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Sad to See Jonny Brownlee out with Stress Fracture
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While having this stress fracture 12 months from now would have been much more problematic, I am sure that Olympic bronze medalist Jonny Brownlee will be bummed to be back home having been identified with a femoral stress fracture (of his thigh bone). Jonny had to return from high altitude training in St Moritz where he and brother Alistair were in their mid-summer big block of hard work. Jonny has been the more duarable of the two brothers over their caeers and has not seen much down-time due to injuries or sickness. The timing is not optimal as the RIO TEST event in August had the ability to help Jonny be pre-selected for the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. He will now likely have to show fitness in 2016 and not have the luxury of being pre-selected in 2015.

Slowtwich readers may not really know Jonny that well, but he is an incredible athlete, competitor and real gentleman. I have interviewed him 20 or 30 times and he is always on time, always answers the question and is a true pro when it comes to doing media and meeting sponsorship, event commitments. While the Javi-Alistair duo have gotten a bit more visiblity and press over the years, Jonny was never far from the action and due to his durability has been in some of the biggest head to heads with Javi Gomez over the years.

If your going to train hard, really hard, like the Brownlee brothers do, its impossible to 100% prevent these kinds of injuries. You can't run 14 min flat off the bike and sub 30min for 10k off the bike, by not really "reaching" in training sessions. Both the brothers are surrounded with great coaches, training partners and medical support, so I highly doubt that there was much that could have been done to prevent this problem from occuring. As I said, if you want to run 32min off the bike, you can likely do that without over-stressing yourself. But if your trying to do the kind of training it takes to win on the ITU Circuit of sub 30min 10k runs off the bike, then the high quality training required is going to put on you the THIN LINE for injuries.

This next 11 months until June 2016, is going to be very high quality racing as athletes from all over the world, pull out their A+ game to just try to make their country's Olympic Teams. Every four years we see a handful of athletes (big names) have some injury set-backs as they are trying to do the highest quality speed work required to be a threat on the circuit. If you really watch any sport at the highest levels (regardless of the sport) you do see injuries playing a big role. Some athletes are just a little bit more durable then others.

Having watched his own brother have to make a remarkable comeback for the 2012 Olympic team (while out with achilles tendon), I know that Jonny has the best medical minds around him to help steer him back to the sport at the soonest (but most reasonable) time possible. RIght now its sounds like his team is looking at Chicago in Sept as the earliest date, as the British Triathlon Association had 2 key races for their athletes in 2015 (RIO TEST EVENT in AUGUST and Chicago WTS Grand Final in Sept). WIth Rio too early, its clear that Jonny is going to have to try to pick up a top 3 podium in Chicago to get himself highly considered for the 2016 Rio Olympic Games). To get 100% pre-selected, I believe they had to have a podium in Rio Test Race and a poium in Chicago WTS (something that Jonny now cannot do and will have to wait till 2016 to officially be named to the RIO OLYMPIC TEAM). The sport needs warriors like Jonny Brownlee, so I hope he has a fast and full recovery by Chicago.
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Re: Sad to See Jonny Brownlee out with Stress Fracture [coachbarrie] [ In reply to ]
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Alistair had the same thing back in 2010. He seemed to come back pretty well! Truly disappointing to hear, I certainly hope he doesn't miss out on Rio.

--------------------------
The secret of a long life is you try not to shorten it.
-Nobody
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Re: Sad to See Jonny Brownlee out with Stress Fracture [mck414] [ In reply to ]
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really enjoyed your post. except for your improper usage of the word your.

the reality is that he COULD have prevented these injuries. unfortunately, sometimes it takes an injury for an athlete/coach/team to realize how to avoid them. it's very unlikely that he'll have another femoral stress fracture and the reason is that they WILL make changes and approaches to his routine.

