Opt outs are:

Women: Holly Lawrence, Paula Findlay, Daniela Ryf, Skye Moench, Tamara Jewett, Emma Pallant Browne, Kat Matthews, Anne Haug, Laura Phillip, Taylor Knibb, Flora Duffy and Taylor Spivey.

Men: Mathis Margirier, Marten Van Riel and Rico Bogen.

Thanks for posting. So far it looks like the men have suscribed to the "season long narrative" idea, unlike the women.

Unless I'm reading it wrong and it has to do with Kona being "more of a world champs" than Nice and the guys wanting to accumulate T100 races earlier in the season to be able to alter their prep with their minds set on 140.6 Hawaii later on.


According to Pat Lemieux, if you are a contracted athlete who regularly opts out of races after DNFing, you're reducing your chances to get another contract next year. May not apply to people who genuinely got injured or ambulanced out of the venue like Matthews and Pallant.

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

Thanks for posting and well... Men list looks super exciting, but women list looks still exciting (Sodaro vs Gentle vs Charles-Barkley, plus others).

Singapore got bad reputation from the last year's sickness (whether it was covid in hotel, food or water, it doesn't matter that much now). It's also pretty far away for everybody, with the most convenient being for Gentle, Watkinson, Sodaro (quite established in Oceania) and Simmonds (she used to race in SE Asia quite a lot).

Great to see Max Neumann back, also happy to see Mika Nootd with the wild card.

What's wrong with the girls? More opt-outs than starters. Field gets weaker and weaker... If they already start missing races when the calendar is not super busy and they're not injured, it will be difficult to meet the 6 races. There will be many who don't fulfill the contract for sure.

yeah, it's strange - you're really putting yourself in a difficult position for later in the year.

on the other hand, singapore is a LOOONG travel for european and north american athletes, and - like florida - it will be really hot and humid for early season.

i think this is one of the big limits on the 'season long narrative' that they want to build. F1 drivers and ATP tennis players travel the world, but they fly first class with a team of physios, and sleep in 5-start hotels and so on. triathletes are grinding it out in economy and building their own bikes in their hotel rooms, putting a huge pounding on their bodies and then doing it again a few weeks later.

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https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

PTO gives you the option to skip races to focus on others. Playing the long game to better prepare and bet that LCB and Indie Lee will be burned out and injured by the end is a reasonable bet.

At a minimum, simply taking the time to build into fitness for the season is reasonable.

LCB gambles on peak fitness season longevity. Anne Haug gambles her last races will be strong when the early season racers are weak.

Which is a better bet?

but don't you HAVE to do 6 races unless you're at the olympics? with 2 races down already, anyone who skips the first 2 is cutting off their other options.

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____________________________________
https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

Anne Haug and Laura Philips will have to do Ibiza after Nice. Very doable but none of them will have the legs do excel. Does indicate how much importance both place on the series overall

The PTO sorta hedged their play very well. They didn't make it "exclusivity" (so they can get credit for caring about all of pro triathlon) but for all intent purposes they have made it very hard to race a full T100 schedule + other A events. If this series can somehow stay long term (very much in question) you are certainly going to see an specificity of athletes racing this specific distance (again it still has to stick long term, and that obviously is very much in question). There was obviously going to be races skipped due to racing all over the world, and you have athletes primarily either Euro or US based. But the worst thing you can do is go to an T100 race and get injured/crashed out/DNF because you then have to go to another race to get a score on the ledger.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

The season will be incredibly long from T100 Miami to the final in Oman.
The 70.3 Worlds won't see lot of the "stars" this year, I believe.

It's only natural that athletes focus on a solid build-up in the early months of the season an traveling to Asia (+racing) costs at least 2 weeks of good training during an important period.
Miami is/was a terribly boring course and Singapore has a strong reputation dept from last year.

The females leaning more towards long distance like Haug and Philipp will have a clear focus on Nice. London, Ibiza are relatively easy to reach from Europe.

Wait what? Oman for the grand Final? - when did that get announced

Last few women's races are going to have to be loaded by default. Just happy to see these lists being published well ahead of time. Now they can do their best to promote the race

Epb and matthews are out for good reasons.

But field still super stacked!
Lcb
Sodaro
India lee

Mathews had no plans to race Singapore anyway just like ryf so they can get their nice slots. Will be interesting to see if mathews can bounce back fast enough to race a stacked field in Texas.

Epb may have re think hot races the rest of her career. The more you get a heat related injury the quicker it can happen again.

