Gwen back to tri

Triathlon Forum
41

Is the US guaranteed 3 spots for women? Or is that still to be determined?

It sounds like a tall feat for gwen with some other fast americans she will have to beat out. I’m going to go ahead and predict she doesn’t make the team and isn’t even in the final running for a spot.

you need to have at least 3 females in the top 30 it would be a miracle if usa does not get 3 spots in the females given that at the moement i think they have 3 in top 15.
i have not locked after grand fianal but usa uk germany and france have to do a lot wrong from now on not to get 3 spots.

42

The US has 5 in the top 31. 4 in the top 23. All 5 athletes have to race full schedules so the chance of anyone just not holding serve on their ranking is very unlikely, so yeah it’s pretty much going to be USA women getting 3 spots. 99.9%

Men getting 3 spots I’d put at 40% with Pearson back to full strength.

43

Makes sense. Thanks for explaining.

44

Duh good catch. To me the wild card is KZ, if not Kz it’ll be imo Spivey and knibb for MTR and Kasper as 3rd female individual race only.

45

Duh good catch. To me the wild card is KZ, if not Kz it’ll be imo Spivey and knibb for MTR and Kasper as 3rd female individual race only.

honestly, between a healthy spivey and knibb, where does gwen fit in? maybe she’s got some performances in her that we don’t know about but that’s a pretty crowded draw already.

i’ve said it before, gwen could probably have some really nice paydays doing some PTO opens, trying to get invited to collins cup, maybe having some fund doing classics like alcatraz, noosa, or phuket.

46

Here’s the sticky part to all of this. I dont think she is going to have enough time to get enough points to make the individual test event by August. If you don’t make the test event you can’t earn an AQ spot (automatic qualification). 2 ouf the 3 will be likely AQ, which leaves likely 1 spot for discretion. There is no scenario where all 3 spots go to AQ, so there will be discretion for the last spot at minimum.

In her case she needs the top 2 americans to take the AQ spots- Spivey and Knibb. The nightmare scenario for her would be a repeat of Tokyo qualification where the #3 and #4 ranked American made the team, leaving the top 2 to get 1 spot (I think Spivey was ranked #2 in the world and left off the team).

So that’s the fun and claw your eyes out in ITU. It’s part politics, part results business. It’s never just the results are the results. With so much money riding on the line based on getting medals, for federations “discretion” is always going to be that “added layer” of the decision making.

47

Any chance she is thinking PTO near future, but wants to get paid to train for a year by the federation? Along with giving the Olympics one more (long) shot?

48

Any chance she is thinking PTO near future, but wants to get paid to train for a year by the federation? Along with giving the Olympics one more (long) shot?

Maybe but answered the question directly on protrinews podcast saying PTO and mid/long course just isn’t interesting to her.

I think she knows she has a good engine and is trying to find places to use it and keep her inspired to train. Unfortunately those goals aren’t always lining up with what makes the most sense to be successful.

49

-She mentions “USAT”, and the HP staff at USAT has all been cleaned house in the last year. That’s a very very important part of this story, and that’s all i’ll say about it.

Gwen is a reasonable person. She left the sport in what appears to be an unreasonable fashion. I trust that the person who was reasonable didn’t suddenly become unreasonable for no reason.

50
  • She has very little MTR races to try and “showcase” her ability, and I would guess at the WTCS races she’s not going to be a top 10 talent.

i’m stuck on this line of thinking. so what’s her play? i imagine that macca might be interested in letting her race superleague. that could be the best training for MTR.

doesn’t do anything for her ranking, though. . .

Personally I think this gives her another 2 years with sponsors and is just that.

Her lack of self awareness will likely be her downfall. She is returning to a sport that she treated with contempt when she left. The sport has moved on and she will have to rise to that.

I don’t think she will be on the start line. Taylor and Taylor, Ackerman, Katie Z and possibly Summer R will all be in the queue in front of her. Plus whoever else pops up through the development rankings. Your women are outrageously strong.

If she works with Jamie Turner after the scandal at Tri Aus she is extremely foolish.

There are worse things once greats can do to remain relevant, like say, go on Piers Morgan and burn bridges and fake cry at the World Cup, so… Good luck to her but based on the response here this is a dud move. It may provide some content and fodder for a future book and speaking engagements but the sport has moved on.

I don’t think it’s a dud as much as she maintains this social media presence of she can do anything. Which I understand at that level that is the mental piece you have to have, but the verbalization of that mentality is off putting at this point after she completely blew up in the I’m going to win Gold in the Marathon messaging.

If I was any of the top 4 women right now who have been kicking ass since Gwen left, I’d be saying go F yourself if you think you’re taking my spot. Gwen used to also have a mental presence in the bike pack of shit if she’s still with us I’m screwed. That is gone too now. None of the women care what she did five years ago from a competition standpoint. She’s gonna have to reprove she deserves to be there. That’s a hard sell.

This is all coming from someone who has always been a big fan of hers. These announcements are just moronic.

If the ITU women are worried about who’s wheel sucking on the bike leg before smashing them in the run, it’ll be Beaugrand. Not Jorgensen.
Beaugrand can swim too.

