bob tobin wrote:
ianmo80 wrote:
Interesting comment from Mark Matthews there that Olav and his team would have to accept that a fit Ali / Jan would have beaten Blu with the tactics he employed. Interesting comment and seems to be a common opinion.
The obvious factor here is that Blu can get there and perform whereas the other two either didn't want to or couldn't.
Because with a completely different opponent with very different strengths and weaknesses obviously we would have executed the race in exactly the same way right?! Not sure what Jan's weakness is to be honest.
I think Jan would have been harder to beat than Ali. When was the last time Ali was fully fit for a long distance race? 2019?
You're putting words in my mouth there with quite a defensive comment. I never made any speculation on strategy etc. I made the only reasonable conclusion in my final sentence, that Blu was healthy enough to get there and win.
For what it is worth I think Ali, if he'd raced, would have been 8mins up from the bike (3 on the swim and 5 from the bike) and Blu would have run him down. I don't think you as a team would have been able to do anything extra in terms of swim/bike and it would have come down to the run. You went far inside your original target on the bike, and I think that was the limit on that day. I also believe the Ali/Joe change happened late enough in the process that your tactics were more or less the same for both athletes. Having Joe join so late probably changed the mental pressure Kristian quite a lot, I would think with Ali he expected to be chasing and he is obviously comfortable doing that, with Joe he was expected to win, and that brings a whole new aspect to things. These are my opinions on circumstance and it is all reasonable speculation based on the limited knowledge I have.
It's healthy to speculate. Macca has mentioned on many podcasts his love for this concept, and he's even specifically said "imagine how good this would be with 10 teams". I think we see this race again, next year or the year after with more teams. So speculation on who would or would not race/perform is a good way to develop this Sub 7 / Sub 8 chat.
I'm not a hater or doubter of Kristian, I had a lot of conversations with him during a training camp in 2020, everything he told me he'd do during that he's done, and I think he is an outstanding athlete who will be a multiple olympic champion and world champion across all distances. I think his style of training and racing is something I would aspire to too, if I had the physiology, talent and time on my side.
I'm also an adopted Norwegian, originally from the UK, so I couldn't lose either way during Sub 7 Sub 8 :D