No Ben Dijkstra. That’s a surprise.
So is Sam Dickinson staying and Sophie Coldwell ( is that due to pregnancy policy?). Nice to see quite a few young guys added.
I think the yearly ITU thread in itself is kind of pointless. It makes it impossible to figure out when the discussion from one race ends and the next one starts without wading through an endless sequence largely from the same 5-10 people. We would get more discussion on the forum with a thread per race. Generally “outsiders” may get drawn into a discussion about a race in Yokohama or Montreal or wherever because they saw something on social media about it (not because they got triggered by a year long title).
Anyway back to the thread at hand, I predict the IOC won’t offer anyone a peace prize for hosting the event like FIFA did. I can’t see IOC chief Kirsty Coventry going that way. OK sorry for the tangent, but you guys asked for predictions for LA 2028 and that’s my prediction that there is no peace prize on offer from IOC
I appreciate what you are saying that by having the discussion contained, in a giant flat list, if one stays on top of things, then it is interesting. But this ends up being the same 5-10 people taking amongst themselves.
You guys come to this forum enough. I’ve come here since 2003. If we end up with the same ten people doing all the posting, the place dies a slow death. There is a greater good to have more people from across triathlon engaged in many fresh threads, than ten power users talking amongst themselves in threads that look the same.
When an occaissional user comes here, and sees : ITU thread, bike race thread, Lionel thread, Sam Long thread, Trek Speed Concept thread, what they see is 'Oh, waste of time, nothing new going on here"
You guys are thinking just about your own interaction with the forum, but in caring more about your interaction you’re killing the larger value of the forum which is to draw in new readers, and most importantly new posters.
The value of the forum is lots of users creating new content, engaging in new content and that pulling in more users
Talking amongst ourselves, we end up with a tiny private club in one tiny corner of the internet.
But I think most of you don’t care about the longevity of ST and continuous recruitment of new users. At one point you were all new users, but you take for granted that there will be a forum that people care enough to engage in, but with giant “news less threads” you kill the platform that you are a power user of.
Eventually we get a bunch of experts talking amongst themselves about narrower and narrower universal topics, to the point that we end up with ten static topics largely with the same ten people talking amongst themselves.
While this positioning is a bit extreme, it’s actually the trajectory that many of you are putting the forum on with this one thread culture, Yes, it is easier for YOU, but it is worse for the triathlon internet universe
But there are several news worthy items at each distinct race that can create it’s own interaction
We’ve got it, Dev. Please don’t keep posting in this thread as you are keeping it alive. Start a thread on the exciting next short course race to capture its “several news worthy items [to] create it’s (sic) own interaction”, and make sure you link it into this one so we know, before I do.
T1 in Lievin in early March
WTCS and MTR in UAE (Abu Dhabi) in late March.
What about spoilers? Can we still post spoilers in the thread title?
/pink
2 Likes
Well the internet was invented in 1989 for real time data sharing and people want to come on the internet in 2025 to not know what is going on in the world in real time.
I can’t help them
1 Like
well dev there is a few people on this thread that follow junior and under 23 racing french grand prix ( the best development league there is) and bundesliga so they have a solid idea who is comming up. oliver conway was talked about around late 23 or early 2024 when sheridan said millner needs proper training partners and it was said millner is ok where he is. then he was spotted again this year at french grand prix early june by ST which again was long ago before maintream started to speak about him. ( and there is no argeninian ,finish ,south africans ready for 2028 when can say this with a pretty hi probability, japan has a solid 2004 female ) there could be an hungarian female 2008 born that has already won a few bundeliga races. but again most people on here would know about her as she has been mentioned a good few times.
so yes its silly to have an la prediction thread right now but most people on here understand that.
and usually what has been good on the itu threads ( apart from this one so far ) that we actually stick to the subject and dont discuss semantics ( i was not the biggest fan of the headline but it did not bother me ) and the tone by and large is respectful and not too polarising
i hear your point about a ( rather well behaved ) closed club, but at the same time its also nice to have a thread where people have solid interest on a subject and follow a long thread.
Itu is too complicated to follow for the casual observer. i totally agree , but this is not going to change quickly. as the ioc world gov bodies and federations like to keep things complicated.
and as i say i agree with you its good to also include the tik tok generation that has more like a 1 week attention span or the more casual follower with race week threads. and its great that you volunteer to open them up !
do open your threads as you see fit nobody is going to stop you. and if you want to open a thread with, will there be a peace price at la 2028 ,nobody is going to stop you . but i would suggest dont play childish games in this thread.
read up on the subject and than add value. like look at the junior results under 23 results and point out if you see something interesting.
ps yee knows full darm well if he wants another oly medal triathlon it is. i would happily bet 50 euro he sticks with tri.
So you want me to post 24 threads about racing around 24 parking lot for three years before they race around a parking lot in LA?
I think the guys running ST are creating articles for each race when results come out and that creates a thread in the forum. Feel free to engage with that, as that spreads the word far and wide around the internet!
Ill be doing WTCS race threads, thats without any spoilers in the title (my predictions aren’t that good!)
4 Likes
I hope that this is the last I’ll say about this.
