I watched the ITU World Championship series triathlon held in Sydney last weekend and I was of mixed feelings about how the cycling portion of the event was conducted. As an age group triathlete, I have always competed in non-draft legal events and wondered about what it would like to be able to compete the way the road bike racers do. Well, I have seen it and I am not a big fan now.
I watched a female racer get out of the water nearly a minute ahead of the pack, only to get swallowed up by the peloton in less than 1 lap of a 5 lap course. No one of the females even tried to break away, and just about the whole field entered T2 at the same time, making transition area bike location as important as the cycling.
The men’s event did have a breakaway of several riders, but in the words of the announcer “If they cannot get at least 3 minutes ahead, it will be all for nothing”. It turned out that way neither of the first two competitors to enter T2 1 minute ahead of the peloton managed to podium, the best of the 2 managed to come in 6th.
My take from this is that draft legal events pretty much eliminate swimming and cycling from the competitive part of the event, there is no benefit to swimming faster than the group, nor is it a great advantage to ride faster than the peloton that forms in the cycling event. It does make it necessary to swim at least as fast as the main group in order to leave T1 with the peloton. It does mean the competitor must be able to ride in a peloton and maintain that speed. Neither of those benefit an individual who is a better swimmer or cyclist. All that matters is how well a triathlete can run, making energy conservation more important than speed in both swimming and cycling.
Perhaps I am not seeing something right after watching only 2 events. Does anyone else see it differently, particularly anyone who has competed in a draft legal Olympic triathlon?
To a degree yes, it basically turns into a running event, but I think you are also severly simplifying being able to swim with the 1st pack. Which in the women’s Sydney race didn’t matter as much because both packs formed up, but look at macca as a prime reason why the swim matters. If you look at the men’s races in which Gomez, brownlees’ are in the race, they will usually try and hammer the bike now, making the swim even more important.
The problem with going back to non-draft, is how do you make it work when 28 guys are leaving T1 2 secs apart. There isn’t enough real estate in a 1500m swim at that level of racing.
you are completely wrong about the swimming, the swimming is absolutely essential, because if you do not make it with the front pack your race is done.
what you don’t realize is how fast the front pack is swimming.
For every thing he mentioned about drafting, the same thing basically applies for non-draft. Look at crowie and kona. It’s a tactics game of how much he can give to the bikers in order to run them down.
I mean by the nature of the sport, you have to excel at running first and foremost. I guess what irks me the most is that people see drafting and they think “oh it’s easy”. No its just a different style of racing. Instead of racing in a straight line for 56 miles and turning around and sitting on a wattage, ITU has wattages spiking upwards of hundreds of times. It’s just that basically people dont see or understand that part of it, they just see a peloton of riders, but they don’t really get to understand the sprinting that occurs out of corners, 180* turns.
The speeds they swim are nuts. 18min 1500 is pretty impressive, and to do that knowing they are going to average 300+ watts on the bike and run sub 34. Damn.
I don’t think you understood what I meant in my original post. What the draft legal fomat means is that a competitor only has to swim fast enough to stay in the pack. Even a secondary pack will do based on what I saw because each separate group in both races merged together before the bike leg was half over.
Yes, a mediocre swimmer who comes out alone will get trounced on the bike leg, lapped and forced out of the race. So will anyone with a mechanical early in a multilap bike leg that leaves them to ride alone, meaning a flat tire is the end of the race altogether-DNF.
A really bad cyclist will also fail, getting dropped in last weekends races meant being lapped and being removed from the race. Bike handling skills are at a premium over the non-drafting races, but is that as good a measure of a competitor as that exhibited in a TT style race?
In summary, I do not think the draft legal format makes swimming and cycling irrelevant, but it does mean that they are not as important as the running leg of the event. In the events last weekend, being a significantly better swimmer meant zip, and being a better cyclist was no advantage either. From what I could tell, the wisest competitors managed their energy through the swim and bike and hammered on the run. To go hard on either the swim or the bike was not productive at all, and seemed to do little to improve the competitors final position in the race.
Again, I cannot come to a final conclusion on this, I will continue to read here and watch races throughout the season (Thank you Dish Network for adding Universal Sports!), but I still think draft legal is not the best way to measure who is the better triathlete.
