What fueled the fire before was something very different. Lionel Sanders grew up in Harrow, a small town about 40 minutes from Windsor, Ontario. It’s a place with one stoplight, fewer than 3,000 people, and not a whole lot for kids to do other than play sports. Sanders tried them all, but it was on the track where he excelled, and by the time he got to high school, he was known as one of the area’s best runners. With that came the weight of expectation, which quickly turned running from an escape to a chore. That was about the same time that he was handed his first joint and beer while hanging out in a friend’s garage, and things escalated quickly from there.
It’s not uncommon for him to put in more than 30 training hours per week—and that includes do- ing nearly all of his riding in his “pain cave,” which has become something of his indoor sanctuary. He still manages to keep a very busy race schedule, but he doesn’t do training races or test races. So every time Sanders lines up, he comes prepared to bury himself. He did nine races in 2017 and won all but two—both misses were runner-up finishes to world champions whom he pushed to their absolute limits: Alistair Brownleeat Ironman St. George 70.3 and Patrick Langein Kona.
Lionel Sanders doesn’t care much for history or the past these days. From his point of view, he didn’t win second place —he lost first. That’s what fuels him now, and he learned a lot from Lange surging past him with less than three miles to go. He has a picture of that moment in front of the treadmill in his pain cave, and he looks at it every day. That moment motivates, but it also teach- es. The lessons it continues to teach might be why we see a different approach from Sanders at Kona this year—even if he’s still at his absolute limit.
Lionel Sanders has been to some pretty dark places, but now he's one of the most popular pro athletes in the sport . And he's just getting started.