Fast Times on a Kona High

Inside Triathlon says it was all Faris Al-Sultan.

"No one took the fall harder than last year's daring winner, Normann Stadler of Germany. Coming in confident after last year's breakaway win and a repeat of his bike breakaway in Ironman Germany, the emerging German superstar suffered not one, not two, but three flat tires and a bee sting on his leg before dropping out in a Teutonic tsunami of bitter tears."

Simon Lessing also had a rough day:

"Over-raced and overworked, Lessing was second out of the swim and rode with the first chase pack until multiple vomiting episodes on the bike left him fatally depleted."