I wouldn’t go as far as the OP in saying that allowing drafting on the bike eliminates the Swim and Bike components from the competitive part of the event.
However, it does seem that ITU races mostly come down to a foot race and who has the fastest 10k times. I certainly don’t think the Swim or Bike are irrelevant, but drafting does seem to skew the relative importance of the three disciplines.
Personally, I would love to see elite ITU races / the Olympics run as a time trial, with competitors setting off at intervals (30 secs, 1 min, whatever) and same, no-drafting rules applying on the bike portion as apply in regular cycling TTs.
won’t ever happen, I know, but that is a racing format I would love to see
I agree about the spacing, it is very difficult to manage a pack leaving T1. That might make draft legal the only way to race, even if it is actually less competitive.
and what you don’t get is that to swim that fast you have to come within a hair of making your countrie’s olympic swim team.
hundreds of triathletes never participate, or don’t participate for long in ITU because they can’t hack the swimming. They switch to ironman type events because of it.
that front pack is at the absolute limit. note how Macca has failed to make it in the front pack a number of times this year.
I don’t think you understood what I meant in my original post. What the draft legal fomat means is that a competitor only has to swim fast enough to stay in the pack.
I see what you’re saying, but I think that if you dropped a lot of these ITU guys into a non drafting race they would be right at the top. In fact I’m willing to put money on it that the Brownlee brothers could win any non drafting Olympic distance race against anyone.
You make some very good points in your post. I have done both styles of racing and agree that it is not a cake walk to ride in the peloton. But the problem I saw in the races over the weekend, particularly in the womens event on Saturday, was the peloton sitting up and riding slower as a group prior to T2. It was not even close to competitive, the number of riders riding side by side at the front would even prevent anyone from breaking away at that point.
On the other hand, I have ridden in a number of pelotons and it IS easier than riding alone at speeds up to about 27-30 mph, particularly when riding up near the front. After the speeds get above about 25-26 mph, the peloton gets stretched out and starts spitting out riders like crazy. Then it becomes a positioning game, which WOULD make swimming faster more important along with cycling speed and skills. How much so I am not sure, I have seen many riders leapfrog up to the front of a peloton in a matter of minutes.
The problem is, based on what I saw last weekend, it is unlikely that enough cyclists will push the speeds up that high in order to create an advantage. I would like to see that, but
the draft-legal format allows triathlon to be an olympic sport. That makes it a good thing.
Gomez also just won Nautica South Beach pretty easily and remember that guy that beat Lance in Panama…? Draft-legal athletes are no joke
draft legal is a good thing. It’s the A league of triathlon.
The skill set needed to race well there is greater then the skill set needed to race 70.3/IM. You’ve got to be able to race like a triathlete & a bike racer. You need an ultra competitive swim and if you can’t run fast you’re done.
You could look at it like this. In soccer you have the EPL as the top league then you have US soccer. It’s sort of a scrub sport compared to European soccer, just as 70.3/IM racing is a scrub sport on the professional ranks compared to ITU racing.
EDIT: this isn’t to say that the top LC pro’s aren’t talented. They are.
The swim is *more *important in draft legal racing than non-drafting. You don’t just have to be proficient, you have to be fast.
The bike portion is just a different kind of ‘hard’ than an individual time trial. Do an hour long cat 1/2 crit or circuit race and compare it to a 40k TT. Sure there might be parts where the pack sits up and recovers, but then there are surges upon surges that will blow your legs apart if you’re not trained for that. It’s not easier, it’s just a different type of cycling… exactly like in the sport of cycling itself where there’s a plethora of formats suiting a variety of athletes. Sometimes breakaways work, sometimes they don’t (just like in cycling).
Your point that draft legal suits runners more than swimmers is pretty inaccurate. It actually suits runners who are also national class swimmers, and capable cyclists. The demands of draft legal racing actually suit the best all around athlete. You can’t have a single weakness in any of the three disciplines or you won’t even be in the mix. Much different than long course racing, where the swim is more a formality.
but I think that if you dropped a lot of these ITU guys into a non drafting race they would be right at the top
You should have said “I think if you dropped a lot of these ITU guys into a non drafting race up to the 70.3 distance, they would be right at the top”
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