Two months on!
monty wrote:
I would think he would be doing Taupo too? He is one guy at the top perhaps of getting that big year end bonus, would think his 2nd half would be the bigger point one. What am I missing here?
Diabolo wrote:
Lagoon wrote:
I imagine heāll be right near the top of the year end rankings so probably a very good bet that heāll line up in Taupo. I also think heāll be paid a pretty decent fee to line up at Roth.
Frankfurt AND Roth seems unlikely.
https://triathlon.de/...terfeld-profi-manner https://www.tri247.com/...mens-field-announced The other bit you may be missing is that Lange needs to earn a slot to race Taupo, and he won't be able to finish high enough in any of the May/June IM Pro Series 70.3s to do so. So he can just truck with Oceanside plus one (Les Sables neatly fits in between Roth and Hamburg). Or plan to race Busselton in December when all the good boys are drawing breath after the GF and/or before Taupo.
devashish_paul wrote:
monty wrote:
My big question now is does Sam start thinking about the Ironman series?? . . . I mean he probably cannot win the thing, but with one, maybe two fulls, well it could be possible to podium?? He could still get some good $$ for doing 5 half's at this level too, especially with a great worlds performance at the end. Has to be entering his mind I bet, so perhaps a full will suddenly appear on the horizon after a little break now for a good training bloc...
I chatted with Sam at Eric Wynn's ST get together BBQ in St. George. It "sounds" like Sam may be contemplating a full IM this summer some time. He mentioned Penticton being an option
Penticton isn't an IM Pro Series race.
I'd be surprised if he chose to race an IM just 'for fun': to be meaningful surely he would want to race a stacked field? And racing anywhere except an IM Pro Series race will be a 'B' field (racing one would take prize money from the the neo-pros who need it).
Long's two top 70.3s plus 2700+ points at Taupo means he could rack up 12000 points with two more 70.3s.
With his contracted T100 events, whilst he needs to race 3 more times, plus GF, he only needs one more podium in the regular season races. That determines when he might slot in an IM (or heaven help us two IMs) or two more 70.3s, or one of each.
So which T100 offers his best chance of good points? Probably not SF with its swim and climbing, and van Riel there btw.
London looks good with Ibiza a possible, but with an enhanced level of post Olympic competition. Las Vegas will lose all the Kona bound athletes but that'll mean a wedge of wildcard weapons to beat. So let's target London (end July) with Las Vegas as the standby, and Dubai as the kick return.
He has multiple North American 70.3s to choose from in the next 7 weeks so that's not a determining factor. But IMs?
If only one then IMLP is the obvious choice (21 July) but that would mean shelving London as a T100 'top finish' counter.
Frankfurt on 18 August is another, but likely the winner there will be further ahead, and 'every second counts'. And he doesn't travel well. Doesn't clash with anything, though.
The numbers (tl;dr probably not worth it):
A set of five scores, including one good (for him) IM raises the IM Pro Series potential score to 14,500 which will be top 10 (my estimate) and remember #8 only pays $20k.
But an athlete (already KQ) who places average #20 when completing two IMs plus Kona (30 minutes down in all three) plus a couple of 70.3s (15 minutes down x 2), scores 13,800.
The max possible score (Ryf 2018 dominance) is 21,500. We might expect Lange to score about 19,000 points (now on 6519, +4800 (Frankfurt), +1900 (10 mins down in a second 70.3), +5800 (Kona)) and not go to Taupo (he has no slot nor likely to get). Who else, as a benchmark for whether it's worth Long trying to score 5 times?
We might expect Mignon to score over 18,000 points (now on 4641, +4400 (Frankfurt), +4000 (two 70.3s), +5400 (Kona)) and not go to Taupo (I note Mlle PierrƩ also hasn't a Taupo start and has all the T100 races to attend).
I assume Blummenfelt is going to validate his AQ for Taupo after Cagliari (guess a gentle training day @ Les Sables) so he with only four races could score 15,300 (2000+4700(Frankfurt)+5800(Kona)+2800(Taupo))
Of course the current IM Pro Series standings include only NA races (x 3) and the European contenders have IM Vitoria and IM Frankfurt to show their cards before Kona. So we have a skewed insight to the likely players.