john
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Re: Sad to See Jonny Brownlee out with Stress Fracture [ahhchon] [ In reply to ]
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One of the things that makes Gomez so impressive is his durability, especially compared to the Brownlee's who invariably miss multiple events a year with injuries. It's a bummer we don't get to see all three on the start line and fully healthy more often.
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Re: Sad to See Jonny Brownlee out with Stress Fracture [USCoregonian] [ In reply to ]
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USCoregonian wrote:
One of the things that makes Gomez so impressive is his durability, especially compared to the Brownlee's who invariably miss multiple events a year with injuries. It's a bummer we don't get to see all three on the start line and fully healthy more often.

x2 about Gomez....the guy is in the mix every race and totally bomb proof. I bet you he could jump into IM Frankfurt on Sunday and mix it up with Frodo and Kienle and take the podium/be on it off his ITU fitness.
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Re: Sad to See Jonny Brownlee out with Stress Fracture [USCoregonian] [ In reply to ]
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USCoregonian, Jonathan has only missed one event in his professional career due to injury, San Diego 2013. He was back for Yokohama. He missed Kitzbuhel 2013 due to food poisoning. Actually he has a better record than Gomez in this respect.
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Re: Sad to See Jonny Brownlee out with Stress Fracture [coachbarrie] [ In reply to ]
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thanks for the post. couple questions:

- assuming he does podium in Chicago, what more would he have to do to get selected for the Olympic team? Or is it just discretionarily up to the selectors after that? If the latter, surely he would be selected based on Chicago and past performance?

- If he fails to podium in Chicago, what must he then do to get selected?
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Re: Sad to See Jonny Brownlee out with Stress Fracture [Kay Serrar] [ In reply to ]
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@Kay Serrar, he would need to get a podium on an ITU world series race. If he does not get one at Chicago, I think he would need two.

Having said that, there is zero chance he wouldn't be a discretionary pick whatever he did, so long as he is fit.

The advantage for Alistair, assuming he does earn selection this year, is that he won't need to travel early in the season and might only make his debut in Leeds in early June.

The reason for this ridiculously tough qualification rules is that it is hoped that the two Brownlees will qualify, that no one can, meaning they can then cheerfully pick someone like Philip Graves as a domestique without offending anyone!
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Re: Sad to See Jonny Brownlee out with Stress Fracture [FeketeBlob] [ In reply to ]
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This entire idea of a single domestique protecting 2 elite athletes never works. Just look at the Olympics road cycling race....the teams are too small to control the peloton. You need to only look as far at Vino's win on the Mall that ideally Cavendish should have taken to know how this works. Liz Blanchford should have gone to London 2012 for the women, but was screwed by this strategy and someone will be screwed again. The so called domestiques have zero impact on the actual outcome. The reality is that the elite group will organically do what it does and unlikely that a single domestique can do anything useful to change the dynamics. I think the domestique selection in ITU olympic tri racing is a wasted slot that should go to a more deserving racers with Olympic dreams who might come 15th, 25th 30th....does not really matter...give it to the next best racer that meets the criteria, not the so called domestique. This strategy did not work for Jenkins as Spirig and Norden were the ones in the sprint finish anyway, so someone else's olympic dreams were shot down to give a useless domestique a free pass to becoming an Olympian. Vicky Holland was 26th, and Lucy Hall was 33rd.

Just let the athletes decide who goes to the Olympics with performance....coaches and politicians getting in the way is BS....always was, always is, in a timed/measured non team sport. As a fan, I don't see why Phil Graves should get an invite to race in Rio...I know I am not a Brit, so I guess it does not matter what I say :-)
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Re: Sad to See Jonny Brownlee out with Stress Fracture [devashish_paul] [ In reply to ]
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devashish_paul wrote:
USCoregonian wrote:
One of the things that makes Gomez so impressive is his durability, especially compared to the Brownlee's who invariably miss multiple events a year with injuries. It's a bummer we don't get to see all three on the start line and fully healthy more often.


x2 about Gomez....the guy is in the mix every race and totally bomb proof. I bet you he could jump into IM Frankfurt on Sunday and mix it up with Frodo and Kienle and take the podium/be on it off his ITU fitness.

One thing that always stuck in my head came from Frodo's "training day" video when he made the switch to long distance racing. He casually mentions that he is now running less then when he was doing ITU, down to around 100km a week from 110km a week. Those guys are training monsters.