Hope Matthews can clinched her Nice spot in Texas otherwise she has to do another IM which will make it even tougher for her to complete 6 T10 races although I believe she has another one planned for the summer as she is also “all in” for the Ironman series I believe

Off topic for Singapore (this thread), but she shared her programme (in late Feb) as T100 Miami and then Texas (as the first of the IM Series) and to IMWCQ (6xWPRO slots). That gave/gives her a full 7 weeks between: entirely doable, tho' injury means (assumes successful rehab) far less quality training in that 'block'.
A finish at IM Texas will surely be top 6 - am crossing fingers for her to treat/rehab her calf tear effectively. Then is San Francisco; six weeks after Texas. Not clear which summer IM she will do (it was 'tbc' on insta): options are Hamburg (but miss SF T100), Vitoria-Gastiez or IMLP (can't see her going to Cairns).
Or maybe can that full and do a half instead (eg Les Sables) and accept a 2500 point handicap (which is 'only' 41 minutes worth) but a 70.3 will be a darn sight easier on body and to recover from, in good time for T100 London and then an 8 weeks run in to Nice (with Tallinn as a sharpener).

Matthews doesn’t need to complete six races as only four races count for scoring… I’m sure that Miami counts as one of the required six races/appearances… likewise for EPB…

I would assume anyone who starts the race but doesn’t finish still gets credit for the race, paid for the appearance but no points for the dnf in the series.

Yes: for the contracted athletes they are required to 'race' 5 regulars (3 for Olympians) plus the GF (and yes, starting meets their contractual obligation). As you say only 3 regular scores will count towards the T100 ranking, which will, with a GF score, determine series prize winnings.
But also keep in mind that an athlete's 3 best T100 scores will likely determine their end 2024 PTO ranking (some might count IMWC (Diamond tier) if they're top 5 but the SOF there will be lower than any T100 race).
PTO Ranking will thus be important for the athletes outside the T100 top 10 and it will AQ them for a contract in 2025.

I think the 1 obstacle that is added. If you say Singapore is a bad travel location. What alternative do you have? You’re forced to travel to US 1-2 times if you skipped Miami + Singapore and just wait til later in the year.

And then the final 2 months is 4 races (3 which will require 1 full day of travel requirements for most athletes) in a 60 day period, in a time of year when you are priming for A performances.

So if you have skipped early season races because you aren’t ready or your DNF/ DNS last min you pretty much are going to suddenly get caught up in a very complicated very busy last few months to gain scores to do this again in ‘25.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

The fact that they didn't pony up the money for Knibb to fly first class last minute to Miami and used an excuse that they didn't want to set a precedent (of supporting their number 1 ranked athlete who has Olympic commitments that got canceled? -- how often does that happen?) suggests to me a serious tightening of the purse strings. So I hope there is even a PTO worth considering next year. -- source for this the triathlon hour podcast.

So either someone dropped the ball there, or they were already overbudget and someone calling the financial shots isn't happy with them. If that's not the case, it seems like a big missed opportunity over small concerns about "who pays" when there's a huge breaking story you can suddenly factor into the race.

Point being, I wonder how much these athletes are really factoring in "next year" or just getting the money that's promised to them this year because they see the writing on the wall.

Knibb was on the record as saying she wanted to go to Miami after AD got cancelled or are you talking conjecture? PTO knew it was going to basically get no Paris bound athletes early season. Knibb likely has zero thought about T100 and she certainly isn't going to travel completely around the world in 1 week just to race an event (that she's not trained for). Knibb is far too smart of an athlete to just throw in a half assed attempt. She's an quiet assassin with everything she does in her life. See how they were adding longer TT bike rides in the early season of her training (on the down low) before even the idea was avaliable after AQ'ing the test event. So to think she was going to want to do that, that was not going to happen; even with a private jet travel.

1/2 the women are only taking the money this year because of IMWC being in Nice.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Apparently Knibb called Pat L as soon as Abu Dhabi was cancelled to inquire about getting back to Miami to race. Pat went through the proper channels to request a lay flat seat to fly Knibb to Miami and eventually heard back that it was a no go. I don't think this suggests a tightening of the purse strings. I can totally understand them not wanting to have to deal with LCB or Magnus or Kristian or Hayden/Alex or any other athlete requesting business class tickets once they heard Knibb was given one. Seems rather sensible to me.

Interesting, fair point Lurker (although I don't think that is necessarily a sign of tightening wallet or not, I think at some point you either are in or out for a race, and you can't get too many last second advantages; as Lagoon said, I don't think this was a big deal against PTO that they said no). I had only heard on the socials that a few of the boys wanted to "let's go race Miami" after AD cancelled. The timeline for the event still left seemingly things to be moved around especially for a location that is screwed if it rains; but that's an whole other point.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II