From Pressure Cooker to Perspective: Patrick Lange on the Change That Saved His Career

If you were at the IRONMAN Texas press conference in The Woodlands last month, the last thing you would have thought was that Patrick Lange was injured. The three-time Kona champ was in great spirits, adorned in a Texas Tech shirt and cracking jokes and, in what has become standard operating procedure at press conferences, asking some of his own questions of the other athletes in the panel.

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A few days later, though, Lange would struggle right from the start of the race, exiting the water well back and eventually dropping out. Which is why we get to see him racing this weekend here in Lanzarote – a race that’s taken him “too long” to get to, he pointed out during yesterday’s press conference.

Lange is 39 and admits that he’s in the latter part of his career, but remains one of the most feared runners in the sport. While his resume is stacked with big wins – those three Kona titles, three IRONMAN North American wins (two in Texas and one in Tulsa) along with the Roth title in 2021 – he’s also struggled at times with the pressure of being a world champion, especially being a Kona champion from Germany, a country that worships it’s long-distance triathlon stars.

Lange, though, worked through those challenges and bounced back after a tough 2019 year to set the stage for his third Kona title, not to mention a runner-up finish in Nice the year before. I caught up with Lange after yesterday’s press conference to chat about the race here in Lanzarote, and that mindset change that has elevated him to one of the most successful IRONMAN athletes in history.

Q: Patrick, great to hear the back is feeling better after Texas. You just looked uncomfortable coming out of the water — I said to the person next to me, “Something’s wrong with Patrick.”

Yeah, definitely. It was such a good build-up, but the last five days it just spiraled downward. Normally it spirals upwards towards the race, but somehow this week it went the other way. It’s good to have recovered from that. The lower back has always been my weak spot, because my left leg is one and a half centimetres longer than my right — I broke my leg bone when I was a baby. So it’s always been that weak spot, but now it’s actual…