Kristian Blummenfelt puts ambitious plan to win Tour de France on hold as 2020 Olympic triathlon champion claims training “went in the wrong direction” after disappointing Paris Olympics results

With young riders taking the world of professional cycling by storm, it looks like there will be one less contender for the likes of Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard to worry about in 2028. Kristian Blummenfelt, the Norwegian triathlete with the highest VO2max ever recorded, has put his ambitious plan to turn professional and win the 2028 Tour de France on hold. Instead, he has decided to try for one more gold in the triathlon at the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

The 2020 Olympic triathlon champion had a disappointing time at the Paris Olympics, by his standards, with a triathlon event that took place at a breakneck pace of under two hours. He finished 12th overall, second in the cycling, eighth in the running and 24th in the swimming, but almost a full minute behind Britain’s Alex Yee who won the gold medal.

Since then he has managed to win gold at the Ironman European Championships held in Frankfurt in August, but not without vomiting during the run and even struggling with nasty intestinal problems. For example, he could not take out his “morning poop” before the race and had to go looking for an empty toilet. He was able to relieve himself in “8-10 seconds” and led the race.

Blummenfelt, who has been called the fittest man in the world, and his super coach Bu seem to have thwarted their plans to move to the professional peloton, struggling with training problems and a failed professional contract.

> Triathlon star with highest ever measured VO2 max Kristian Blummenfelt reveals ambitious plan to win the Tour de France in 2028

In July, just before the Olympic Games, Blue and Bu, the super duo known for perfecting the ‘Norwegian training regime’, shocked the cycling world with the announcement of their ‘Project 2028’.

“Let’s say there’s a 90 percent chance that we’ll be racing next year. The reason I say 90 is that we haven’t signed a contract yet,” Bu said, amid rumours that Australian team Jayco-AlUla are interested not only in Blummenfelt’s abilities but also in the training methods and research the Bergen-based endurance athlete has been involved in.

Flower felt can absorb more than 7.7 liters of oxygen per minute, almost seven percent more than the highest value ever recorded, 7.2 liters per minute.

However, the team has since confirmed that these were only rumours and that there have been no updates about a professional peloton catching the triathlete.

And now Bu has confirmed that their focus is now on holding on to the LA Olympic gold medal, rather than the yellow jersey. “After the assessment of Paris, we decided to aim for Los Angeles 2028,” Bu told Velo, referring to the next Games.

“Despite the results in Paris, we are more confident after the race that Ironman’s return to the Olympics is possible. We want to give it one last chance.”

This probably comes as a shock announcement, coming just two months after an audacious but ‘serious’ plan was presented to beat riders like Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard, although some road purists and our readers had raised eyebrows and raised doubts about Blummenfelt’s ability to do so, given that he would have turned 34 in four years.

> “Kristian Blummenfelt is not to be messed with”: Tour de France stage winner backs 2020 Olympic triathlon champion’s plan to win Tour in 2028, saying he will “immediately claim his place in the peloton”

Coach Bu had told TV2: “We probably need a couple of years. The first year probably won’t be the Tour de France. 2025 will probably be more of a mapping year, where we have to figure out where we need to work. Not just with Kristian specifically, but also with the team.

“In 2026 we want to be in the Tour de France. In 2027 we have to be able to win some jerseys. If we’re not able to win some stages or be at the absolute top of the general classification, it’s hard to think that we’re going to do something magical until 2028. So we think we’re really going to test it in 2027, and then the goal is to go all-in in 2028.”

He had also received the endorsement of Tour de France stage winner and former hour record holder Victor Campenaerts, who told the Belgian press that the Olympic champion is mentally “unmatched” and “means it” when it comes to success in professional cycling.

In a candid video shared on his YouTube channel, Blummenfelt also spoke about his disappointment at the Paris Olympics and his comeback in Frankfurt by winning the Ironman European Championship. He said: “I feel like maybe I didn’t do the right training in the last year or so. I want to learn more about the reflection on Paris.

“Did the project (to win the Olympics) fail? Yes, of course we did,” Blummenfelt said. “If you finish 12th in Paris, you fail in the project to return to short track. That’s the brutality.”

“We have to be honest with ourselves. I think it’s the decisions we’ve made in training, how we’ve weighed it up over the last 12 months, that haven’t been good enough. It was clearly good enough to be in Ironman shape, but that shows that it’s gone a bit the wrong way.”