You don't need to qualify for the sprint.

Oly is way more competitive. It's not even close.

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-Stephen in Arkansas

you do need to qualify Team USA to race Sprint Worlds (but not to race AG national Sprint).

To the OP: If you have your heart set on racing worlds, race AG National Sprint and only the Sprint. A lot of people will do both, but some will only do the Oly. Because of this the Oly has more competition, and then the Sprint has more tired legs the next day.

This is just me talkin'
It seems to me that:
Olympic favors good swimmers/runners
Sprint favors good bikers/runners

I really think the competition in our AG will be deeper in the Olympic distance though.

Reading comprehension fail.

Olympic is much more competitive.

Anyone know why the Sprint and the Long Course races aren't nearly as competitive?

Agreed. I plan on racing both for the fun of it next year. I only raced the Sprint this year because the Oly filled up and almost made the cutoff for qualifying for the Sprint Worlds but didn't hang around for the rolldown. I doubt I will have a better sprint next year with racing the day before.

I think more people will want spots with the WC in Chicago so that even may impact the competition.

Historically the Olympic has been much more competitive. But, Chicago Worlds could change lots of factors.

Super speedy bubble guys might drop out of OLY to focus on sprint and thus make the sprint fields super strong from , say, 5th-25th place.

Both races will be incredibly fast. And I can't imagine many spots during worlds qual will get rolled.

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Austin Hardy -

Why do you think that one distance favors either group? With the sprint distances being exactly half of the oly, there's no relative change.

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-Stephen in Arkansas

Because you can bullsh*t 750m & a 5k no problem. Olympic distance tends to expose people who think they can double the distance & still redline the entire thing.

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The sprint bike course contains the most challenging parts of the olympic course - so it will play more to stronger bikers.

I agree with that, but can't one bullshit the 12.5 mile bike, too?

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-Stephen in Arkansas

Ah, makes sense.

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-Stephen in Arkansas

Yes, but a 40km gives you a lot more time on course to overdo it & kill your run :)

By the time the pace settles down, you're half-way through the Sprint swim. You can also drill it for the first 3k off the bike, then just jog it in if you blow up. No such luck in an Olympic.

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Oly is more competitive, by an enormous margin. For comparison:

2x top sprint swim split= 24th ranked swim in the Oly.
2x top sprint bike split= 32nd ranked bike in the Oly.
2x top sprint 5k split= 1 sec/mi faster than top oly run pace.


Or looking at the total times, if you double the top 3 sprint times and compare them against the oly results, the top sprint guy would finish 29th, the #2 sprint guy would finish 48th, and the #3 sprint guy would finish 107th. Sure that's not a great comparison because the sprint covered the harder parts of the bike course, but the oly guys have to go double the distance so I figure it comes out in the wash. The oly race has always drawn more competitive athletes, partly because it generally takes a more committed and fitter athlete to race an Oly, but also because the Olympic distance AG national championship is a pro qualifier. The top-5 guys there are eligible for pro license, so that's a big incentive to draw in the sub 2hr folks.

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I tweet!

It's in my opinion that poor swimmers do worse as the distance increases. In an olympic distance race more can be gained by being an exceptional swimmer than an exceptional biker.

A decent biker will lose 5 min to an exceptional biker in an Oly. A decent swimmer will lose 8 min to an exceptional swimmer. I feel the time gaps will be more even in a sprint race.

These of course are my opinions

jaretj

That's probably true, but I think it's more because the decent triathlete biker still bikes a lot more compared to the exceptional biker than the decent triathlete swimmer swims compared to the exceptional swimmer. In other words, triathletes don't swim enough. =)

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-Stephen in Arkansas

Olympic is way more competitive for most of the reasons above.

I made roll down for the sprint in my AG. I wouldn't have been in the top 30 in the olympic.

I think a lot of people too, don't want to travel all that way and just race for an hour or so. You'll see a ton of locals do the sprint.


I also believe that Chicago is going to change everything as well. I expect a sub 2 hour will be required to be top 18 in the olympic next year and probably sub 1:02-3 for the sprint.

I think worlds in Chicago will be a game changer. I think in years past, the Olympic was more competitive... because of the attitude of 'traveling all that way for a sprint' and especially when worlds was in Europe - are you going to fly all that way for a sprint.
But, for the US athletes, and worlds on 'home soil'... I think folks are going to come out of the wordwork to see if they have a chance to go to worlds.

Not sure what all to make of it, but looks like the fastest overall guy in the sprint also did the Oly, 9th AG, 53rd overall? Chicago may bring things closer, but would guess that the Oly would still be a bit more competitive.

Although I fully agree that the Olympic is more competitive...


There are couple problems with just doubling times.

1. For the Olympic you don't do 4 transitions
2. The 20km of 40km used for the sprint contains all of the hills from the Olympic and excludes all the fast flats
3. No way of knowing if both swim courses were accurate or at least equivalent to 2 or 1/2 the other race

The run calculation is probably a good measure. The one funny thing for me was the overall vs. age group positioning for Olympic and Sprint. Not intended to be a back door brag but Saturday I was 80th overall, 3rd M0-19 and then figured I had a decent shot on Sunday given the two fast guys weren't registered. Not a chance...a bunch of younger draft legal kids showed up putting me 6th in AG despite being 30th overall on Sunday.

The two might get a *bit* closer with the Worlds being in the US, but I suspect that many of the same dynamics that have made the Oly more competitive will still be in play. I'd be surprised if the Sprint bumped up so much that the discepancies vanished or even significantly decreased.

My money? You're still gonna have to be proportionally faster in the Oly to finish proportionally "well."

But who knows, really. :) I'm just psyched to go race 'em both!

Matt

For a long time, the only way you could qualify for Worlds as an AGer was at the Oly distance, so there's that history attracting the fastest AGers to the Oly distance.

shhhhh!

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Aaron Bales
Lansing Triathlon Team