The career of Jan Frodeno has officially come to an end.
The German athlete has become arguably one of the most recognisable faces of triathlon over the past decade as he has led the long distance side of the sport into new waters. Before he became focal point of a generation of long distance triathlon, though, he was an exceptional short distance triathlon.
The peak of his career came in 2008 when he won Olympic gold. With his win in Beijing, he catapulted himself to the pinnacle of the sport and an exclusive group of athletes.
Frodeno, however, was not favoured to win the race.
Rather, that status lay with Javier Gomez Noya. The Spanish athlete arrived at the Games as the newly-crowned world champion. To go with that, he won four World Cup races in 2008; only one other athlete won more than one (Daniel Unger, with two). To cap it all off, Gomez had the biggest winning margin of the World Cups as well as the fastest run split.
Gomez was therefore as close as it came to being the prohibitive favourite to take the gold.
Meanwhile, Frodeno had never won an elite international triathlon.
In one of the greatest upsets the sport had yet seen, Frodeno claimed the gold medal in a dramatic finale while Gomez was pushed off the podium and into 4th place.
Frodeno has only really stepped into the top level of the sport five years prior. A solitary African Cup marked his only international race in 2001. He added two European Cup appearances in 2002. In 2003, he became a regular on the international circuit. That year, he won a first international medal at end of season, a silver at a European Cup in Zagreb.
He picked up where he left off in 2004, winning a silver at an African Cup in his first race of the year. Later in the summer, he won a silver medal at the World U23 Championships in Funchal.
When it came to the world stage, though, Frodeno took a little longer to fully break through. As had been the case with his first international medal, his first World Cup medal would come with the last race of his season, this time in 2005.
Where, of all places, did he win his maiden bronze medal? It had to be Beijing.
Two further World Cup medals followed in 2006 while he added a silver medal at the European Championships in 2007 behind the preeminent Gomez. He kicked off his 2008 with a bronze medal at the Tongyeong World Cup. A silver medal followed at the Hamburg World Cup (behind his compatriot, Unger).
And then Beijing happened.
In the bigger picture, Frodeno’s win also came at a changing time in triathlon. The World Triathlon Series was announced in the wake of his success and commenced the following year. As the Olympic champion, Frodeno now found himself as an important face of the sport.
Not one to disappoint, he won the World Series stop in Yokohama in 2009, getting both his World Series career off the ground while claiming a second international win.
In Seoul the next year, he won another World Series race. That would stand as his third and final international win in the short course scene. Frodeno won four other World Series medals in 2009 and 2010, with his last being a bronze in Kitzbuehel in 2010.
From then he would never return to the individual podium.
A 6th place at the London Olympics in 2012 reminded everyone of his abilities, although Gomez and the Brownlee brothers had by then moved the sport to a new level.
In 2013, Frodeno would race for the last time in the World Series. A 9th place in Auckland preceded DNFs in San Diego and Madrid. To conclude his short course chapter, he then finished 10th in Hamburg before a home crowd.
Never one to go out without a bang, Frodeno still had something up his sleeve.
For the first time, the World Mixed Team Relay Championships would be held in Hamburg. Racing on the second leg, Frodeno helped Germany to the gold medal. He therefore signed off on a high and moved on to a new challenge.
Frodeno was a classy short distance athlete and as an Olympic champion will always be regarded as a tremendous athlete. It is easy to wonder, though, what any of it means.
The sport has evolved since the heyday of Frodeno while his medals have gathered dust over time. For many athletes, their careers inhabit brief snapshots of a much bigger narrative. A collection of medals and memories are gained then the world moves on.
Frodeno might be part of a select group of athletes to have a real legacy in the sport.
In playing his part in the Mixed Team Relay win in 2013, he was part of a seminal moment for German triathlon. Ten years later, Germany repeated the feat, again in Hamburg.
To a degree, Frodeno’s feats a generation prior helped pave the way for and inspire the current crop of German stars.
More than any medals won and victories claimed, maybe his greatest legacy on this side of the sport has been elevating triathlon in Germany and helping the country to become the powerhouse that it is today.
A lot of athletes win races. Not many win Olympic medals. Even fewer still, though, hand something over to the next generation. In doing all three, Jan Frodeno’s short course was thus something special indeed.
