Decent win that, I'd have thought that would put him in the conversation at least.

Yes, the one drawback though, may be his lack of experience in the relay. Not sure how many he has done. Was in that distasteris one in Hamburg. Think it was during that, that he got injured, so he had a very poor leg as a result

Think that assessment is a bit unkind. Spivey, with that result, (#4) may not have AQ'd but she's surely stamped her selection ticket.

Jorgensen has tried super hard; some cards have fallen her way to get to 5th USA and a start in a WTCS race by right (care with which rankings you use). But the interview was immediately after the denouement of her comeback campaign and it'd be amazing if she were not disappointed (not "arrogance": she deserved a Cagliari start but Zaferes, for USA national reasons, deserved it more. When you saw Rappaport just hanging around at/off the back of the main chase group (with Jorgensen maybe 3 wheels ahead) I still think USAT made a decision error by not subbing Rappaport out for Zaferes (to allow both mums to race Cagliari given there's no AQ opportunity there): but hey, it's done now.


Kasper seemed chirpy and after her excellent race I'm not surprised. If Zaferes stumbles in 4 days time, it's conceivable Kasper might get selected. Kasper matched Spivey within a few seconds SBR and same at Pontevedra (NB Spivey managing injury). Kasper (on the evidence/results available) is super close to Zaferes. It may come down to who does best in Sardinia.

General question to the group - do you put your strongest relay man 1st or 3rd?

In my mind a weaker swim/ bike is better “hidden” in 1st because of the draft, especially if they have a strong run. Things are blown open by 3rd.

Thinking about this hearing PTO saying Morgan should go 1st. I only think you do that if 3rd is a stronger swim/ biker than him.

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Aaron Bales
Lansing Triathlon Team

There's more than one factor, but you definitely want a strong 1st relay, especially in the swim. I would definitely put Morgan 1st for the US. For the 3rd relay, you want someone who is strong on the bike as there may be more gaps, smaller groups, sometimes needing to jump onto a small group just in front at the start, etc.

it really depends on how you view the other 3 and how you think they can do against those you think will be on their legs. other than france, every other country has issues with at least 1 leg (and most with the slower female). i don't think it is catastrophic to fall behind on the first leg because who is going to be ahead of you other than france? probably belgium, norway, australia, portugal and brasil and then maybe germany, new zealand (if wilde leads off) and hungary. what do all of those countries other than germany have in common? they all have weak 2nd legs that a GTB and spivey will be gobbling up and erasing the deficit.

If you have a good swimmer, put in first. Same with the first woman...better to assure to be at the front in the T1s. I am interested to see the 2nd american man (so it is between Smith, Rider, Mc Elroy, Mc Queen, right?). You have a strong team, but the only team that can threat France will be UK if they find a good 2nd man (brownlee or Dickinson)

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

both france and germany have the most secure teams to medal
you can use all 6 qualifier and you would not be worried to use any of them. especially since schonburg is a transition beast and can run the first k fast
lindeman can sprint so i would consider them as a thread as well.

the other bonus is 5 of the 6 germans can prepare for paris since the grand final ,they can peak for paris and dont have to waste mental energy on the qualification process.
usa and uk are not really a team or can you see potter and gtb being best friends for 3 hours and no american is really willing to do something for their team mates or train together. . its not awlays the best individuals but the best team see the dutch 2021 or last weekend. its still a individual race but still its better to have a good vibe than a neutral or bad vibe.

if you look which courtries produces the best males and females
its france germany uk and usa in that order and i hope nobody is going to argue that a nation that gets 5 people to the games is better than a nation that gets 6 atheltes to the games the depth in france and germany is high in both genderes not just one.
i would say likely uk will get the most medals from tri but they are not the best nation as they need to get 2 or 3 males into world series races via the waiting list. and you cant be the best nation like that.

at the end of the day all 4 nations could win the relay.

if the dutch speaker could send a joint relay that would be a good team van riel, kingma , geens and klamer
if kingma could get in a breakaway on the bike with 2 other teams you would have a medal potential team

I'd say wait till after Paris and we'll have the discussion on the best Tri nation, no point in qualifying 3 men and women just for participation!

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I thought Germany was the 2nd best team (Lindemann, Tersch, Hellwig, Schomburg) but Uk has GTB, Potter(Waugh) and Yee... germany and USA are quite even, then Belgium (Vermeylen,Michel, Van Riel, Geens) and the two oceanics are quite even too...

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

Before Tokyo everyone was waxing lyrical about the French, Australian, USA teams, British team wasn't getting a mention despite in my opinion having the best side on paper, was really annoying! (Either the French and Australian teams were absolutely nailed on for gold)

We messed around a lot with our selection in the build up though, don't think we seen Jonny, Yee, GTB and Learmonth once in the build up, again though, in waiting until after Paris before declaring the best MTR teams.

What? You want to wait until after some one-off MTR before "declaring" who's best? After all the evidence we can draw on to establish the hierarchy beyond all reasonable doubt?
The Olympic MTR rankings seem fairly clear. After Paris, they may (or may not) change.
World Triathlon Mixed Relay Olympic Qualification Rankings • World Triathlon
The first crunch point is T1 on Leg 2. If a nation's athlete is not front pack after the mount line (a lone breakaway is fine, but not a pair (eg FRA/DEU)) then you're in with a shout: otherwise a challenge.

