The Truth About Youri Keulen’s Success 

I ran into Youri Keulen on the pool deck in France, and the always friendly and cheerful Dutchman was gracious enough to carve out some time for Slowtwitch. Currently ranked 15th in the world, Keulen found his stride on the middle distance circuit, racing as a regular in the T100. But this season he surprised everyone with his full distance debut at IRONMAN Brazil. His second place finish earned him a Kona slot, but that’s not the only new dimension this season has brought to Keulen’s life.

To kick things off, I ask him about his upcoming schedule. I’m expecting him to tell me Kona is the next big one with perhaps a 70.3 or T100 in the build-up. Instead, he tells me that in a few days he will be leaving his squad training camp for something more important: his wedding. 

“Right now,  I’m writing the speech and the vows and and a letter for her to read, so you kind of go through the love story again,” he says with a glowing smile. As we chat about the wedding, I can tell he’s in a thoughtful mood. Part of that love story, for better and worse, is triathlon. 

“I don’t really want to talk about Singapore,” he says preemptively, before we really get into the sport side of things. But anyone in the triathlon world knows Keulen and Singapore are hard to separate. It was 2024, the T100 was still new and flashy, and Singapore had attracted all the big names. Keulen’s name wouldn’t have stood out on the start list. A breakthrough performance at Challenge Barcelona the year before saw him outrun Alistair Brownlee, and he backed that up with a win at Challenge Mallorca. That was enough for a wildcard start at the 2024 T100 season opener in Miami, and when he crossed the finish line in fourth, T100 CEO Sam Renouf personally offered him another wildcard slot for the next race in Singapore. 

He might have been an up-and-comer, but no one was picking him for a win–except Keulen and his team. Keulen went above and beyond to prepare for the horrifically humid and hot conditions with an aggressive heat training block in Thailand, and it paid off big time. After making his move on the bike, Keulen held off a charging Sam Long to take the win by over ninety seconds. It was the biggest performance of his career, but it wasn’t the win or the fact that he missed the podium presentation that people remember. Racing in the oppressive heat, Keulen collapsed at the line and was removed from the finish line area in a wheelchair–images that went viral in the triathlon community. While recovering in the hospital, Keulen missed his podium and never had the chance to truly celebrate.

But that’s not why he doesn’t want to talk about it. 

The Heart of the Matter

To get at the heart of the matter, Keulen tells me Singapore was a big day for him in another way. His wife-to-be, Imogen Cotter, had officially decided to retire from professional cycling that very same day. The two had met a year earlier, just weeks after she had been hit by a car while on a training ride. Her injuries ultimately caused the early end to her career but, in a twist of fate, that was the reason they ended up meeting. Unable to come to the door for a courier delivery while recuperating from the accident, her new neighbour, Keulen, graciously collected her mail and brought it to her apartment door. It was a meet-cute worthy of any rom-com but, as is real life, things were a bit more complicated for the new couple. 

“ When you have such a horrible accident, there’s not only a physical trauma, there’s mental trauma as well,” Keulen says. “She went to loads of therapy and figured out more and more what she wanted to do and it put me more in my strength…I got a bit more of her and she got a bit more of me. From me, she got more structure and detail. I got from her, the side to be kind to the world, to be kind to yourself,” he says.

Keulen is quick to say he also didn’t figure things out on his own. 

“Imogen found me one of the best mental coaches there is in endurance sports…and it was insanely good for the benefit of our relationship from both sides,” he says. “It changed our relationship completely in a good way. We were already really happy, but being vulnerable and open from both sides, from her side, from my side, it changed us a lot in a positive way.”  

The Backlash

When Singapore arrived, Cotter finalized her retirement, and it was a coming-to-peace moment that they had both worked for. And Keulen’s win should have been an exciting way to open a new chapter, but the two were thrust back into hard times. 

Keulen’s breakthrough performance was met with a lot of support and positivity–but there was also a strong backlash of online negativity. Skeptics started to spread rumors, some being brazen enough to confront his family in real life. The social media storm hit him so personally that what should have been one of the best times of his career was actually the worst. 

He doesn’t want to go into details, but I ask how long it took to weather the storm. He pauses and exhales. 

“A full year,” he says solemnly. 

 ”Every time I came to a race, I felt that if I’m not performing, I’m just a one-time wonder.  Every interview I gave, I was questioning everything I said because people made something from it…  [The win] brought stress. From that moment on, it put stress on me,” he says.

Grounding

“Then we got a dog,” he adds with a smile, shifting the energy of the interview in an instant. “Because Imogen really wanted a dog. And then we kind of became like a little family and that grounded me so much more.”

Keulen changed coaches as well, joining Glenn Polenius’s squad, and that became another source of grounding. 

“That definitely brought out the best out of me,” he says, referencing the other athletes in the squad. “I’m 100% sure because I can actually take an easy day and go for a nice meal with Imogen and actually enjoy it without thinking of like, ‘Oh, what’s tomorrow?’”

But, as the groom-to-be reflects on, not what he’s been through but who he has become, he can’t go past the person who, around that same time, he decided to spend the rest of his life with. 

“I think the most important thing that Imogen did in my career is making me realize that there’s so much more than being a triathlete. I can be a world champ, but if I’m a dick of a person, it doesn’t matter. Being the IRONMAN world champ is the biggest goal, but the ultimate goal next to that is being a nice person, a good brother, a good son and a lovely husband.”