It has just been announced that there will be a tenth event in the ITU world series next year - a race in Abu Dhabi BEFORE Auckland. This is the schedule:
6-7 March - Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
28-29 March - Auckland, New Zealand
11-12 April - Gold Coast, Australia
25-26 April - Cape Town, South Africa
16-17 May - Yokohama, Japan
30-31 May - London, Great Britain (sprint)
18-19 July - Hamburg, Germany (sprint)
22-23 August - Stockholm, Sweden
5-6 September - Edmonton, Canada (sprint)
15-20 September - Chicago, USA
I do find this schedule a little bizarre and I wonder to what extent it was discussed with the athletes. For example, there is not a single Olympic distance race between May 17 and August 22, a 14 week spell when the European based athletes are traditionally racing. Indeed, there is only one Olympic distance event between Japan and Chicago on September 20th (but four others at the start of the season when athletes are only just getting going.) So it demands a complete re-design of traditional training schedules which may or may not be welcomed.
No, of the 10 races, 7 are Olympic distance, 3 sprint … But during the traditional European season (when countries like UK, Germany etc will want to have Olympic qualification races), there is only one race to choose from, Stockholm.
The sprint distance is great on TV (Hamburg is a cracking race to watch), but Olympic distances can be too (Stockholm 2013?) But they need difficult courses and apart from Stockholm (and Hamburg which is break conducive) they crop up too rarely.
The schedules might not be ideal for the athletes, but since they have the most incredible live coverage I find it hard to fault them for anything. Barry’s race commentary is second to none.
I’ll be renewing my annual triathlonlive.tv contract once again for 2015.
Seems they listened to Alistair and have reduced the amount of globe hopping, in at least the sense that you head out east by way of UAE for the first 5 races, Europe for the next 3, then North America for the last 2. But as an athlete I guess you’d still have to go base yourself abroad for a good chunk of time.
Nevertheless, I can’t frikkin wait. Lucky here in the UK these races are shown on DTT and satellite by the BBC.
I can’t wait either and agree with the excellence of the Barry Shepley internet coverage (the BBC coverage is great until the race when they use a commentator who really knows nothing about the sport… ) But I’m not optimistic that we will see many battles between the Brownlees and Gomez next year and I suspect Alistair won’t even target the world championship because he is will be unwilling to subject his hamstrings to that much early season racing. The highlight of the year will be Stockholm which must surely be the Olympic trial race for a number of countries.
Brownlee’s already have raced in the Abu Dhabi early spring races every year (non ITU race), so that reasoning hasn’t held true in years past. So that could be 1 WTS event. Plus, let’s say they do the 3 Euro stops. That’s 4 races. So either do Edmonton before Chicago, or do Auckland off the early Abu Dhabi fitness.
If an athlete can’t get enough scores out of that schedule, based on their participation in years past, they more just don’t want to race enough. Which is fine, but I think to say they are not going to do it because of injury concern, I kinda shrug my shoulders at based on previous years schedules.
I don’t get why they have the sprint as well. If the ITU WC is Olympic distance then make all races that distance and have an ITU Sprint WC with its own series.