Andy Wibowo (JP/Seto Wardhana)

Andy Wibowo, Indonesia’s top triathlete, is dead set on improving his performance in the Ironman World Championship in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, in future competitions.

The Ironman World Championship, a triathlon organized by the World Triathlon Corporation, is preceded with a series of qualifying Ironman events.

The Full Ironman category consists of 3.8 kilometers of swimming, 180 km of cycling and 42 km of marathon, making it one of the toughest one-day races in the world.

“I do have a plan to return to Kona, because I believe I still have room to grow in the race,” said Andy, a former Summer Olympics swimmer, in a recent media gathering in Jakarta.

Andy and sports enthusiast Inge Prasetyo were Indonesia’s first two triathletes to have competed in the Kailua-Kona race. Their participation in the event was supported by PT Indofood CBP Sukses Makmur, a leading consumer goods company in the country.

In the World Championship, which took place on Oct. 14, Andy clocked in at 9:49:38 to finish 67th out of around 200 participants.

In his debut in the Ironman full-distance race, Andy admitted that he fell short of his own expectation.

“I think I could’ve done better. I encountered a slew of challenges, which prevented me from finishing the race a bit faster,” said the 37-year-old who hails from Bali.

He had set 9:10:00 as his personal target in Hawaii.

Unpredictable wind drift, a mechanical problem in his bicycle’s electronic gear shifter and a penalty had cost him valuable minutes, he said.

“When I faced the mechanical problem, I had to get off of my bike. Trying my best to make the shifter work again, I panicked. Some of the other participants even calmed me down.

“And then I really started to panic when I realized there were a good number of athletes that had passed me — dozens or maybe hundreds of them,” said Andy, who earned his ticket to Kona when he participated in Ironman 70.3, a half Ironman event, in China in late 2016.

Andy said he thought the mechanical problem was caused by rain that fell the day before the race.

The bad luck did not end there. After he returned to the race and joined a group of cyclists, Andy was penalized for breaking a rule: failing to maintain a distance of 15 meters from competitors in front of him.

However, Andy argued that the participant in front of him cut him off of his line during the race.

“See, during the cycling race in Ironman, you have to overtake all participants in the group you are in if you want to improve on your overall position.

“It seemed that this guy didn’t have enough power to overtake all of the athletes in my group, so he cut me off.

“The marshal interpreted that as me failing to maintain a 15-m distance,” he said.

As for wind drift, Andy has learned to anticipate unpredictable Hawaiian weather next time he competes in Kona.

“The drift of the wind changed within 2 km. First, you got the drift from the side, but after the second km, the wind came from the front,” he said.

Andy began training for the triathlon in 2009 after he finished his career as a national swimmer. In 2012, the 2007 Southeast Asian Games bronze medalist in swimming decided to compete professionally in the sport.

After his hey-day as a swimmer, Andy, who raced in the men’s 100-m butterfly in the 2008 Olympics in Athens, realized that the triathlon was a sport in which Indonesia had potential.

For Andy, competing as a triathlete marked another milestone in his sporting career and he is eager to add to past successes, with a focus in the half Ironman.

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