‘Afraid but excited’: T100 triathlon overall champion Marten van Riel sweats for Singapore challenge

SINGAPORE – Marten van Riel has swum, biked and run countless kilometres in several Ironmans, Olympics and triathlons, though the 32-year-old admits that he is “a bit afraid” as he heads into the opening leg of the T100 Series in Singapore on April 6.

Singapore’s heat and humidity has earned the island a tough reputation among the T100 competitors, and the 2024 edition saw the exhausted race winner Youri Keulen collapsing after crossing the finish line – he was eventually taken to the hospital.

Reigning T100 overall champion van Riel did not compete here last season, as the Belgian was trying to qualify for the Paris Olympics.

Having heard from his fellow triathletes about the local conditions, he said: “I think that this is the particular thing about the Singapore races.

“It’s probably the professional race in the world with the hardest conditions, the heat, the humidity, and even the course.

“It’s quite, quite a hard course with the big bridges and everything. So I think this combined, makes for maybe one of the hardest races on the circuit.

“It’s very much about conserving your energy and trying to race a bit more careful. It’s a very fine line between having the performance of your life and not being able to finish. I’m very excited, but I’m also a little bit afraid.”

To prepare for his Singapore debut at the Marina Bay course, van Riel, who trains four to five times a week, runs in the sauna with extra clothes on while reducing the ventilation to mimic conditions in Singapore.

He is ready to put a roller-coaster few years behind him.

He spent a large chunk of 2022 out injured after twisting his ankle in a race and was not in top shape in 2023. In the 2024 season, he missed the first two legs of the T100 series before winning the third in San Francisco.

Skipping the London leg to compete at the Olympics, van Riel only managed to finish 22nd in Paris.

He said: “It was a very emotional year for me. I think that this is something that you never, like kind of take into account with athletes.

“At the beginning of the year, I still had to fight to go to the Olympics, I wasn’t even sure yet. And then I did the T100 in San Francisco and I was obviously on a high, I was in really good shape.

“Then I went to the Olympics (and it) was a big disappointment for me. In the best shape of my life, but I had a disappointing result.”

A consolation for van Riel was his recovery and return to the T100 series, where he won in Ibiza, clinched silver at Lake Las Vegas before a victory in Dubai for the overall championship.

“I was living on that high again,” he said. “Once I got the world title in Dubai at the end of November, I really needed a bigger break than normal, because of just how big of an emotional and physical roller coaster that 2024 had been.

“The Olympics was maybe my biggest disappointment ever, because I didn’t expect that it was going to go so bad. (To be the) first T100 world champion, it’s the high of my career.”

Van Riel will compete in the Ironman African Championship in South Africa just a week before the Singapore race to try to qualify for the world championships.

He added: “I think that the level (of competition) will definitely go up this year.

“But I’m feeling full of energy now, I’ve had a long preparation period. So I think I’m ready for this challenge and I want to defend my title.”