Long Chile was a silly place.
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Re: Sad to See Jonny Brownlee out with Stress Fracture [devashish_paul] [ In reply to ]
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If you had seen the recent race in Baku, you would see that domestiques can indeed produce winning results. And Stewart Hayes did an exemplary job in London 2012 (watch the bike leg from start to finish, the whole race is on YouTube, if you need convincing.)

Of course, if someone with podium potential was being denied a place, then that would indeed be unjust. But among the British men, there are the two Brownlees and no one else. For the women, the Helen Jenkins strategy misfired but only because Helen had one of the worst swims of her career (which she admits.) Had she swum normally, she would have found herself in a front pack with Lucy Hall and would have saved a lot of energy for the run. Of course, she was also injured but I'm not sure someone who comes 5th in the Olympics can be THAT injured!

If one of the Brownlees was to have a puncture in Rio, Philip Graves (the most powerful cyclist in ITU racing now Tom Davidson has left) would be able to get them back to the front group giving them a good chance of a medal. It is an insurance policy strategy and I think makes sense. But there is no one else capable of a podium and UK triathlon funding is dependent on Olympic medals. So that has to be the priority (rightly or wrongly)
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Re: Sad to See Jonny Brownlee out with Stress Fracture [devashish_paul] [ In reply to ]
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I am in agreement that the next best athlete deserves the opportunity to be an Olympian. But disagree that the domestique scenario never works. In the Brownlee's book, of which the focus is pretty much the 2012 Olympics, they give a ton of credit to Stuart Hayes, who was pretty much picked just for the purpose of going out crushing it on the bike for them.
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Re: Sad to See Jonny Brownlee out with Stress Fracture [FeketeBlob] [ In reply to ]
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FeketeBlob wrote:
If you had seen the recent race in Baku, you would see that domestiques can indeed produce winning results. And Stewart Hayes did an exemplary job in London 2012 (watch the bike leg from start to finish, the whole race is on YouTube, if you need convincing.)

Of course, if someone with podium potential was being denied a place, then that would indeed be unjust. But among the British men, there are the two Brownlees and no one else. For the women, the Helen Jenkins strategy misfired but only because Helen had one of the worst swims of her career (which she admits.) Had she swum normally, she would have found herself in a front pack with Lucy Hall and would have saved a lot of energy for the run. Of course, she was also injured but I'm not sure someone who comes 5th in the Olympics can be THAT injured!

If one of the Brownlees was to have a puncture in Rio, Philip Graves (the most powerful cyclist in ITU racing now Tom Davidson has left) would be able to get them back to the front group giving them a good chance of a medal. It is an insurance policy strategy and I think makes sense. But there is no one else capable of a podium and UK triathlon funding is dependent on Olympic medals. So that has to be the priority (rightly or wrongly)

My beef with this "what if" domestique strategy, is that you sacrifice the life goals of a truly more deserving individual athlete as "insurance" for a medal. Jenkins screwed up her swim and the insurance policy was never activated and more deserving athletes did not have a shot at the games in the name of an insurance policy athlete who had zero impact. Again, this is all BS coaches and politicians playing with what if outcomes in the name of "more medal chances for our country". Just let the athletes decide with performance who are the top three in qual, and then let them just race at the games and the results fall where they fall....trying to engineer results a priori has no impact....whether Stuart Hayes was in London or NOT would have zero impact on the top 3 medals to Brownlee-Gomez-Brownlee. All that happens is more deserving athletes get the axe on their Olympic dreams because "the coaches know better"....which they usually don't. Their ability to predict "what if's" is pretty close to zero.
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Re: Sad to See Jonny Brownlee out with Stress Fracture [devashish_paul] [ In reply to ]
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Tough luck for JB but at least they already have a pool for training (AB set one up in the garden for 2012). JB will be going to the Olympics (it's hard to think of a scenario where he doesn't get selected) and his time out may actually help him. If he doesn't get too stressed about it. Even thinking of a scenario where he doesn't get run fit I'm sure that AB would asked for me to be his super domestique.
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Re: Sad to See Jonny Brownlee out with Stress Fracture [coachbarrie] [ In reply to ]
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Wow, this really is the pits for JB. But, with the Brownlees' tendency to get injured, you have to think it's better to have this now than later.

