arizona of 8:36:13. Her time was the third-fastest female ironman-distance time to date, beaten only by her two records in
Roth. Despite riding the last two miles of the bike course on a flat tyre, she beat the previous course record by 35 minutes, and runner-up
Linsey Corbin's time by 29 minutes. Her marathon time was only 4:44 slower than the fastest men's run, and her swim time only 32 seconds slower than the men's winner,
Timo Bracht. Commentator Timothy Carlson quoted Wellington's boyfriend as saying, "It's a sign of a true champion that she can pick herself up after something as painful as her withdrawal at Hawaii. Six weeks later, all the issues from Hawaii were behind her, and today she was phenomenal", to which Carlson added, "Phenomenal might have been an understatement."
2011: a new season, and two more world records Having trained in
Stellenbosch since mid-February, Wellington won Ironman South Africa on 10 April in a new "M-dot" world record time of 8:33:56, lowering her own record by a little over 2 minutes. She finished in 8th place overall, nearly 35 minutes ahead of runner-up
Rachel Joyce, who in turn broke the previous course record by 8 minutes. Not only did Wellington set new female bike, run and course records, but her marathon time of 2:52:54 was also faster than all of the men. In July, Wellington bettered her own ironman-distance world record at
Challenge Roth by exactly one minute, to 8:18:13. Her marathon time of 2:44:35 was also a new world record. Only four men finished in front of her, and only one man, the winner
Andreas Raelert, who also set a new world record, was able to beat her marathon time.
Bike crash and partial recovery before Kona On a routine training ride near Boulder, Wellington suffered a serious bike crash on Saturday 24 September, exactly two weeks before the
World Championships in Kona. She received severe
road rash (equivalent to second- or
third-degree burns) on her left leg and injuries to her left elbow and hip. Wellington described the pain as "intense", much worse than the fractures she had suffered earlier in the year, but X-rays showed no broken bones. Her first attempt at training after the accident was on the following Tuesday when, despite a swollen, infected leg, she tried swimming. She could manage no more than two lengths, in pain she later described as "excruciating". She had to be lifted out of the pool, and given crutches to enable her to walk; her boyfriend
Tom Lowe and coach Dave Scott had to carry her back to her car. The next day, Wednesday, she was due to fly to Kona, but she preferred to remain in Boulder, close to the experts treating her. The infection was causing her fever and night sweats, and the hip pain had disturbed her running gait. By Saturday, the infection had died down, and she flew to Kona. On Sunday Wellington published a blog post in which she referred to
Sun Tzu's book
The Art of War and elaborated on how war strategy could be applied to triathlon, saying that she hadn't lost her fight because of her injuries and quoting
Bella Bayliss's dictum that "It's not a race, it's war." The flight had caused her leg to swell up again, but she was still able to do some bike and run training. On Monday she tried a four-kilometre swim, her first hard swim since the crash; this produced pain in her pectoral muscle, which worsened over subsequent training sessions. On Tuesday she tried another swim session: after 1 km she had to stop, and again had to be lifted out of the pool by Lowe. She later wrote, "I was 'crying into my goggles', and described the pain as 'unbearable'", adding, "I was convinced I'd broken my rib. Every breath hurt and I couldn't move my arm properly." The previous day Mike Leahy had begun treating Wellington using his
Active Release Therapy (ART); he instructed her to go to the hospital for tests, not wanting to continue ART treatment if the problem was a fracture. The hospital's first concern, from the swollen state of her leg, was that she might have a
pulmonary embolism. Six hours of tests showed that she had no fractures, nor any embolism, but that she did have damaged
pectoral and
intercostal muscles; the badly infected state of her leg was obvious from the appalling smell when the bandages were removed. Wellington's condition improved over the remaining three days before the race, thanks in part to a new course of antibiotics, and continued ART and
acupuncture treatments. In public, consistent with her mantra of "never give your opponents anything", Wellington admitted to little more than road rash, but journalists at the pre-race press conference were, correctly, able to detect a different, less confident, attitude in Wellington before the race.
Regaining the world title Her coach had advised her to hold back on her swim speed, otherwise she might not be able to complete the race; together with the lack of power in her left arm, that meant her swim was much slower than usual at 61 minutes. In contrast with her previous races at Kona, where Wellington had dominated on the bike, she started the marathon stage with five women still in front of her. Wellington's main concern, though, was
Mirinda Carfrae, the 2010 champion who was only a little over three minutes behind her, and the only woman who had run faster than her on this course – a serious worry, given Wellington's injuries. Her hip had been in constant pain during the bike stage, but once she started on the marathon, her hamstrings began seizing up as well. She wrote, "I saw my family at mile three and gave them a smile, but inside the pain was unbearable." She described the pain on the marathon as "the worst I'd ever known. 'You are going to hurt like hell', I said to myself, because this is just the start." She ran the first half of the marathon in 1 hour 22 minutes – her fastest ever at Kona – increasing her lead over Carfrae to five minutes. Her body slowed down in the intense heat approaching the
Energy Lab, where she passed
Caroline Steffen to gain the lead. She crossed the finish line with a marathon time of 2:52:41, winning in an overall time of 8:55:08. Her marathon time was a course record until Carfrae crossed the line in second place 2 minutes 49 seconds later, in turn setting a new marathon course record of 2:52:09. Her overall time was second only to the course record she had set in 2009. After the race, her coach Dave Scott told journalist T J Murphy that Wellington was "traumatised" by the effects of her injuries, and that despite her "stoic" attitude, her injuries were "worse than any of us might have imagined", adding, "I don't think Chrissie will appreciate me telling you this, but it's important." Murphy described her performance as "inspirational", but added, "it was more than that. It was chilling. [...] It was chilling to watch because you could see Wellington racing her way right to the hospital, paying literally no heed to her brain's internal governor – one that has been wired into the human body through millions of years of evolution." == Retirement from professional triathlon racing ==