Great point with the comparison to Beth Potter in Leeds. So much to watch for!

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Aaron Bales
Lansing Triathlon Team

much less miserable than being the 4th best UK or USA woman.

There's actually a handful of Norwegians that are starting to make waves on some of the ETU events, and may become factors as Paris approaches... Their women's program is also emerging, with a couple more coming up the pipe to support Miller (they nearly snuck in to the MTR at the qualification event, which would have likely meant Stine Dale getting a spot on the Tokyo start grid).

Did anybody see the confusing IG posts from Pro Tri News Yesterday, they made a bunch of these posts about different NF's olympic selections, but that weren't actually their olympic selections, but rather their predictions for selection (FWIW they noted that USAT notified their picks yesterday, and that they believed that the picks were McElroy and Spivey to round out the auto selections). While it's great to have outlets providing covered and discussion on triathlon (both World Tri and IM/Challenge events), they seem to be thriving in this controversial space (see Tri Can vs. ProTriNews after the Jo Brown story after Lisbon, where the intent was right to support Jo, but the execution was wrong completely blasting the federation who was actually supporting the athlete (not financially, but in terms of helping her get logistics sorted out)). So my question is whether this podcast is the Howard Stern show of Triathlon?

US Athletes were notified early this morning of selections.

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Shawn
TORRE Consulting Services, LLC
http://www.TORREcs.com

Funny that they were wrong on both picks…

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Aaron Bales
Lansing Triathlon Team

Ehhh, McDowell/McElroy were interchangeable...

It's official for the USA:

Summer, Knibb, KZ
Pearson, McDowell

I think on balance, those are the right picks by the USAT.

Athletes were not notified yesterday... they were notified early this morning.

Well at least that is one less team for GB to worry about.

Talbot be a shit disturber haha...who knew!

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

But Matt earned the spot.


Gutted for Spivey - But there was no good decision

Gutted for McElroy - He was the obvious choice from my perspective

Spain:

Gomez/Mola/Alarza
Miriam Casillas/Anna Godoy

strongest male team along with France...

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Spaniard. Sorry for my english for the sensitive ones :P

Commentary seems to be they don't care about MTR one bit. Which, if that's how they're selecting their team. Strongest chances for individual medals. Then why aren't other federations looking at it like that and then having those athletes train for an MTR.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

I suspected that their claim about people being notified the day before was off (too long of an embargo to keep the cat in the bag) and that at least one of their picks might be off as well. They did guess the Spanish team right, but yeah.

McDowell and McElroy were kind of interchangeable, I think the McDowell might be a slightly better relay pick (which is honestly their best hope at a medal, outside of the ladies race), although McElroy would probably be better in the individual race, given that he has shown better at the WTS level... KZ make sense as a pick, if you go off her body of work, and overall consistency as being one of the top in the world. Shitty for Spivey, because she did all of the right things to make it a hard choice, and has shown better in the last year than KZ has, but the last nail in her selection coffin was Knibb's qualification in Yokohama... I didn't see an official announcement of alternates for the US, my assumption is that it's McElroy and Spivey as first alternates.

We'll probably start to see more confirmations coming out of selections over the next week, although Australia is waiting until the last moment, to keep looking at form of their athletes before finalizing picks.

I'll come out and make a prediction right now though, while there are 17 relays who are now in for Tokyo, It's unlikely that all 17 will start (I'd predict it'll be closer to 15), either from people not recovering from the individual race, or from injuries/illness/crashes. teams are limited in their recourses, in that they can't change their athletes as of two days before the games, and then can only pick their team from who they have there, which in most cases is 2 and 2 (those with 3 on either side have a bit more flexibility to absorb that, so I suspect that those 6 countries will start for sure, but the others is where the attrition is likely).

I reckon GTB, Spirig, Holland and few others can match her on the run depending on what bike they've all had.

Certainly don't see Duffy as the fastest runner, I'd actually bet on Spirig if it came down to a bunched run off a hard bike, she was the only women who could stay with Gwen in Rio.

it will be interesting to see the battle Duffy vs Spirig as they are quiet even..Duffy is FOP swimmer, Spirig is not. On paper, imo, Duffy is younger and superior. I think the 3rd big call is Learmonth. If she has time enough to get her run back , she is up there... GTB and KZ should be in the mix in normal conditions, but nothing is normal lately... Those are the 5 big names.

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Spaniard. Sorry for my english for the sensitive ones :P

Spirig is not going to pull back any two of these riders...... Kingma/Duffy/Learmouth/Knibb/GTB.
She is swimming far too slow these days.
Yes, she can pull back the WC field in Lisbon, but that front group did not have a single "strong" rider in it. There wasn't one rider in the Lisbon front group who can hold the wheel of the five I just listed.

If the front group sits up and looks at each other, Spirig will be there. Then she'll be running against a fresh Summer, Beaugrand, Hayes. And it'll be anyones game at that point.

I don't know that Summer would be fresh in that scenario, if the big group catches the break because they are all looking at each other, she'll still be dangling at the back... That's not to say that she couldn't run to the podium, but I wouldn't say that she was fresh. But the only way that the chase pack is in play for the medals is if the lead pack are looking at each other, and nobody is willing to work (I can't see Flora standing for that), and there's a monster effort in the chase, likely spearheaded by Spirig, Brown, Holland and Gentle (if you look at the WTS races since 2018 where the break gets caught, it's usually some combination of that group (sometimes with Stimpson, Kasper, KZ (if she misses the break)). While the men's race is more likely to be a dash for cash out of a larger group, the ladies racing of late tends to be dominated by a break on the swim out of T1, and from there it's the breakaway's race to lose...

And Spirig recently came 2nd in the Swiss 10k championships.

agree. The dynamic of the women' s race will be mostly up where Duffy and Spirig will be in T1. Assuming Duffy is a better swimmer, we have two scenarios
1. Flora in the front p with learmonth plus 6-7 girls (Kingma, Summer, Cassandre , GTB?KZ?..). Race over for Spirig. Tough day for Summer...

2. Flora in the chase pack with Spirig. They will keep chances to be close to the front p or even chase it. So, more girls in the 10k in the lottery.

I think the men's will be a big bunch in T2 (20-25 guys) because the norwegians plus NZ plus some others will push to close any break. So, my money would go on Molas, Yees, Wildes, Pearson...

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Spaniard. Sorry for my english for the sensitive ones :P

I think the chances of Flora missing the swim break are minimal (and if she does, she won't be in the bunch with Spirig, but somewhere in between, and likely to solo bridge...), and it will really be the swim break's race to lose, in whether they let the pack back in.

For the men's I agree, I'll give a break a 5% chance of making it to T2, otherwise, you're right, it'll be a bigger pack in the 15-30 guy range doing a dash for cash.

Was Summer 5th in the test event? I thought she had made modium,..soooo I think USAT made a stupid mistake... the bike course is super technical .... Eh Summer, to the bench! you go in Spivey!

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Spaniard. Sorry for my english for the sensitive ones :P

It is a bit mental on how the medal hopes of so many probably all hang on Spirigs swim!

cause she is class in top racing and double medallist, aint it enough?

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Spaniard. Sorry for my english for the sensitive ones :P