“Surprise of the day - Harry Palmer. What a year for that Bath training group….”
Yup. He’s gotta be over the moon with a Top10.
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Keep in mind after his “great” year, he sorta under the radar, low key wanted to see if he could sneak in and make a bid for a USA ITU spot; went back to back “racations” in Europe and Brazil in 1 week in Oct (which only pushes out your “off season” further). May seem “innocent” enough quick comeback, but was very interesting turn of events to try (he never really had good enough swim nor biked well enough to allow his run to be a weapon).
Was a very curious decision, maybe it was nothing, maybe it was something. If your Jason West and your suddenly in prime time with his '23 results, maybe he reached just a little too far with wanting to see if he could gain an Olympic spot from that magical run.
So did Lionel, but in the opposite direction unfortunately.
Gone from a top 10 in Tri Fantasy to ending up 304th, I didn’t have that much of a shocker with my predictions!
Better luck next year I suppose!
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To be fair, Geens did his first 70.3 back in 2021 in La Quinta. At the time Luis looked like the favorite before he crashed and it was actually LS whoe ended up winning. Geens got a drafting penalty and placed third. So this is why the borderline obnoxious LS fans think that he owns Geens. But like you said, Geens has dialed in the distance, he worked with Bart Aernouts after Oceanside to improve his bike position as he had a too aggressive UCI like position previously, and we can all see the immediate improvements (Las Vegas).
There is a simple reason influencer athletes (LS and Sam L for example) will never do a race of this caliber, they would get destroyed and that is not good for their business model of projecting an image that is a bit inflated. e.g. “the strongest legs” , etc. whereas ITU guys don’t care and just race whether it’s a field of 10 or 30 heavy hitters, they are used to it and they don’t have any influencer interest and revenue other than place as high as possible.
On a separate note, it was reported that Schoeman had a slow leak over the last part of the bike. Not that it would have made a difference against Geens but maybe he could have placed a bit higher.
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He’s very likeable Geens, he’s had a bit of a shocking few years in ITU from when he went from regularly podium to struggling to get a top 10.
Would never have predicted he’d just need to shift over to 70.3 to get his mojo back!
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Great race summary (from first person swidt), maybe “the greatest ever” by Geens in this short PTN interview. Recommended
https://www.instagram.com/p/DDk1GN3ykDw/
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Well, I’m gonna have to disagree with you on this one. Lionel has done a really big race quite a few times and it’s rarely gone well for him. You might have heard of it, it’s the Ironman World Championship in Kona. I don’t think his brand has suffered too much from his failures there.
I’ve never seen anyone who is an LS fan anywhere say he owns Jelly Bean.
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Yeah, but that’s why we race these things. I don’t see that post as being out there, but YMMV.
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Post Race press conference video (fwd to 16:00 to skip the Paul Kaye chat):
Not sure how anyone could dislike Hayden. Classy athlete.
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Why don’t you discuss that in the Lionel thread where it belongs since he was not in the race
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When he isn’t wiping out other athletes on the bike, that is…
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PK, I was replying to Engner66, saying that Lionel wouldn’t risk racing in a big race in case he got embarrassed, in THIS thread so I believe it was relevant. Also forgot to mention Lionel did 70.3 worlds last year so he’s obviously not scared of some competition.
WAY different level of field last year.
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Just replying to this as I was offline from ST, but I would like to say that this was a stunningly awesome (and fair course). Scenery was astounding in the swim (we all knew that), the bike was a solid test (it seemed that most people had around 750m vertical) but with the chip seal CRR, times were similar to St. George with 1150m vertical. The run course was just fabulous, and the pros would have been spared the most painful sun exposure that hammered many of us age grouper. To provide some comparison Paula Findlay’s time was 2 min faster (overall) vs what she ran in St. George, so it was not really that fast a course. The run was rolling. It seemed most people ended up wtih around 150m vertical recorded (my watch crapped out on me, so sorry I can’t share detailed stats…combo of user error and my battery dying).
I have not caught up on the rest of this thread, but arguably some solid champions crowned Sat and Sun. That women’s race was really exciting (Knibb never imploded and 2-10 was all over the place). And how about Kat Matthews’ season.
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Wow! This thread has almost turned into a Lionel thread, its like the dark old days of when we didnt have a designated Lionel thread!
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