Zäck Attack

Old iron can occasionally be quite hard. Triathlete Jürgen Zäck, 40, is the best proof of that.

Jürgen Zäck prefers to go his own way, a predilection that first made itself known at the tender age of 14. He dropped out of the local football club despite being the leading goal-scorer. It was inevitable, because the youth from Koblenz had recognised his inclination for going it alone. In his case, “going it alone” also meant swimming and cycling alone, for Zäck is one of the most successful triathletes under the sun – and he’s been at it for over 20 years. Legend has it, he’s amassed close to 100 Ironman starts during his career.

Never in the Rain

Zäck goes his own way even off the race course. He has no trouble criticising the at times excessive training regimen of his fellow triathletes and making claims you wouldn’t exactly expect to hear from an Ironman competitor: too much training makes you sick, mentally and physically.
For Zäck, this means “no cycling when it rains.” And in winter, it’s time for a somewhat longer break.
Jürgen Zäck draws up his training schedule “from his gut”, as he calls it. No coach, no doctor tells him what to do. Zäck is an autodidact who does fine without pulse or lactate measurements and who also refrains from professional performance assessments. “I know my body best”, he says.

Motivated by Fun

In principle, Ironman Zäck only trains when it’s fun. Luckily, that’s almost all the time – there’s no way he could have acquired such a record by only jogging on Sundays. For example, he set the second fastest Ironman time ever with 7:51:42 in 1997. He’s won eight Ironman competitions – the German Ironman five times, the Austrian twice and the Australian once. That was in 1996. In the most recent competition in Germany on 10 July 2005, Zäck took sixth place. That was about what he was aiming for, after just getting over a cold. Had it not been for the cold, he likely would have done more justice to his nickname: he’s called Zäck Attack because of his sudden attacks during the cycling segment.