I do wonder - the femur is by far the most difficult bone in the body to get a stress fracture in. The tibia, tarsals, metatarsals, are fairly common. But the femur usually speaks to a nutritional deficit, in combination with a very high training load. We know the Brownlees train at the highest level possible, but maybe there is an underlying issue here.

I'm sure they're looking into all of this, but it really does suck for JB, and I hope he comes back strong.

"Don't you have to go be stupid somewhere else?"..."Not until 4!"
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Re: Sad to See Jonny Brownlee out with Stress Fracture [devashish_paul] [ In reply to ]
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devashish_paul wrote:
FeketeBlob wrote:
If you had seen the recent race in Baku, you would see that domestiques can indeed produce winning results. And Stewart Hayes did an exemplary job in London 2012 (watch the bike leg from start to finish, the whole race is on YouTube, if you need convincing.)

Of course, if someone with podium potential was being denied a place, then that would indeed be unjust. But among the British men, there are the two Brownlees and no one else. For the women, the Helen Jenkins strategy misfired but only because Helen had one of the worst swims of her career (which she admits.) Had she swum normally, she would have found herself in a front pack with Lucy Hall and would have saved a lot of energy for the run. Of course, she was also injured but I'm not sure someone who comes 5th in the Olympics can be THAT injured!

If one of the Brownlees was to have a puncture in Rio, Philip Graves (the most powerful cyclist in ITU racing now Tom Davidson has left) would be able to get them back to the front group giving them a good chance of a medal. It is an insurance policy strategy and I think makes sense. But there is no one else capable of a podium and UK triathlon funding is dependent on Olympic medals. So that has to be the priority (rightly or wrongly)

My beef with this "what if" domestique strategy, is that you sacrifice the life goals of a truly more deserving individual athlete as "insurance" for a medal. Jenkins screwed up her swim and the insurance policy was never activated and more deserving athletes did not have a shot at the games in the name of an insurance policy athlete who had zero impact. Again, this is all BS coaches and politicians playing with what if outcomes in the name of "more medal chances for our country". Just let the athletes decide with performance who are the top three in qual, and then let them just race at the games and the results fall where they fall....trying to engineer results a priori has no impact....whether Stuart Hayes was in London or NOT would have zero impact on the top 3 medals to Brownlee-Gomez-Brownlee. All that happens is more deserving athletes get the axe on their Olympic dreams because "the coaches know better"....which they usually don't. Their ability to predict "what if's" is pretty close to zero.

I agree, that domestique thing doesn't appear to make any difference and more deserving athletes should be included in the roster.
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Re: Sad to See Jonny Brownlee out with Stress Fracture [devashish_paul] [ In reply to ]
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I think we saw from the Baku games that the domestique strategy can work quite well for the Brits given the part that Phil Graves played in the Brits winning gold there

http://www.swimcyclerun.com
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Re: Sad to See Jonny Brownlee out with Stress Fracture [devashish_paul] [ In reply to ]
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devashish_paul wrote:
FeketeBlob wrote:
If you had seen the recent race in Baku, you would see that domestiques can indeed produce winning results. And Stewart Hayes did an exemplary job in London 2012 (watch the bike leg from start to finish, the whole race is on YouTube, if you need convincing.)

Of course, if someone with podium potential was being denied a place, then that would indeed be unjust. But among the British men, there are the two Brownlees and no one else. For the women, the Helen Jenkins strategy misfired but only because Helen had one of the worst swims of her career (which she admits.) Had she swum normally, she would have found herself in a front pack with Lucy Hall and would have saved a lot of energy for the run. Of course, she was also injured but I'm not sure someone who comes 5th in the Olympics can be THAT injured!

