SheridanTris wrote:
No Beth Potter. Allegedly Tri Canada cocked up her visa. She was reaching out to Tri Canada, ITU and Brit Tri over weekend but didn’t get sorted out in time to be able to do the first race.
That will cost her as she is now one race short on the series.
Several athletes have been posting about how bad Air Canada have been. Lost bags, missed flights due to connections being impossible. Note to self don’t fly Air Canada!
I'm not sure that all of this is true (the fault in this that is, I fully believe that her visa got cocked up). Tri Canada had no role to play in people getting their Visa, other than issuing invitation letters to athletes who were registered by their federations, which was done weeks ago (unless they were late substitutions). The issue that she likely ran into was waiting too long to get the Visa sorted (the elite athlete guide was released a couple of weeks ago and warned people that Visas could take a while so not to wait), and their was a firm cut off date of August 8th for athletes to be on the ground in Montreal in order to be eligible to compete (because of the 3day strict quarantine in their hotel rooms that the Government of Canada had implemented, before a softer quarantine where they can move freely about the hotel and in groups between training venues and the race site and the hotel, they needed to be there by then so that they would be done the strict quarantine by this afternoon, so that they could pick up their kits following the virtual briefing, which is normally two nights before the race for all World tri events). If she got her invitation letter, it would really be between her, Brit Tri and the governments in terms of getting things processed on time for her to make the travel. It sucks that she will miss Montreal, but I assume she'll fly over this weekend to start her strict quarantine in Edmonton assuming she got her Visa sorted to race the Grand Final...
Most Canadians widely know that Air Canada blows, especially if you're traveling with a bike. I've been lucky in that I've managed to dodge flying Air Canada with my bike mostly and used other airlines (I did fly Air Canada to Penticton for Multisport Worlds, but I shipped my bike out by ground, so they couldn't screw that up), and had no issues with missing luggage (the only time I've lost luggage was flying in the US with Jet Blue, and they were good and couriered my bags to me in Canada a day later when they arrived...). In general when flying for races, I try to book the least number of transfers possible (to reduce the number of times luggage moves between planes to reduce the odds of one of them being screwed up) and I tend to book with longer layovers to reduce likelihood of missed connections (even if it means longer travel days and hours hanging out in airports) to try to avoid that, since that would be my nightmare for my bike not to arrive on time for the race (I saw that Erika Ackerlund was one who's bike was stuck in the southhern US, and was trying to get a rental arranged for the race; and Sophie Coldwell had some issues, but I think her bike at least made it)...
I disagree with the hate for the format, yes, it's egregious copying of Superleague, and yes, I would have similar objections if half of the WTCS followed this format, but it's a fun riff on the heats and finals sprint/super sprint mix which has been on the continental and world cup circuits for years (Tiszy and Chengdu at the WC level, on the continental cup level, Canada has run our nationals with that format between 2017-2019 which is also a continental cup race, amongst others). I suspect that we'll see an eventual split with two different overall rankings like they do in Nordic Skiing, a Sprint and a standard ranking, with Sprint distance and super sprints counting for the sprint classification and Standard distances (and maybe allowing for 1-2 sprint results to be included) for that ranking. If I had to guess, I would say they would have 5-6 races on each series with 4 counting towards your rankings (or possibly 4 and 4, with 2-3 sprint distance races that would be joint and could count for either ranking). We'll also see how this weekend goes, if the format is a trainwreck, this could be the first and last World Tri Eliminator race, but I can't see that happening... It could get really interesting, as the weather is dicey on at least one of the days of racing (it was shite for friday, but now they're saying friday might be ok, but saturday could be pretty wet) this weekend, and it's a pretty technical course, so it will be great viewing on Tri Live (there are technically no spectators allowed on the venue, meaning in the Grand Quai where the swim and Tzones are, but the bike and the run go onto city streets, so you could spectate from there, they just warned people in the AG race briefing the other day that if they have spectators with them to watch, to make sure that they circulate, rather than park in one spot, because there may be by-law officers that might ask them to move along if they are set up and not moving). As someone who is a fan of all Tri race distances, and with a softspot for the short and fast stuff, I'm excited to watch. I will say having been at Superleague races before with this format, that it is a great spectator friendly format, and it's a tough one for athletes, and whiley it might bias towards the younger athletes, you have several over 30 who have had success in those distances on the SL circuit... The downside for Montreal is that unlike at a superleague race, there's no Beer Garden overlooking the TZone...