Frankfurt Favorites: Camilla Pedersen

Saturday 05 July 2014
The defending champion's journey back to Frankfurt is nothing short of a miracle. Exactly 10 months after she was involved in a bike crash that almost took her life, Camilla Pedersen found herself at the pre-race press conference for the IRONMAN European Championship in Frankfurt. Last September doctors put the 31-year-old in an induced coma as they desperately tried to save her. When she was brought out of the coma, they told her she would never walk again.

She obviously didn't take that message to heart. Pedersen managed to convince the medical staff to let her go to her brother's house on the weekend of the IRONMAN World Championship, where she watched the Kona coverage from the floor. Determined to compete again, Pedersen began the long ordeal back to being one of the world's best triathletes.

It began by learning how to walk again. After walking down the halls of the hospital, Pedersen eventually ventured outside. A 500 m walk had her heart rate at over 160 beats per minute.

In late January she started to train. Not anywhere near the level that she had once found easy on her way to becoming the IRONMAN European champion, but something. Swims couldn't be too long because she'd start to get dizzy. There was so much damage to her bones that even now her coach won't let her run more than an hour in training.

Despite all the limitations, Pedersen has been on fire this year. She's won all five of her races so far this year, including IRONMAN 70.3 wins in Barcelona and Pescara.

For her, though, the wins don't mean nearly as much as the sheer joy of being able to train and race.

Male Pro:                                      Female Pro 
1.Frederik Van Lierde                   101.Camilla Pedersen 
2.Jan Raphael                                102.Jodie Swallow 
3.Sebastian Kienle                         103.Sonja Tajsich 
4.Jan Frodeno                                104.Natascha Badmann 
5.Andreas Raelert                          105.Gina Crawford 
6.Johann Ackermann                     107.Corinne Abraham 
7.Clemente Alonso-Mckernan      108.Simone Brändli 
8.Miquel Blanchart Tinto              109.Line Foss 
9.Denis Chevrot                            110.Astrid Ganzow 
10.Hannes Cool                            113.Helena Herrero Gomez 
11.Kurt Debouck                          114.Mareen Hufe 
12.Alessandro Degasperi              115.Katja Konschak 
13.Martijn Dekker                        116.Camilla Lindholm 
14.Marc Dülsen                            117.Annabel Luxford 
15.Iván Gómez                             118.Liz Lyles 
16.Yeunsik Ham                           119.Amy Marsh 
17.Ivan Jezko                               120.Yasuko Miyazaki 
18.Jens Kaiser                              121.Jenny Schulz 
19.Ludovic Le Guellec                124.Eva Wutti 
20.Carlos López                           125.Lucie Zelenkova Reed 
21.Michael Louys                        126.Kristin Möller 
23.Brendan Naef                          127.Mary Beth Ellis 
24.Mark Oude Bennink                128.Caitlin Snow 
25.Stefano Paoli                           129.Stefanie Adam 
26.Jens Petersen-Bach 
27.David Plese 
28.Lukáš Polan 
29.Alfred Rahm 
30.Evert Scheltinga 
32.Hendrik-Jan Verhaegen 
33.Damien With 
34.Marek Nemcik 
35.Vincent Depuiset 
36.Benjamin Sanson 
38.Ronnie Schildknecht 
39.Bas Diederen 
ironman.com (Photo: JacVan events)


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