Dev, the chase to the Olympics is a drawn out process. People are doing things TODAY in preparation of a race in 2 years and 8 months. That is fascinating to me and instructive to me on how to accomplish something great. I understand that may not interest you. But it is intersting to me and others and having a journal of how this all unfolded is worthwhile.
I do agree, and we started doing this, that each race should have its own thread. And I there are plenty of topics, such a Yee’s marathon, that will create thread crossover. I think most people here are intelligent enough to navigate that.
Your point of view has been considered but we wont be closing this thread down. Feel free to not particpate or not.
Anyone have a thread title? I don’t like the current one, I was just being cheeky.
1 Like
How about this for a thread title
In Dec 2025, what are your predictions for LA Olympics Tri 2028
Simple, to the point, and then let’s resurface the zombie thread in 2028 to see who had the best crystal ball.
That’s a bit different theme then saying “come back to this thread only for every discussion in the lead up to the Olympics for 3 years”
I predict that Coventry is not giving out peace awards and that neither Paris Olympic gold medalist is in the medals. Largely because only a few times we get medalists repeating, so I predict everyone from 2024 is shut out. We can bump this thread in 2028.
Hopefully I am wrong about Yee, but these forays into single sport have never panned out well when the athlete comes back to tri.
My opinion, turn it into a an ITU thread for 2026, people will chat Olympics in here automatically.
Id definitely be in favor of a combined Olympics/ITU thread for for the Olympics year, but too early.
Are there no conditions to maternity pay? Does Sophie have to come back and race x amount of races?
we could call is the dev me me me thread.
or
Itu and LA olympic games qualification window 2026 till 2028
1 Like
@ajthomas included “World Tri” in the title, rather than “ITU” which is now deeply retro, and the new name should be there. I think “short course” included makes it easy for all Dev’s new/newly interested twitchers to find it and is a broad enough church for Lievin, MTR, sprint and standard draft legal racing. Maybe “draft legal” is better. As has been said, general chat about this/that will start with no focus on LA except ‘I wonder if athlete X might improve enough in time to be selected/ be a player’. And if this thread stays the course increasingly the Olympics aspect will loom larger, running up to the test T50 event in 2027.
I expect Dev to start a new thread a fortnight before every WTCS race and I assume there’ll be an ST ‘news’ article briefly describing the action and results. Then we can have two threads running after each race - great.
Given we’ve seen how talented athletes in SC can make good money in MD/LD I’m amazed that the honour of representing their country and the annual assured stipend many feds offer to athletes in their ‘top’ squad remains sufficiently attractive. Maybe so few have the full set of disciplinary skills to prosper without being able to draft for 40km, or think they haven’t, or are content with their lot.
We’ve seen Loevseth, Waugh, Derron, Perterer be hugely/very successful, and Knibb was hybrid for 23 and 24 and then all in this year. I underestimated how well Learmonth would do: I guess that was masked by injury and motherhood since warm down after Tokyo. GTB, Spivey to an extent, also clearly MD capable, but assume they’ll return to main effort SC. Are there other SC women about to step up? Neubert says she’ll stay to fight for a place in Germany’s SC team despite a competent Marbella on not much TT training (was made to look better because of run fails from Matthews, Findlay and to an extent Learmonth).
Dev’s unnecessary distraction aside here is whta is on my mind:
Simon Whitfield said that he never understood how anyone could participate in draft legal racing on the highest level and focus on anything BUT draft legal racing.
What have Yee and Knibb given up due to their focus on other events? I still think it is likely that both compete in 2028. Let’s say one has a good performance and one has a disappointing one. Who is more likley to have the good performance? For this discussion, grade them on a curve. Yee needs to medal, Knibb needs to be top 8 to meet what I think is fair to consider a “good” performance for them.
Just a note of appreciation for the long annual ITU threads which the same 5-10 people post in. I learn a lot from those who follow short course closely and share their knowledge (even if sometimes this takes the form of a pointless vortex of doom of repeated points 
) … ultimately it enhances my enjoyment of the sport - I know more athletes as a result of those threads and I know more things to look out for in specific races. I suspect I’m not alone.
The key point is that certain content appears in the annual threads which I don’t believe would make it into a race-day thread. I like race-day threads too btw - they’re just different.
I’ll go back to lurking now but sincere thanks to those behind the annual ITU / WT / T100/50/25/12.5 threads.
2 Likes
Gaag got caught juicing at some point after that win, the way he came past Lessing at the finish, no one can try and convince me he was clean!
1 Like
I would encourage you to post. Reading the insights of incurable nerds such as Ajax, Brooks and pk (no, not you Jackets 
) can be intimidating. One starts to think “I can’t add much to the discussion”. Wrong! We need more voices.
1 Like
I think she does have to come back and race some although I think Jess learmonth never made it to an ITU start line after pregnancy (due to injury niggles)
Can’t see Sophie doing any more than is necessary before hopping off to middle distance, where I think she will do well. Don’t think she wants another Olympic heartbreak
Great to see GTB. Who has said she prefer the short stuff and Kate both staying be with ITU. That brings a lot of depth to the British women.
1 Like