Five years ago, during a pandemic-disrupted period where competitive sport was fragmented at best, young Kiwi triathlete Kyle Smith was taking advantage of the few opportunities available to start making a name for himself.
Having returned home to New Zealand where life as a landscaper began to offer a clearer future than professional sport, he dove into a couple of middle distance events on the north island, and won them both.
Lockdowns and travel restrictions put paid to professional triathlon racing in the months that followed, but as the calendar rolled around again, Rotorua in December, Tauranga in January, and Wanaka in February, offered further opportunities for the 23-year-old.
This time he won all three, obliterating course records and beating established names on the world stage, such as Braden Currie and Terrenzo Bozzone. It meant that as the world opened up, the Professional Triathletes Organisation began to flex its financial muscle to host higher profile racing, and IRONMAN® responded in kind.
Smith – with the versatility to compete at any distance from sprint to IRONMAN® – was in the right place at the right time...
But two years later it hadn’t worked out. Despite having the fortune to hit it off with three-time IRONMAN 70.3® World Champion Jan Frodeno, who became a friend, training partner, and offered a window into what it takes to become the best in the world, it was challenging financially.
The competition was tougher and victories had dried up. There were glimmers of the talent. A second-place at IRONMAN 70.3® Lanzarote at the start of 2022 after front-running for much of the contest was impressive. Leading the IRONMAN 70.3® World Championship on to the run in Utah in 2022 showed his appetite for the big occasion, but something wasn’t right. Smith continually got sick.
"You can't fire a cannon from a kayak"
“It’s no secret that my health had been poor,” Smith says. “My intuition was that something wasn’t right, but it took the best part of two years to find out.”
It turned out to be a mould infection from his apartment in Girona, with both Smith and his girlfriend Kira testing positive for fungal particles in their systems. Smith says the mould was in the roof space and had been concealed with fresh paint before they moved in.
“We barked up every tree and once we eventually found the issue, it was barking up every tree to find the best specialist to get it out of the body,” he continues. “It screws up the immune function and the best thing was to remove ourselves from that environment.”
Smith says returning to New Zealand to see family gave him the contrast he needed to understand that the issue might be linked to the flat in Girona. “I felt great in New Zealand, living in a healthy environment and eating proper food, but would struggle to train and recover in Spain. As athletes, we’re such fragile creatures, we need a good home environment. What’s the saying? You can’t fire a cannon from a kayak.”
Smith says removing the candida fungal infection and repairing his stomach was the priority. “We know how important the gut is for the rest of the body, from our immune system to our mental health. My body was in this state of infection for two years and the whole time my immune system was heightened, and couldn’t fight other pathogens.”
The diagnosis provided the opportunity to move forward. Smith was back in familiar territory regaining his IRONMAN 70.3® Taupo title against a strong domestic field in December, and then repeated the trick in Challenge Wanaka in February, finishing more than five minutes clear.
"I was being coached by Jan's screenshots..."
A wildcard for the Singapore T100 race in April offered the chance to line up against 18 of the best triathletes in the world, and a fifth place finish not only showed that the 100 kilometre distance was to his liking, but it also put Smith in a plumb position to pick up more invites for the rest of the seven-race series.
A victorious trip to Slovakia for the Challenge Championship in May, where he took a number of scalps including reigning IRONMAN 70.3® World Champion Rico Bogen, preceded the closest of sprint finishes with Belgium’s Marten Van Riel at the San Francisco T100.
Smith then matched that runner-up spot at T100 London the following month, this time to Sam Laidlow, which left him as the top wildcard and with an outside chance of being crowned world champion heading to Dubai for the T100 grand final. In the heat of the Middle East, he raced at the front throughout, eventually crossing the line in fourth to end the series in second place overall.
It has been some turnaround, and much of the credit Smith lays with Dan Lorang, the much sought-after coach who guided Frodeno, and also counts Anne Haug, Lucy Charles-Barclay and Taylor Knibb among his stable of athletes.
“The reason I pestered Dan so much to be coached by him was that when I started training with Jan, I was doing Dan’s programme blind,” Smith explains. “It wasn’t specific to me and I was being coached by Jan’s screenshots from his Training Peaks. But whatever the stimulus was, it just seemed to work. Then when he was injured I wasn’t training under that methodology, and things weren’t going so well.”
Smith says Lorang’s strengths lie in cementing the foundations and working backwards from key races to lay a pathway, rather than knee-jerk reactions. “The last four weeks before a big race are always huge, but you have to build up to be able to do that, and it’s only this year that I’ve been able to fully reap the benefits of that programme,” Smith explains.
“It sounds cliche, but consistency has been the key and I’ve reaped the benefit of having that foundational fitness, strength, and robustness for months before building into those hard weeks before a race.”
Smith points out that while his curiosity is a useful asset in always trying to find a competitive edge, the flipside is that he could be too quick to make changes in the past. “I listen to a lot of people,” he says. “But Dan has had to remind me that I’ve been one of the best in the world, and this plan has been working. We’ve found the formula and we just need to keep doing it. To be honest, there’s no better feeling than to trust the programme 100 per cent and I can wake up every morning, do what I’m told and know it’s working.”
Diving into the technicalities, Smith says that because he has a high aerobic threshold in comparison to his VO₂ Max, a lot of steady-state low intensity training doesn’t work well for him. Threshold relates to the point during exercise where lactate – a byproduct produced when the body is struggling to use oxygen – begins to increase significantly. VO₂ is a measure of oxygen consumption during physical exertion. It's often recorded in the number of millilitres of oxygen used per kilogram of body weight per minute. In short, Smith’s challenge was to stress his body enough to see improvements rather than layering on hour after hour of easy workouts.
