Agree 100%, Chasing the Burn is a compulsory listen for anybody vaguely interested in this thread. Golden stuff, and laid out in a super interesting way.

---

"FTP is a bit 2015, don't you think?" - Gustav Iden

The process to qualify is too long and depends in too many uncontrollable facts: weather (see Abu Dhabi), trips (e.g.food poisoning), race conditions (e.g.Sunderland water quality), technical decissions (e.g.bike circuits...), federation decissions (e.g. Jorgensen-Zaferes decission for the start lists), luck (crashes, penalties...see Van Riel in Cagliari). Then, the federations even have the last word.
Xisca Tous, now in the turkish national team (she is spanish) has competed in almost 40 races within 2 years and lost her qualification in the last 2 races...
This sport must be more simple.

---

Spaniard. Sorry for my english for the sensitive ones :P

Agreed.

The finer details really matter at this level… in Cagliari, Katie Zaferes and Georgia Taylor-Brown were off the back of the first pack on the swim and were it not for the moto assist, might not have been there at the end.

Reminds me of PTN talking about Gwen having the fastest relay split in Sunderland… which happened with a lot of luck. She entered the water ahead of Bragmayer, came out behind her and hung during the bike as Bragmayer dragged that group up to the front group. Gwen had a great run but without a massive assist from Hungary, would have been a very different story.

i would totally say its way to complicated . for instance if you go for a new flag spot i would say if not all at least most slots should come from the continent you live on, especially the Europeans travel like crazy to cherry pic continetal cup races in asia, africa and south america and hardly have a european score they qualify with. would be very easy to change and say only european continental level cups scores at conti cup level for the european flag spot .

doing 40 races in 2 years is of course not the smartest way to do. i have no idea how many she did but she was obviously in pretty much every race this year . i just checked and she did really do 40 races athletes need to be smarter..

So to break that down.
Period to qualify is too long - It started spring 2022 and lasted 2 years: your suggestion?
Cancelled races - Need to have a plan to elevate another race to that status and, particularly, if it's one of the rare MTRs cancelled.
Too many trips? - It's an international sport, or are you suggesting the number of events counting towards ranking is reduced. The problem is that athletes will duck more races and we want to see every top ranked athlete racing one another the WTCS races (don't the athletes relish taking on the best too?).
How will changes to the bike course specification make things simpler. Should we insist on a minimum amount of climb?
Luck? How do you suggest we "simplify" luck.
Federations have the last word - who is paying these athletes? Who is making the case for funding so to do? Most provide selection policies with the opportunity to gain automatic qualification. After that, someone's got to have the final say: if not feds, who?
Remember that the system World Tri use is designed to meet Olympic ideals which is not as simple as getting the best athletes there. If you just took the top 50, some nations would have 5 athletes and many nations would have one or none. Not many nations would have 2+2 for the MTR: that would be a very select affair!

Debatable - just US centric and quite annoying, imo.

1. We must "decide" if this is a team sport or an individual sport. If it is an individual sport, the federation should just have power to decide, let's say, 1 spot, no more.
2. Shorten the time frame to get the points to just 1 year, or even less.
3. Try to host the races in places with good conditions to race (water quality, no open ocean swims, safe bike circuits)
4. Luck: triathlon is complicated, think about that... pontoon placing, buoys, transition 1, mount, dismount, T2. You make a small mistake, you have a penalty. It is hard to think when you have 180bpm. It is not the first time that a helmet bounces out of a basket... I dont know how, but something should be implemented to make things easier.

I know the athletes receive help from the federations and world triathlon depends on the hosting cities to get funding, but nobody is thinking on the athletes. This sport is not really well paid and they are risking too much, so a helmet bounced out from a box or a yokohama circuit full of white paint on the asphalt is not the best way to make it more friendly.

---

Spaniard. Sorry for my english for the sensitive ones :P

Interesting take - while some triathlon podcast hosts do irritate me, I don’t see how this one could annoy anyone?

Yes, it’s a little US-centric but I don’t really fault it for that.

Outside of the voice itself which is very personal (can’t stand it, similarly to Belinda) it’s just the lack of actual content.
No opinions, no proper comments, race dynamics, just a lot of fluff (for fear of upsetting someone?)
Paula gave more opinions in the last episode as a guest than Chelsea in all of her episodes as a host.

You have raised some excellent points.

I do believe the qualification period should be shortened. I think there should be 3 qualification races with 2 months between each race. That way both Southern and Northern hemisphere athletes get the best of both worlds as both ends of the racing season would have to be used and injured/returning athletes get opportunities to qualify. Each qualification race should mimmic the Olympic course (if it is a sea swim have a sea swim, if it is a river swim have a lake/river swim). If the Olympic course is hilly the bike course should have a similar profile.

Luck and discipline go hand in hand. Most athletes have discipline so if they have an infraction it isn’t normally luck. We can’t go back to dangerous transition areas.

Individual or team is a good question because there are lots of questions around domestiques and whether that is triathlon. Well the rules don’t say you can’t and they never changed the rules. MTR just gave triathlon another race in the Olympics.

National federations use their athletes as commodities. If anyone thinks anything differently they have never seen the inside workings at federations. They protect the federation and their own roles. They don’t care what they put their athletes through and they certainly have no qualms about spitting them out once they are finished using them for their cause.

I understand what you say,
And it's hard to be friends with athletes and them be more critical sometimes ,at the same time most people have no idea what a new flag spot is and how you get it for instance .
I liked how Taylor spoke about domestique rule
Or Pearson about funding.
I understand it's not super deep
But there is not so much stuff on short course

Out of interest do you have a podcast you think that is better?

I do think that Pro Tri News does a great job in general, especially if you can ignore the bias on certain athletes (again another very US centric podcast), but they stand by their positions bravely (e.g. Talbot allegedly losing some work with PTO due to the antidoping testing enquiries)
Loved Max Stapley on Triathlon Mockery post the disaster by World Triathlon, honest and refreshing.
Most of the time The Triathlon Hour is great too, though sometimes Jack gets too worried about the consequences of his opinions for his gigs - like what the hell what that episode with Fred Funk post Singapore about?!?! 90 minutes of nothing.
I understand some athletes are reticent to express opinions, but they have to if they want this to become a wider recognized sport. We need rivalries, plots, etc.
Otherwise let’s all go do podcasts like TTL (that I love) that are only answering questions from newbies.
Curious to get your ideas too