High performance coaching in Tri these days is a bit strange. From the successes of some of the big international training groups, there's some good evidence for some athletes thriving in an environment surrounded by the best athletes from around the world, and as long as the coaches are aligned with the national programs needs, things work out. Conversely, national team coaches are paid for their support of national athletes. While in many of these cases, the best support for these athletes might be surrounding them with other strong athletes from around the world, there will always be naysayers from the national team for whom they coach about the level of attention given to their athletes, vs. the others. For developing programs trying to make a breakthrough in the sport, having strong national coaching is really key to help bring people onto the world stage, but for many other countries, they might be better served with a different model...
At the junior/U23 level, having national coaches to help athletes break into the senior ranks is huge, and a great investment for federations to develop their olympic pathway. At the elite level, rather than having national team coaches, they might be better in converting those funds as subsidies to their elite athletes to go pursue coaching in one of the many elite squads around the world that might be better to bring the performance out of them. The federations might be better place with high performance coordinators who rather than dictating the training of the athletes, work with the coaches of their athletes to coordinate race planning and scheduling. Obviously this is easy to say from the outside looking in, but given the tension between the high performance squad model and the national team model, this type of approach might be better for the athletes. That might also help with some of the challenges seen in certain federations, where there are some politics that come into play between athletes training on national squads vs international squads that sometimes show up as suspicious selections for events (and non-selections).
At the junior/U23 level, having national coaches to help athletes break into the senior ranks is huge, and a great investment for federations to develop their olympic pathway. At the elite level, rather than having national team coaches, they might be better in converting those funds as subsidies to their elite athletes to go pursue coaching in one of the many elite squads around the world that might be better to bring the performance out of them. The federations might be better place with high performance coordinators who rather than dictating the training of the athletes, work with the coaches of their athletes to coordinate race planning and scheduling. Obviously this is easy to say from the outside looking in, but given the tension between the high performance squad model and the national team model, this type of approach might be better for the athletes. That might also help with some of the challenges seen in certain federations, where there are some politics that come into play between athletes training on national squads vs international squads that sometimes show up as suspicious selections for events (and non-selections).