Australia's Pete Jacobs has admitted that he did not pay enough attention to a niggling back problem in the run-up to last year's Ironman World Championship, where he came a disappointing 77th.
Writing on his personal blog, Jacobs says: "It was my back that let me down in Kona, an issue that flared up just before Sunshine Coast Ironman 70.3 a month out from Hawaii.
"I was so pig headed and confident that all would be ok that I kept doing the sessions I thought I needed to do instead of dealing with the obvious issue which undermined everything I’d worked for."
In 2012 Jacobs won the Ironman World Championship with 5mins to spare over second-placed Andreas Ralert (GER), and was many people's favourite for gold in Kona last year.
"Only through mistakes do we learn, and make changes for the better," he adds. "I have been happy and upbeat when talking about Kona, Kona 2014 that is, as I don’t want to look back into the past.
"I’ve spoken to the people I needed to speak to about it, I know what went wrong, and I don’t want to relive the disappointment of the result of 2013."