My comments were more like "if this is the pinnacle, and she gets it", well it kinda puts a black eye on ITU. This type of athlete shouldnt be allowed to start at this level of competition, period. I'm guessing it's one of those things where they want the race "full" and then of course USAT and the HP team can claim that they covered their quota of host athletes. In a way it just kinda feels cheap/dirty. It's in no way disrespectful to the athlete, I think my beef is clearly with the process that allows this type of athlete into an WTS level race. Of course, the thing is, this racer wont have any negativity on the race. Her race will be over 2.5 mins into the race as she'll be floored over the initial surge. She'll re-group, finish way down on the swim and alone in the back, and probaly get lapped on the 2nd or 3rd lap of the bike (without incident).

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@brooksdoughtie
USAT-L2,Y&J; USAC-L2
http://www.aomultisport.com

fine, i'll just say it: the world is full of forgotten people who go on and on about how they shoulda and coulda. 'all those pros' who 'should' be on the start list? tough crap. this girl got in. obviously it wasn't impossible - she just found the way to make it happen. i don't know how and don't much care, unless it was something horribly illegal or unethical. nobody owes those other triathletes anything, and this girl was the one who figured out how to punch her ticket instead of standing around and grousing. now she gets to race at the trials. if she never races another tri again and lives to 100, nobody will ever be able to take that away from her. will she finish DFL? maybe. but she'll honoring the race and her competitors by showing up and giving it her all. i'd kill to finish dead last in the olympic trials.

good on her.

-mike

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https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

I think you could argue she's not honoring the race or her competitors by showing up, seeing how she's never finished an ITU race EVER in her career. As noted above, she will get lapped out, she could potentially be a danger to her other competitors, and there's no conceivable reason she should be selected for that slot.

The US has 10 women on that start list and 9 of them are ranked in the Olympic points list (guess who isn't?). All 9 of them on the points list have multiple ITU finishes, with almost all of them having at least one podium finish at an ITU event. There are 12 other US women on the Olympic points list who are not on the start line.

To me, those stats indicate that however she got on the start line is unethical.

She found a way? or her coach did. I was under the idea that someone from from usat called her coach and asked if they had anyone who wanted to race.

That is the way his blog reads, yes.

America, the land of oppurtunity...

after having read through all of this AGAIN as carefully as i can, i've pulled a lot of posts, and the fruit of those posts, that are straddling the line.

i think it's well established that this is one of those discretionary starts that invite a lot of criticism and/or speculation. this would not be the first time, by a long shot, that someone not typically considered competitive is in a race of this stature, and that includes the olympics. the ITU has often placed athletes from "developing" countries on the start line, and whether that's because the NF has always been looking for fairness, equity and the olympic spirit, or whether it might have something to do with votes at congress, i don't know.

let's not have a THIRD set of posts that go down this same road. we know enough about everybody's relative strengths and race results and whatnot. let's leave it there, please.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Well I'm sure someone did. But how do you get from someone got hurt to jumping over 12 people on the olympics points list, to jumping over people not on the list who have raced ITU, to jumping over the list with pros who haven't raced ITU but have won multiple races, to this selection. I understand Dan's point that the ITU lets developing nations and other get into the race that probably shouldn't be. but weren't a developing nation, we may not have the best group of pro triathletes in the world but the ones we do have that got skipped over seems absolutely absurd.


Edit to add: And if its for development purposes why not ask someone like Marissa Ferrante who won Collegiate Nationals with a 2:06.xx to race it, she even goes to school in California. It's a nice thought that there wasn't something more to it than just calling them, but it doesn't make any logical sense.

Ferrente was on the list but must have dropped out.

too bad cuz i bet she would have been competitive.

rumor is that she was the one that got injured last weekend.

i think your point is eminently valid. however, i may have missed it but in the several hundred posts on this topic (most of which are not available for view), i did not find what i most thought i've eventually find: a post from a very qualified gal - or a post referencing a complaint somewhere else on the web from a gal - who wants to be in this race, and who can't be, because the spot has been given away to a lesser qualified athlete.

had this been the men's race, we know who those men are who'd be screaming from high heaven. and, yes, we can name selected women who might be more qualified selections. but, have we heard those women complaining that they were not given a chance to race? i haven't heard that. again, maybe i am just woefully misinformed, and it wouldn't be the first time.

and i don't think this qualifies as a safety issue, because, again, athletes of very questionable talent have been let into these races because they're from countries that do not have a strong culture of multisport. sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. if you can't let this gal in because of safety concerns, you can't let the guys and gals from malawi and brunei in either.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

If that is in fact true, let's then discuss the woeful job USAT has done in developing the sport and recruiting racers. It's been established that there are easily a couple hundred U.S. women faster than Ms. Johnson. I bet a dozen of them will even be doing the age group race on Saturday.

