I actually just texted one of my friends to see if she heard anything about an opening. She's raced ITU multiple times and has competed at U23 worlds but isn't on the start list. I'd honestly be concerned to say anything at this point if I was one of the females. If its as easy to just call someone up and get them in the race, the last thing I would want to do start running my mouth to make sure I was looked over next time. I think it shows a failure in the system to get people into the races at the least, and at worst something shady took place between the coach and USAT. Obviously thats just my opinion, but realistically on the depth charts she behind a ton of athletes, so once again how do you get from we have an ITU athlete injured to lets call someone who hasn't even broke the 2:20 mark. It's not a comment saying she is bad its just what happened to the other 100+ girls in between. Then the next obvious question, which goes back to a failure in the system, at what point do you say you haven't gone 2.XX what ever that number may be so were not going to let you enter. Since it surely doesn't help anyone's cause if you get lapped out on the bike before you finish 1 or 2 laps.

As far as the safety issue, I agree. I don't think its a big deal unless the person makes it a big deal and its normally due to someone doing something stupid not a lack of a certain talent or skill set. Which if we want to talk about safety issue's someone can find the video on youtube of a bunch of the females, I believe in london, trying to get on their bikes after T1. I think and you can correct me if I'm wrong they don't normally put those small countries straight into the WCS series races though do they? Don't they normally start them out on continental cups where you're not going to have quite the competition?