I wonder if the Detroit river is clean enough for open water training? If Lionel could put in regular sessions with some guys or gals faster then him in that sort of current it would certainly transfer to a Kona swim a bit better than pure pool swimming. He needs a small group to work with in this sort of environment to really hone his OWS skills so that he'll have a chance to hold some fast enough feet for the first 500m at Kona.

WTF kind of backward loser Canadian thinking is this? Be a hero at Long Course worlds and get your butt handed to you at 70.3 Worlds vs potentially winning Kona. Just ask Jordan Rapp if he'd rather win long course worlds or Kona and just ask any Canadian triathlete if they know what long course worlds are or 70.3 Worlds. Almost none know about the former. Some triathletes know about the latter. Every triathlete knows about Kona and that even spills into the general population (almost all my colleagues who are techie ultra geeks can tell you what Kona is). Sorry man, as a Canadian I say, there are only two prizes in this sport that anyone cares about....the first being the prize that Simon Whitfield won, and the second being the one that Peter Reid and Lori Bowden have won. Any other prizes are also ran awards in the big scope of our national sports market.

I'd say, depending on your home market, 70.3 and ITU LD WC are about equivalent. In North America, there's a bias towards 70.3WC; in Europe, the bias is towards ITU LD WC.

But both are dramatically far back from Kona in terms of importance.

*However,* I'd not trade winning ITU LD WC (or 70.3 WC) for anything other than a win in Kona. I.e., I'd not give up being a World Champion to be, for example, 2nd in Kona. Whatever arbitrary importance some pundit or peanut gallery puts on any given race, being a world champion is a remarkably rare and special achievement. To this end, it's actually quite sad how little emphasis the ITU places on LD WC. This is a race with 20+ year history that has seen some of the sports greatest champions win the race - Simon Lessing, Luc Van Lierde, Greg Welch, and Chris McCormack. Plus of course all of the great Kona champs who have also contested the race at some point and who have medaled - Peter Reid and Crowie.

To me, I think racing Penticton / Kona is a great option. And certainly, I think, preferable to Chattanooga / Kona.

For triathlon, I'd agree with Dev's assessment that there is Olympic Gold - especially as the ITU has moved to a net points total for the WC - and Kona. With Olympic gold having the very clear edge there, simply because absolutely everyone in the world knows what an Olympic gold is. Everything else is secondary and roughly par. Sure the hardcore fan will have some nuanced ranking, but at the end of the day, someone who says that winning the WTS World Series World Championship title is somehow more important than even XTerra World Championships is simply reflecting their own bias.

Ultimately, I think the only things that matter are:
- do the races you enjoy
- do the races you can do well at (which obviously is intrinsically related to enjoyment, though it's not exactly the same thing)
- do the races where you can earn money

If I have two big regrets in my career, the first is not hewing more closely to this rationale post-2012. And the second is not being willing to simply step away from training/racing for a month (or two or three) when it was clear I needed to.

But circling back to the original topic, I don't think any athlete ever regretted winning a world championship title simply because a bunch of other people thought it wasn't that important.

so it's official now.... ;-)

http://triathlonmagazine.ca/...cisions-rest-season/