So why can't USAT get a full slate of competitive athletes to the start line of a U.S. race?

+1

Go Kristi Johnson! Hope you do well.

keep a couple of things in mind. first, there might be a lot of really good age group racers who are, by definition, not pros and don't carry a pro card. what usat has available to it, in filling these slots in the pro field, are athletes who can, under the itu's rules, toe the start line.

second, it's just a historic truism that women's fields, tho extremely competitive at the top, often lack depth, and it's hard to fill pro fields.

it would seem to me, not as a close follower of all of this, that alicia kaye, margaret shapiro, kaitlin shiver, amanda felder, lindsey jerdonek, jennifer spieldenner, jenna parker, lauren goss, the wassners, all have a righteous beef. even the swimmers, like piersol and mclarty, even as domestiques if not as outright individual racers. but i haven't seen anything from any of these gals. i would think that if there was a spot open that any of these gals would certainly covet, that they'd say something. write it on their facebook pages. post on this forum. tweet about it. has any of that happened?

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Dan, women tend to be more PC. They tend to want to get along. Even if they felt that way, I would be surprised to ever see them post.

I know when I just try to ask a question, especially to guys, who mainly run this sport, one is attacked, black balled, made out to be the bad person. Women are smart, they try to avoid getting us guys upset.

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

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Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

The only thing that I have seen posted anywhere from a Female was Lauren Goss on Twitter. Looks like she is ranked 170th on the ITU points list, but hasn't raced any ITU races this season by the look. I am sure there are some other females out there that are pretty heated about it but have not been vocal about it, yet. I wouldn't be surprised if after this weekend we start to see some post and comments about what happened through out the internet.

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-Brad Williams
Website | Twitter: @BW_Tri |Instagram: @BW_Tri | Strava | Co-Founder & Coach at: KIS Coaching
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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?

 

Kinda reminds me of Rocky.....

"A small time boxer (insert triathlete) gets a once in a lifetime chance to fight the heavyweight champ in a bout in which he strives to go the distance for his self-respect."

I wouldn't, I would pass the spot on to someone qualified.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

Haha, yeah except I think we both know were the odds are on this one tomorrow.

I understand the removal of our posts.

I'm honestly curious is the women's field depth in the USA so small that a woman with a 2:27 olympic is our 9th fastest racing ITU?

I bet if this opportunity had been on the men's side we would've found a bunch of up and comers and a list about 100 people long.

"I'd honestly be concerned to say anything at this point if I was one of the females."

there's a process for this as well. the usoc is pretty strict about athlete representation on its board. you've got victor plata, steve sexton and dave kuendig, watching out for the athletes. you've an ex-officio member, melissa merson, who is no wallflower and who would scream bloody murder, very publicly, if a deserving athlete got overlooked.

however, if emails were sent out, one after the other, to each of these ladies, and they went unanswered, or each successive athlete turned down the opportunity, and there's this one saying, "pick me! pick me!" at some point i'm going to say, fudge it, i've got the six gals who have a realistic chance of making an olympic team on the starting line, i'm not bringing a domestique, so what the heck?

but, i'm obviously purely speculating, and just giving you one alternative rather than just assuming usat fudged up. when i look at the half-dozen women who really ought to be on that starting line, they're all there, and when i look at last year's ITU rankings, and i see where our top-4 women are in the world, it seems to me we've got some ladies in the hunt.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I'm with you, this isn't a matter of finishing dead last its a matter of even finishing. You can't just keep going like you can in the marathon trials if you get too far behind they'll pull you.

"I bet if this opportunity had been on the men's side we would've found a bunch of up and comers and a list about 100 people long."

yes, and this is the historic norm. great women at the top, but not so deep. this is a cultural problem from a generation, or two, or three ago, and it has not yet been sussed out. i'm 55 years old, and when i was in high school there was no women's track team. at all. not just at my school. all schools.

so, we've still got some catching up to do. we've already seem the mean scream about not getting on this weekend's start line. but not the women. (that i've seen.)

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Dan,

By virtue of this being a qualifying race for the Olympics and most of you being Americans and USAT members, doesn't that really give you the "right" to question publicly, not only the process of who gets to race but also the racers themselves? If you put yourself out there as a pro racer you have to expect a certain amount of criticism. Especially if you want to be supported by tax payers (which I assume she would be if she ever made the team).
I didn't see anything of a personal attack against her in this thread aside from just posting her numbers, which we do here every day to pretty much everyone we can find. She knows her numbers, we know the numbers, I think it is fair game to talk about them and how they pertain to the race and the process. Think of how many times we have talked about things here and the folks involved have come on to clarify their stance. Countless. That is why we are here.
Your ball, your game, but I think you are off the mark on this one.
Respectfully,
Mark