It should be noted within the US guys going for Paris West is likely 4th best runner amongst the contenders and if you want to take out McDowell due to MIA he’s 3rd best. But unfortunately you’re talking about an athlete who is at best a chase pack athlete *at best*. Meaning that’s a liability for the MTR in the same way McElroy is.

So if you’re saying let’s build his program to give him a shot at discretion pick in May….that would almost assuredly mean no pto from now until Aug due to his rather obvious weaknesses. He a lot like GJ, they aren’t 3 weeks of itu training and they are good like Knibb can do. They are 6 months in the pain cave specificity to even be somewhat close to then deciding whether they can make it or not.


So he’s looking at what fairly easily $200k + in winnings next year very likely w PTO tour. So he would not even be able to balance pto racing and itu training he’s sorta that far behind. And if he was actually picked he would sign a contract stating his training would be monitored and would have specific requirements to train up too.

So if he were on the same ability as McElroy that would be more spicy. But to West’s credit he was always the black sheep of the federation. Didn’t come up through juniors, didn’t get CRP support (I don’t think since he wasn’t D1 single sport athlete), he just went and grinded cus he truly liked the sport and was low key really good at it all things considering w his lack of tri background.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

But he didn't stay with the ppl he got out of the water with, they rode away from him, as did some others who were behind him. This makes him not equal to mcelroy at all. His cycling was his biggest weakness, mcelroy stays in the packs, and pulls out better than 22nd fastest run. 21 guys were faster than West here, there will be many more faster in a wrcs race. Can't see him being any faster over supersprint either. Maybe he also just had a bad day, was he 100% healthy? We don't know. When you look at quality of field in Brasil he would need to pretty much podium there to still be in the argument.

i don't understand why the usat would fund sending west plus one other male (and no women) all the way to rome. i assume a coach, a bike mechanic and a massage person also were flown out there. how is that a wise use of limited funding?

Yes which is why I mentioned if he could actually do what McElroy does, it would be a much more worthy conversation. But we are seeing even now McElroy is now struggling with how intense the bikes are, and even though it's not translating on TV, I think the efforts are zapping the energy. And when 50 guys in the sport can all run sub 15 at that level even 0.5% off means you lose spots. Which I think is why suddenly every race now McElroy has had "nutrition" issues on the run this year.

In regards to West, from all accounts he certainly seemed "fine" in the WT interview that was likely 1-2 days before this event, so I think this was likely a fair representation of where he is at and where he needs to be, *if* this is truly an attempt at making the team....which I think this was more of an preliminary attempt and only going to go all in if things actually worked out better than they did. So I think next weekend he'll have a much better performance and it likely mean less than what we learned from this weekend. I think this was one of those "yep ITU still is really really hard" kick to the balls type of results for West, in that nothing has changed since he left other than it's really really hard and still really deep on the men's side.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Maybe they didn't fly out all thise extra ppl. Aus often don't, athletes often fully supporting themselves for WC races

lol i home stayed some ITU athletes and they definitely dont. the athlete works on their own bike , lays on the floor with legs on the wall for 'massage'.

Thankful for the coverage of a WC race, but no splits, and I tuned in on 2nd bike lap. West was in the chase group that apparently had a 50s gap, but now with less than 1 lap to go, it looks like they are within 15s of the front. West has been on the front at times on the coverage "driving" the chase group trying to catch the 1st group of looks like 12. There's no timing and the live stats only update after each leg is cimpleted.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

I’m watching too, waiting for my son to swim. He might actually do something significant today. I won’t read anything into it other than the obvious, he’s a great runner who needs a certain kind of race to be relevant in the results.

Not that I begrudge him or think he shouldn’t be there. I like seeing what he’s got.

That lap may have been the craziest tactic I've ever seen. It looked like the chase group was super close and then a few in the front attacked which caused a blow up to catch back up and then suddenly the gap is back to a large gap again....That was kinda a nuts 6 mins.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

I missed the swim but based on the sketchy "live stats" I believe ~19:04-19:11 was T1 time top 10 guys and he was 19:53, so ~50s back on the swim for him today.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

He’s about 60 seconds down from the lead 4 at that first u turn with the mounted camera. Let’s see if he can run to top 8

9th with 6 k left. He might actually have the fastest run split.

I think he will Get 6th or 7th

5th seems super solid. A lot better than people were predicting on here, even if you want to say the field was watered down.

5th is in the money! $2100 and it looks like 2nd fastest run. I’ll have to figure out the splits when they are on WT but looks like the chase grpup basically kept the same gap by T2 that they started with (near a min) There was a frantic lap by the leaders after the gap fell to roughly ~15s to push it back out. Get to the front out of T2 and you got something….obviously easier said than done.


Swim- 11s from the last person who made front group
Bike- 50s slower than front group (he was chase group 1 the whole time)
Run- 32:29; 2nd fastest (7s slower Hidalgo won came in 1st), finished 1+ min behind winner.

Top 3 had 1, 3, 4th fastest run splits. Just goest to show how important it is to make the front group out of T2 (thanks capt obvious). If he can have that swim but keep his bike power up and stay in the group like McElroy type (he's a chase pack athlete who can hold wheels and if chase merges with front, he's guranteed t15 at any WTCS every time that happens), he'd be a more realistic wildcard.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

That's a solid result and much better than the last race. Swim was good, bike fitness is still a bit suspect in this format. But then he got the second fastest run split about 5 seconds slower than Hidalgo. Let's not forget Hidalgo placed 6th at Worlds Finals so definitely a tier a competitor although perhaps he was not really pushed to the limit today. Paquet just ahead of West placed 24th at Words, maybe a better comparison. So it seems to me as if he is behind McElroy but perhaps ahead of Pearson?

I think you have it backwards, Pearson is the front pack swimmer *usually* who can also run top 5 in WTCS (he's had e top 5's or better at test even or GF in the last year). McElroy is better comparison to West who both are chase pack swimmers, but McElroy can easily hold chase pack wheels, at this point, TBD if west can.

So he would not be in front of either of those 2 guys, and Pearson obviously has already AQ'd for Paris. So then you talk about the MTR and West would likley surely be a worse pick than McElroy due to his poor bike (at this point), Which is why Rider and potentially McDowell have likely a better chance at getting the 2nd spot due to MTR (McDowell had the race of his life for what 5th at individual olympics).

And he likely wouldn't even be ahead of Rider if we are talking WTCS *at this point* because he likely isn't strong enough on the bike, and those at the front put massive time on any athletes can't hold wheels (see last week for example of that playin gout).

ETA: Today he lost roughly ~45s from T1 to T2 to the leaders; it didn't look like he was in any danger of being dropped from chase group.

So if you are thinking about an assessment: I would think he's not close to being in the consideration for an olympic spot without a bunch of specialization this winter on the bike and also likely the realization that in order to make the team, PTO prior to Paris would almost assuredly be out.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

I’d imagine West is in line to get a PTO contract so he’d be giving up a lot to chase that spot.

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Let food be thy medicine...

West says on the socials his season isn't done just yet, and is on the wait list for the last Chile WC. He's 3rd in line for the US and well down overall on the wait list (he's currently last ranked on the wait list) who's already maxed out their federation quota so I dont think he'll roll on, but I guess he'll have to train up for that and likely travel to the race. Which would likley give him a 75% chance of rolling on even 1 hour before the event if someone gets sick etc.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II