I agree with that. I thought GB were the favourites going into Tokyo and they proved me right. Whereas France often used their A team in the run up, GB experimented more.
Unfortunately this year, I do believe that France have the edge.Cassandra has shown that she is the best runner over the shorter distance.
Hope Beth proves me wrong.

What's going to be interesting about the relay orders is where do you put the guys like Yee, Blu, and Wilde? I mean they are considered the best 3 in the wrorld(arguably) but they all suck in the swim as compared to guys like Hauser and a few others that can stretch them out. If you put them first, then they possibly have to chase the entire bike and then need their run just to catch up. They would be much better TT'ers in a catch up mode, which will be the 3rd leg where things will be split up.

That is where GB is going to hurt unless they get a Johnny(or Johnny like performance) on that first leg, same for NZ and Norway. And I think Norway is severely underrated in the lead up, once you put Blu on the team, they have some solid legs to be there at the finish.

I think for the US we have to use Pearson in the 3rd leg, so we need someone that can lead off and get to T2 with the group and just lose 10 seconds or so on the run. That's where Spivey can shine, getting us back into the race, hand off to Pearson in the lead group, and hope that he makes that final 3rd leg selection in the lead group. Would be nice not to have to use Knibb's top swim and bike just to catch up, and perhaps use it to thin the group down even further...

With the wonky 4th persons that many countries have at the moment, think France is in the drivers seat, even with recent injuries. Putting Luis on that team probably makes it stronger anyway..He is a guy along with Hauser who could force a 1st leg break that could be less than 5 teams, and that would be something to happen so early, and could put other favorites like GB on the back foot.

Nice revisionist history there. They were 2nd in the Tokyo Test Event by a nanosecond (it was so close with France that they had the same final time as France). Who was not mentioning the team that was 2nd in the Test Event and missed winning by .0001 of a second? People were salivating over a team anchored by Yee and his track chops with Learmonth, JB and GTB ahead of him.

It is inexcusable that WTCS did not add a MTR to either Yoko or Cagliari as nearly every country outside of France is picking at least 1 athlete solely for the MTR.

You're just arguing my point for me, I think they should have been favourites, it was the Triathlon media that hardly gave them a mention, I definitely can't be arsed proving the point, but I'm sure hardly anyone was mentioning them on here either.

I can remember making a told you so type speech in here after they won Gold though, so I'm not imagining all this.

I don’t know - it seems like the team spirit is pretty high when the US races. Whatever their relationship outside of racing, they seem to be supporting each other at the races that are broadcast.

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Aaron Bales
Lansing Triathlon Team

Just noticed the original post in this thread, still going with this??

What are you trying to accomplish here?

of course i see your points and one can hardly agrue the medals are key
at the same time 1 gold medal in the single event also dosnt show everything works well .
if you took yee and the bownlees away all three super athletes , how many uk male athletes haven been top 8 in a world series race in the males since 2016 and how many super talented athletes struggle to make it world class which is obviously the big issue in the uk males. ie one courld argue the trajectory for the uk is going down since 2012 , when there was the brownlees tim dom and will clark all legit top 8 guys. 2016 it was only the brownlees and now its only lee at world series level .

uk is doing really well in producing talent but especially in the males they have a lot of injury issues going into a consistent senior world class level. and what you do well is having training centers at universities but i would say yee s likley gold medal in paris can t gloss that over that france has 4 athletes that can win races or are always a thread for podium in a world series level .
or on other words if you have one super hero but then only participants than you are more lucky that you have a super talent, if you have 4 world class males like france that means overall something is working.
obviously there is no doubt that the uk females do rather well.
still you cant be a top tri nation if you dont get 6 atheltes to the game as this is minimum requirement to show a system works,

if you look at germany where they where 8 years ago and where they are now you can clearly see they are going up at the moment and with koch behrens henseleit etc their are people comming up that can become pretty good and can really run. and i guess its fair to say that tertch in 2 years will have won a world series race.
so i would not worry too much if germany only got a bronze medal and 2 top 6 from the games as overall the trajectory is on the right path and if you would take top 3 atheltes females and males and add them up iam 99 peercent sure germany would be clearly in 2nd nation overall , 3 females are top 11 and 3 males are top 19 while uks males are 50thand 53 rd or so those 2 guys have a way higher score than the whole german team.

so i think you can discuss this right now, if you focus more on the process and trajectory overall and not just on the results. Medals are obviously important for funding. at the same time not every system just works on medals but also on top 8 and top 8 is worldclass or being with a realistic chance to be top 8 which 5 of the 6 german atheltes have as they have shown it either at the test event or the grand final. the uk has 1 male and thats it,
2028 they are looking good as tertsch and hellwig are young enough and still improving.

the 2028 female oly champ likely will not come either from uk france germany or usa as there is a female alex yee comming up in scandinavia ,so again this is a bit less system but having an athlete with outstanding talent and of course you have to nurture that talent but yet nobody will be talking about the swedish method anytime soon as this is more an insulated case just as alex yee is a runner they dont often come along . and just to be clear i do not downplay the success of yee i am just trying to point out that this is not toalay system relveant but of course you still have to do a good job .
would you then say sweden if the best nation if they only get 2 atheltes to the games of which one might win gold ...