51

Yeah, so far that interview is really enlightening. Gwen seems very rational and clear-eyed about the road ahead.

52

-She mentions “USAT”, and the HP staff at USAT has all been cleaned house in the last year. That’s a very very important part of this story, and that’s all i’ll say about it.

Gwen is a reasonable person. She left the sport in what appears to be an unreasonable fashion. I trust that the person who was reasonable didn’t suddenly become unreasonable for no reason.

As a member of the federation, if the High Performance staff and the federation have chosen to give her a high performance grant I find that incredibly poor usage of performance grant funding for developing athletes. That money is not for her.

53

She’s doing what she wants to do (I.e. leave tri when she didn’t enjoy it, try running because she loved it and coming back because she misses it) and good for her for doing this and wanting to challenge herself.

Interview with triathlete magazine:

https://www.triathlete.com/culture/news/13-questions-with-gwen-jorgensen-on-her-return-to-tri-im-motivated-by-big-challenges/

54

I do find it ironic you talk about money, usat and HP funding for the 1 athlete that single handily brought the largest sum of money to the federation w her Rio gold medal.

(I’m not saying I disagree with the premise something about “it’s not her miney” made me laugh at the irony of the whole situation)

55

Brooks, the Irony is that a gold medalist would be so destitute that they’d need funding to continue their toil and not have money from sponsors.

Whereas we have what 5-10 young women who are coming out of NCAA programs that could use that funding to get their start. That is where the money should go.

She’s been out of it five years and reading how wishy washy she is about her plan around a race schedule, do you really expect her to get into the top 120? And if she does and she gets selected over someone who is at least 20-30 spots ahead of her in the rankings list. Then more heads would need to roll.

But I’m guessing based on what you wrote about her needing to be 120th or higher. She will need to race A LOT, a lot more than she thinks because I don’t think wins will come.

56

She’ll easily get inside the top 120, that’s a no brainer. That’s very low hanging fruit. What I cant see is a path to getting a start for the test event. With federation capped quotas and already 5 US women in front of her, her best option is to be on the test event MTR as a “ringer” (the person who doesn’t race the individual race just a day or 2 before the MTR…I don’t know the particular schedlue of the test event off the top of my head). USAT did that at the Tokyo event. They may do a plan like that, or they may look at the athletes and say “the 2 best men and the 2 best women are the MTR”. I would highly doubt they would have her on the MTR, but I’m just giving you examples of past decisions that were made.

I can tell you from first hand knowledge, the money that GJ won from the USOC has funded some really kick ass programs that help get those newer pro / ncaa athletes “development”. Hell I was the head coach for the usat summer collegiate development camp for 3 years of which the likes of Tamara Gorman (ranked 108th in the world), Erika Ackerlund (ranked 31st in the world) were able to get world class coaching and training all because of GJ’s win (junior camps became more elaborate with the funding GJ brought to the federation). She’s not going to “steal” anyone’s money, if they give her funding. If I had to guess it’s very likely going to be an incentive based “plan” which is what pretty much all non national team funded itu athletes race under…Get yourself to a race on your own dime, podium or maybe even top 5, etc and suddenly usat pays your expenses back. Finish 41st and federation just shoulder shrugs at you.

The current HP manager I think has the federation in good hands, imo much better than the previous HP manager (even though under that regime, usat won 2 medals).

57

Let me rephrase- Turner is now in Boulder to coach GJ (he was back home when she called him for a “in person chat”)

ETA: Turner and GJ had an awesome coach/athlete relationship. Whatever happened to him with the Aus federation, is what it is. But the relationship between GJ and Tuner was/is rock solid.

Yep so good he screwed over his Aus athletes, male and female, for Gwen. When she retired he just tried to screw what athletes he had left.

58

I don’t pretend to know the inside of exactly what did or didn’t transpire post GJ within the Aussie federation position he had (just the “coaching gossip” of potentially what transpired). He’s not the 1st federation coach that has had some issues with athletes, and he certainlhy won’t be the last (tri canada had an coaching issue just a few years back). My point was that GJ and Turner had a good thing going within that relationship.

59

Any chance she is thinking PTO near future, but wants to get paid to train for a year by the federation? Along with giving the Olympics one more (long) shot?

Maybe but answered the question directly on protrinews podcast saying PTO and mid/long course just isn’t interesting to her.

I think she knows she has a good engine and is trying to find places to use it and keep her inspired to train. Unfortunately those goals aren’t always lining up with what makes the most sense to be successful.

She said ITU wasn’t interesting to her as well and look where she is!!!

60

I can tell you from first hand knowledge, the money that GJ won from the USOC has funded some really kick ass programs that help get those newer pro / ncaa athletes “development”. Hell I was the head coach for the usat summer collegiate development camp for 3 years of which the likes of Tamara Gorman (ranked 108th in the world), Erika Ackerlund (ranked 31st in the world) were able to get world class coaching and training all because of GJ’s win (junior camps became more elaborate with the funding GJ brought to the federation). She’s not going to “steal” anyone’s money, if they give her funding.

i believe the canadians refer to this as “pulling a whitfield.”