Agree, Blu is in great shape so recon he will have a good chance. I think he will have a great year so this may be the start of it. To me it is between Jonny and Blu, and if Jonny is fit I think he will win, but after a shaky season I'm not sure.
Jonny must be going after the title this year, no?

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Terrible Tuesday’s Triathlon

You know the road is slick when Jonny Brownlee goes down when leading the bike.

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Genetics load the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger.

Strong riding from Henri 'Lionel Sanders' Schoeman here

and after a very strong swim as well. Mario certainly had a solid ride catching up 30 seconds to the Brownlee group on such a technical course.

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Genetics load the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger.

Brownlee had a terrible bike by his absurdly high standards, probably the worst I can recall, definitely didn't add any charge to the group. Will be interesting to see what he says - perhaps he backed off fearing another crash which could rule him out of the Commonwealths.

Looks like this season could be quite competitive with around 7 guys all in with a shout.

Yeh the Commonwealth's are gonna be very interesting. If AB is fit and starts then he'll be a game changer. But I'm not convinced with Johnny at the moment so you could have a situation where only one or no Brownlees make the podium. Still there's 6 weeks to go.

I'd bet that Alistair will look at these results and massively back himself. He'll think "okay, nail the swim and that's goodbye to Birtwhistle and Murray" and there is absolutely no way he's not going to back himself in a running race with Schoeman.

From a British perspective hopefully he can get in 6 weeks of decent training, judging from Dubai 70.3 he only needs to add some top end running speed.

It looked and sounded like Henri or his coaches made excellent tire tread and pressure choices for the race as he seemed to be cornering more confidently than so many others. What ever the case he certainly executed an excellent race.

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Genetics load the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger.

I think it depends on the extent of the injury. In the past we've seen ABs injuries linger to the point of enforced rest. Hopefully he has a better feel for when to nip things in the bud and has the time to do so.

AB's run in Dubai was okay but 71 equivalent on a pancake flat course is solid but not amazing in an ITU context. I don't think he was pushing it though.

That being said I totally agree there was nothing exceptional on display today, other than Schoeman's bike handling. Gomez might even be having 2nd thoughts.

It appears that Flora went down on the fast off camber down hill turn where so many other guys and gals went down before and now Joanna Brown down in the same corner:(

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Genetics load the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger.

The ITU have completely f*cked up here.

And about 10 others now, going into the last lap of the bike... this race has become a bit of a farce.

Having said that, anyone from this front group could win it now, I reckon Learmonth is the strongest runner left.

Only because they pander to their favourites who in interviews always say want harder, more technical bike courses. Well this time it came back to bite two of the most vocal in the arse.
In making courses more and more technical just promotes crashes and sometimes season ending injuries, these athletes are actually humans not video game characters.

ST - Where a 71 min 70.3 run is “okay”.

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Terrible Tuesday’s Triathlon

The course isn't inherently dangerous... The races were fine there last year. The issue, with any race car track event (Having done a number of bike races, and a number of draft legal multisport races on race car tracks) is light rain and it's effect on the residual motor oil... If it's going to rain, you want it to dump, that way it washes away all of the residual motor oil. When it's light rain, it just pulls it to the surface, making it super slick. With just a bit of moisture on the surface, it was pretty suboptimal. That being said, the right choices in terms of tires and pressures, can mitigate those risks, but a lot of people gambled wrong... In the women's race, the course was drying up, but it was still slick, and I am not sure everyone banked on that...

I'm surprised that Flora was one of the ones who went down, because she usually excels in technical courses and suboptimal conditions, and usually nails the tire/pressure game... I can only suspect that it's partially due to sponsor changes, and only having a couple of months with the new equipment, and not being completely comfortable with things yet... The corner where a lot of the carnage happened you were moving from relatively light to relatively dark, descending under that overpass, which can be challenging...

It's typically the LOC proposing the course, not the ITU (the ITU does have to approve it though), so I'm not sure some of the accusations here are fair. But for sure when they moved from the old course to the race track last year, the aim was for more of a spectacle from the event. In terms of the comment about technical courses encouraging crashes, I disagree mostly. Technical courses tend to be safer than less technical ones in a draft legal context, but they string out the field, and prevent the pack from bunching up (which are prime pile-up conditions). You will see crashes on those courses, when riders try to ride above their actual skill level (ride a course feature faster or more aggressively, than their handling skills can support).

The commentators actually said the course was made more technical than last year, adding in some extra tight corners.
The number of DNF was bad enough last year when it was dry, was a huge number. Ppl still over estimate their own abilities and crash on dry technical courses. More corners =more crashes, strong capable riders often get slowed or tangled in the mayhem.

Your point may well apply more generally (although I'd argue only really amongst the AG-ranks, seeing as crashes in WTS races are relatively rare), however in this particular race all of the crashes bar the JB one were happening on the same corner as the athletes descended down into the underpass and straight into a tight left-hander.

This part of the course was exactly the same as last year and it was clearly an issue with the track surface; the added technical sections were the coned-off turnarounds further around the lap.

Also your points about the strong capable riders getting slowed or tangled in the mayhem seems completely irrelevant seeing as Duffy and JB both crashed when they were at the front on their own...

Well it doesn't compare with a sub 30 or low 14 over the ITU distances. And like I said he was probably comfortable.

Comparing the run splits of the ITU guys to typical 70.3 run splits is silly. The ITU guys are on another level.

Starting to see all the road rash pics now on social media post race... Duffy and Richard Murray didn't look too bad, Katie Z and Jo Brown got some gnarly road rash (can't imagine armpit road rash...). At least from what we're seeing so far, the injuries are mainly of the cosmetic variety, and not the broken bone variety (although there was a pic from Non Stanford of an ambulance, heading for x-rays to check out her wrist...)... That may be the one silver lining to a slick oily course, tires slide, but so do bodies, so while you'll get some epic road rash, you're less likely to stick and break something...

Just seen the result, has Schoeman been issued a new TUE?

he sure looked good didn't he?

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
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Contrast that with the official TriathlonLIVE Twitter feed that doesn't make a single mention of the conditions in their mid-race-live-tweeting, nor reference 90% of the people that crashed nor the fact that they all crashed at the same point on the course like Wacky Races...

It looks like Katie Zafares had a pretty nasty fall and is in the hospital being treated for a concussion per her Twitter. Tommy even mentioned short-term memory loss in his recent post. Hoping she's alright and will be released soon.

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The Gram: @agyenis
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[quote

Your point may well apply more generally (although I'd argue only really amongst the AG-ranks, seeing as crashes in WTS races are relatively rare), however in this particular race all of the crashes bar the JB one were happening on the same corner as the athletes descended down into the underpass and straight into a tight left-hander.

This part of the course was exactly the same as last year and it was clearly an issue with the track surface; the added technical sections were the coned-off turnarounds further around the lap.

Also your points about the strong capable riders getting slowed or tangled in the mayhem seems completely irrelevant seeing as Duffy and JB both crashed when they were at the front on their own...[/quote]



Johnny and Duffy aren't the only strong , capable riders...There were way more crashes between the 2 races than just that corner, not all made the live feed. Actually every single wts race pretty much has crashes, we just don't see them all on screen.

Ancient history. ITU did a full scale investigation on this. Henri did a great job cooperating. ITU President feels good about it. Case Closed...

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