If one of the Brownlees was to have a puncture in Rio, Philip Graves (the most powerful cyclist in ITU racing now Tom Davidson has left) would be able to get them back to the front group giving them a good chance of a medal. It is an insurance policy strategy and I think makes sense. But there is no one else capable of a podium and UK triathlon funding is dependent on Olympic medals. So that has to be the priority (rightly or wrongly)


My beef with this "what if" domestique strategy, is that you sacrifice the life goals of a truly more deserving individual athlete as "insurance" for a medal. Jenkins screwed up her swim and the insurance policy was never activated and more deserving athletes did not have a shot at the games in the name of an insurance policy athlete who had zero impact. Again, this is all BS coaches and politicians playing with what if outcomes in the name of "more medal chances for our country". Just let the athletes decide with performance who are the top three in qual, and then let them just race at the games and the results fall where they fall....trying to engineer results a priori has no impact....whether Stuart Hayes was in London or NOT would have zero impact on the top 3 medals to Brownlee-Gomez-Brownlee. All that happens is more deserving athletes get the axe on their Olympic dreams because "the coaches know better"....which they usually don't. Their ability to predict "what if's" is pretty close to zero.

The problem is that the Olympics are many things to many people. For some, it is the pinnacle of the sport, it is ultimate competition to win, for others it's merely about participation, being able to say they were there - and for a few, such as the soccer & tennis players, it's an odd little tournament that kinda sorta means something if you win it, but which is forgotten about if you don't.

A lot of the European federations receive funding from "public" sources, either directly from government, or such as in the UK, indirectly via the National Lottery sport fund. Their actual funding levels are determined by performance at major events, such as the Olympics, so they HAVE to go with the best chance of medals. So whilst it would be personally nice for the technically 3rd best athlete to be selected, making a tactical selection is in the best interests of the federation.

There's no question (despite the gushing words from the Bs in their book) that Stu Hayes had zero impact on London 2012. But as has been noted by others, had things gone differently, he might have been needed. But had the UK selected the 3rd best male athlete, the result would have been the same, 2Bs and G on the podium and the third placed Brit nowhere important.

This debate comes up in a number of sports, in a number of countries, every 4 years. Personally, I think the IOC should set the qualification criteria for everyone, and take the discretion out of the hands of the federations. But until they do that, the Federations will make the decision which is best for the Federation and not the athletes.
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Re: Sad to See Jonny Brownlee out with Stress Fracture [devashish_paul] [ In reply to ]
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devashish_paul wrote:
This entire idea of a single domestique protecting 2 elite athletes never works. Just look at the Olympics road cycling race....the teams are too small to control the peloton. You need to only look as far at Vino's win on the Mall that ideally Cavendish should have taken to know how this works.

That was very different though.

Normally in single day racing, the only thing that counts is who is first across the line. But in the Olympics, it's the first three. The other country's riders forgot that, and were so concerned about not delivering Cav to an almost certain victory on the Mall that they forgot there were two other medals up for grabs.
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Re: Sad to See Jonny Brownlee out with Stress Fracture [alir] [ In reply to ]
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Alir, I agree with everything you wrote. With the exception that Hayes had zero impact.

It was his pace that ensured that Murray and Mola (and others) were never able to catch up and have a chance on the run (Murray had just won Hamburg beating Gomez, don't forget), and the Brownlees were spared the task of doing all that work themselves. And given that Gomez was only 11 second behind Alistair, I would submit that he ensured that AB and JB were a lot fresher on the run that might otherwise have been the case. Also, the pace that was set kept the front pack of 22 stretched and no one had to compete with any breakaways (other than Alistair who had a go once!)

I don't think we can put an exact figure on Hayes contribution. But whatever that figure was, it was most definitely not zero.
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Re: Sad to See Jonny Brownlee out with Stress Fracture [FeketeBlob] [ In reply to ]
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FeketeBlob wrote:
Alir, I agree with everything you wrote. With the exception that Hayes had zero impact.

