Mathias Lyngsoe Petersen

Mathias Lyngsoe Petersen hadn’t even considered a career in triathlon until 2011, but he is now a respected competitor on the world circuit.

Petersen was injured as a swimmer in that year, when his swimming coach said he should try a local triathlon race just to have something to train for. It ended up changing his life.

He borrowed a wetsuit and bike for that first triathlon and has never looked back since, becoming one of Denmark’s finest triathletes over the past decade.

Petersen has quickly improved and developed, winning the Danish Half Distance National Triathlon Championships twice at Challenge Herning. He did so by finishing second to German Andreas Dreitz in 2018 and first overall in 2019.

Meanwhile on the world stage he notched a top-10 finish at IRONMAN New Zealand in 2019 and claimed a podium via a third at IRONMAN Kalmar.

When on form, Petersen says running is his favourite of the three disciplines while swimming is his least favourite, because he says it is very repetitive and only fun when at full speed.

Outside of competing in triathlons, Petersen is very interested in history and spends a lot of his free time reading about various time periods.

He sees his legacy as having been kind and humble off the course, but a fierce racer and competitor when the gun goes off and the race is under way.

Some of his favourite foods include peanut butter and pizza, his favourite training location is the Bavarian Alps, his heroes growing up included Javier Gomez and Jan Frodeno and his favourite genre of music is indie rock.

Petersen’s favourite piece of training advice is to find a way where you can perform on both the good and bad days, and don't have a setup where you only perform on your good days.

He also says: “You have to be able to allow yourself to make mistakes and learn from them”.