bluefever wrote:
I agree, Monty, and in addition the swim in the Olympics is a lot more spread out due to the bigger spread of ability.
Tokyo will suit a small breakaway just fine. It's more technical than London.
It's likely KB, Mola etc don't see the front all day.
I still remember AB going off the front of the bike on his own at London, what seemed like just for the hell of it. That was ludicrous. And was before walking the end of a 29:07 run.
I'm not sure I'll ever see something like that again.
I'm a bit worried about Luis. By his own admission he messed up his prep for Rio by trying new things, I hope that's not the case here.
Rio was hyped as too hot for AB and JB, there were doubts about their form, and look what happened.
On the women's side, Spirig seems to be criminally underrated. She wins almost anything she races in. If you follow her IG, she seems to do almost any Tri or running distance and almost always smashes it. Plus she has gold and silver already. Yet hardly gets a mention. She'll be there in Tokyo.
The field of 55, with arguably 5-10 athletes that wouldn't normally make a WTCS, will string things out so that bike break could stick. I just think there is enough firepower to bring a larger group of 25-30 together, somewhat like the Lausanne grand final. The key to getting away if getting that group down to 4 or 5 for the more technical sections. The normal 10-12 won't cut it. So AB would be advantageous in that scenario.
2012 AB is something I dunno if we will see for a long, long time. Literally ridiculous. In some ways he wasn't the same athlete (runner) in Rio but that was an equally impressive performance over all 3 disciplines. Just check Ben Kanute's lead pack power numbers for the bike leg!
The heat in Rio was actually fairly tame with an air temp of 26â°C and water of 21â°C. Tokyo is gonna be over 30â°C air and 29â°C water. That's gonna be a massive variable in this race. Be interested to see how this gets handled, given many athlete's heat prep is gonna be hampered by Covid travel restrictions.
I have a cheeky tenner on Spirig. Absolutely worth a punt. I don't think anyone else is really standing out at the moment.
I'm not to worried about Luis or Mola as Joel Filliol tends to get his athletes in top shape for the big races. Luis certainly won't make the same mistakes again as he had a different coaching set up prior to Rio. Basically smashed his running, got injured and was not in the required shape come Rio.