It was his pace that ensured that Murray and Mola (and others) were never able to catch up and have a chance on the run (Murray had just won Hamburg beating Gomez, don't forget), and the Brownlees were spared the task of doing all that work themselves. And given that Gomez was only 11 second behind Alistair, I would submit that he ensured that AB and JB were a lot fresher on the run that might otherwise have been the case. Also, the pace that was set kept the front pack of 22 stretched and no one had to compete with any breakaways (other than Alistair who had a go once!)

I don't think we can put an exact figure on Hayes contribution. But whatever that figure was, it was most definitely not zero.

Fair enough,I meant zero impact on the result - his presence obviously had impact as he wasn't just sitting in - but I stand by what said in that if the UK had taken Clarke, or Don or someone else, the end result would have still been Bs & G 1-2-3 and the third Brit nowhere that matters - ie 4th or worse - probably top 15 at best.
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Re: Sad to See Jonny Brownlee out with Stress Fracture [alir] [ In reply to ]
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alir wrote:
FeketeBlob wrote:
Alir, I agree with everything you wrote. With the exception that Hayes had zero impact.

It was his pace that ensured that Murray and Mola (and others) were never able to catch up and have a chance on the run (Murray had just won Hamburg beating Gomez, don't forget), and the Brownlees were spared the task of doing all that work themselves. And given that Gomez was only 11 second behind Alistair, I would submit that he ensured that AB and JB were a lot fresher on the run that might otherwise have been the case. Also, the pace that was set kept the front pack of 22 stretched and no one had to compete with any breakaways (other than Alistair who had a go once!)

I don't think we can put an exact figure on Hayes contribution. But whatever that figure was, it was most definitely not zero.


Fair enough,I meant zero impact on the result - his presence obviously had impact as he wasn't just sitting in - but I stand by what said in that if the UK had taken Clarke, or Don or someone else, the end result would have still been Bs & G 1-2-3 and the third Brit nowhere that matters - ie 4th or worse - probably top 15 at best.

I think that Don had a good chance to be in the top 15. Certainly more deserving than Stuart Hayes for sure, as was the case on the women's side. Would Murray and Mola be in the mix without Hayes in the front? Who knows, but I seriously doubt that they would have bridged up without burning a lot of matches of their own....thus the final outcome would more than certainly be the same, Alistair would just run less seconds closer to his open 10K split.

Overall the selectors getting in the way of the "best athletes' under the pretense that they know what is best for country medals is a pile of BS (we see that in every country who does not have a cut and dry approach....I applauded USTFA back in the day when Carl Lewis failed at US Olympic trials and did not make the cut in one of his events (I can't remember which one, but I think it was for Barcelona), or the Decathlete Dan O'Brian for those that remember. It just takes BS from selectors out of the game....perform and you are in (ex Manny Huerta making the London US Tri team), don't perform and you are out (Matt Chrabot). Same deal in Australia if I recall. Atkinson and Kahelfeldt performed a notch about Macca in the qualification run and were in. Macca was out.
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Re: Sad to See Jonny Brownlee out with Stress Fracture [devashish_paul] [ In reply to ]
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Tim Don and Will Clarke had the opportunity to earn the third place. All they had to do was podium once in 2012. Despite very poor fields in Sydney and San Diego (and a better one in Madrid), they failed to do so. They did nothing to prove they deserved to go but they were given ample opportunity.
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Re: Sad to See Jonny Brownlee out with Stress Fracture [FeketeBlob] [ In reply to ]
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FeketeBlob wrote:
Tim Don and Will Clarke had the opportunity to earn the third place. All they had to do was podium once in 2012. Despite very poor fields in Sydney and San Diego (and a better one in Madrid), they failed to do so. They did nothing to prove they deserved to go but they were given ample opportunity.

I have to agree. Tim/Will both didn't match the selection criteria so they were automatically selected. Both are great athletes but they hadn't shown any form that worried AB/JB. Will was perhaps looking the strongest but Tim is a big race performer (well apart from Athens). Will also said that he was willing to go as a domestic.

I know very little about bones but was immediately surprised by a stress fracture in the femur. It's not one of the common places.
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