“The first principle is to understand your physiology and I don’t respond like normal athletes,” he says. “Building up both my VO₂ and my threshold brings everything up on the curve. If my V02 is high, my race pace is high, but actually figuring out what works can be more valuable than figuring out what doesn’t work.”
This means that short, sharp efforts dominate much of the early part of each training block. On the track that looks like 200-400 metre repeats, in the pool it’s 50 and 100 metre sprints, on the bike it might be 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off, building up to 45 seconds of high power and 15 seconds rest. Smith says four-by-four minute efforts with four minutes recovery is a current favourite.
Ironically, for a long course athlete who has never looked like he lacked in power, he feels the high intensity is an area where he struggles “I’m bad at it, but when I do it, I just get lifted up so much.”
One noticeable aspect of Smith’s season has been how much he’s homed in on the middle distance, in contrast to previous years where full distance IRONMAN® or the carrot of Olympic selection has been floated. His last full distance race was quitting in transition after the bike leg in 2022 in Hawaii, and he was one of a spectacular number of drop-outs in his last standard distance race in a World Cup in Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic last September. The singular focus has to have helped?
“Right now, I think the middle ground is perfect,” he says. “It’s a mix of speed and endurance where I’ve always had a natural inclination. It feels confidence-inspiring to get results on the board and is super motivating going into the next one.
“When I was trying to qualify for the Olympics last year, I travelled here, there and everywhere, not getting any consistent training blocks in, and constantly getting sick. It was a big eye-opener that I actually need a good amount of time and quality of training to do well. To set out my stall for eight weeks towards one race and execute that one race.”
Ironically, the VO₂ Max focused training he’s undertaking to focus on the middle distance is actually showing he possesses the explosiveness to still compete in Olympic competition. “A couple of weeks ago I sent a run session to Dan and he was like: ‘Maybe we should focus on LA!’”
Then again, when it comes to short course Smith has mixed feelings over the one race he undertook that was off-plan, a trip to China for the inaugural Challenge Beijing, a standard distance non-drafting race. The victory offered a welcome pay cheque, but sickness from the trip resulted in him missing the Ibiza T100 race and needing to recuperate.
“I’m always learning, and I said at the start of this year that a lot of people will tie themselves in knots trying to chase the IRONMAN® Pro Series. I wasn’t going to fall into that pitfall and would focus on my training to get to a point where I'm raring to race rather than dreading it because I’m not ready.”
"I didn't have a pot to p!ss in!"
Another area where the outlook has become more professional is in equipment choice, and he credits the passion of willing partners as his profile has grown. “You’re seeing how fast everyone is going and luckily the companies I work with are at the forefront of that,” he says. “Take bike company Canyon, who are as passionate about performance as I am and want to succeed just as much too. They are always innovating. My cockpit at London T100 was totally new.”
There’s a reluctance to take a sponsorship deal just because of the pay cheque as well, his running footwear being an example. “I’ve tested every shoe on the market and the Nikes work super well for me, so I’ve even abandoned a contract to buy Nikes from the Nike website.”
How is he able to do this? “As blunt as it sounds, more money in the bank. I can afford to buy a new saddle or shoes, whereas two years ago I didn’t have a pot to piss in. I’m fortunate now that with the sponsors I have and the race performances I’ve produced that I can afford to eat better, aero test, lactate test, even buy a stride pod to measure run power.
“I don’t care about nice cars and nice houses, I just want performance and invest heavily in myself. I even flew one of my best friends, a sports scientist, over from New Zealand. He’s living with us now and helping out with training and being a bottle carrier and is also dialled into my nutrition, working closely with Precision Fuel & Hydration and Fuelin. I feel we’ve got all the bases covered and we’re building a nice little team.”
One area of success has been through understanding the sweat volume and concentration as well as fueling appropriately to sustain sessions. “I’m now up to 150g of carbohydrates an hour in some of the really hard sessions, which has led to me feeling fresher through the block and I’m recovering better too,” he says. “The Precision Fuel & Hydration products sit really well with me so I don’t have any GI issues.”
The final piece of the puzzle is confidence. In such a measurable sport it’s often one of the intangibles, but Smith recognises he now has momentum. “I always thought I was capable of being one of the best in the world,” he explains. “But that comes into question when you have two years of mediocre performances. Am I good enough and do I belong? I think confidence comes from knowing what works and what doesn’t. It means I won’t panic and be reactive, I can have the confidence to take a day off if I need it.”
If 2024 has been the best season to date, the crowning glory could come in Taupo when he lines up for the long-awaited IRONMAN 70.3® World Championship in his home town, the event having originally been planned for the venue in 2020 before Covid struck.
“I started my long distance career in 2019 because the 70.3® Worlds were coming to my home town,” Smith says. “And I wouldn’t be a triathlete if it wasn’t for the community. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to race a home world champs and give it everything I’ve got.”
The two-day event, with the women racing on Saturday and men on Sunday, is expected to attract thousands of age-groupers as well as bumper pro fields and Smith thinks plenty of athletes will be in for a shock.
“They might have looked at the course profile and think they know what the course is about, but it’s a hard course to race. Either 12 degrees and sleet, or sunny and hot, and challenging road surfaces.
“I’m not the bookies’ favourite but I’m stepping into it with a town behind me and an army at my back champing at the bit. I’m excited for the fight, to win or bust, and give it my all.”
