So I guess you are delulu too?? (-; I agree with most of your points, my only point was that it looks like she is in a good spot to make the team once again if that is her goal. More of a betting line than a synopsis of how we got here…
funny meanwhile at an european continental cup we had the 6th places finisher in Paris and no 15en in the world racing and he came 12th
and in the females the 11th and 13th place finisher in Paris and they came 3rd and 5th and nobody complains.
ie its totally normal that athletes do their home continental cup race or the start the season with a Conti cup
this very same race last year had terch beaugand and gtb racing and everybody was happy.
Well perhaps its different than in other sports that are more professional that offer real prize money where it is looked down on for an athlete in a higher level to play down for an easy win and money.
The key aspect here is that the WTCS schedule is (as said ^) very poor (why?).
After a super early Abu Dhabi, nothing till Yokohama in mid-May. What’s an athlete to do? Just train? Super boring.
Guess better go and race T100 if good enough (Waugh, Mislawchuk), or 70.3s (plenty last week and next week), IM (Schomberg) or the London marathon (Yee), road racing (foot)(Beaugrand, Potter, Pearson), T1 (Lievin) or some cross country (Brownlee, Matthias, GTB, Milner)
Guess who will have made the best money . . .
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The more avid ITU guys can tell me…but what’s going on that there are only 6 events this year? How can they even build a series with that?
Post Olympic year is always hard for ITU. Now more and more athletes are taking their “break” to go get paid racing other formats, and so it’s only natural at some point that federations and/or host cities are going to ask why host under those circumstances even more so when the hosting costs are only increasing every year.
lets me honest, right now its not an olympic year and all the ITU heavy hitters are doing 70.3 or T100 which will probably pay better than developmental draft legal races. They seem to come back down to DL with no dent in ability to perform
Spivey is racing WTCS this season… talked about it in recent interviews (Triathlete) and raced Abu Dhabi last month. LA would be a hometown Olympic Games for her, not just a home country Olympics.
Ya I see that, but I really dont think it is in the cards for the US team to have he back again. She is more than dabbling now at non draft, and I think she will have some good success there. She really hates the politics of the US team dynamics, and if no medal shots are even close on the horizon, think she will see that.
Without Knibb on that relay with two better than average men, those hopes will just be that. She is a solid member of that team, but looks to me like those 3 will be gone next time around too. I would gather that she is taking whatever funding is left for her at this time, no one really to challenge her. She can double dip for awhile, until she gets settled in non draft and can leave ITU completely. She certainly has earned that after the debacle of Tokyo, so good she has a chance to play it out on her terms for a change…
One thing to note on the ncaa front. I think the short and compact tri ncaa calendar has really hurt development. Due to it being a fall sport and racing outdoors means, mid Oct has been regionals. Nationals being a month later has helped, but it’s meant, teams have had to compress 4-5 races in a 8 week period, and racing that often just means your basically not really training, your essentially racing/recover/racing/recover. Add in world champs has been in the fall and suddenly you have athletes trying to do itu championship events within the ncaa seasaon.
2025 will be 1st year, they’ve moved regionals to end of Oct (2 additional weeks to the calendar)
And then of course there is the major dynamic, none of these coaches are “federation” coaches, they are being paid by the universities. So suddenly “olympic development” may not be the top priority (even if the coach wants too), and the priority is whatever your AD/president wants you to have. I’ve been in the ncaa ranks long enough. Universities care about their student athletes first and foremost, they don’t care about federation sport politics. So if their top student athlete is a Canadian / Swiss / Aussie, they’ll shout from the heavens how great said athlete is, even if they are beating “US athletes”. Universities are all about their brand/alumni success not worrying about what actual country said success is representing.
Ya…I saw these results. This is the first time I have seen Reece on a podium without his pink flamingo bucket hat on. I have been racing against him at local races since he was about 15 years old. I knew he was good and figured he would go pro. I didn’t know how good he was though. The only time I have crossed Gwen’s path was at a local race last year where she was doing the Sprint Triathlon. I was doing the Olympic Duathlon and went out really fast for my opening 5K. I had the second fastest 5K time at the event and her closing 5K for the sprint Triathlon was #1. I was doing the outbound leg of my closing 10K and saw the top two women for the sprint on the inbound leg of their closing 5K. They were flying. It was really impressive. These elite athletes are amazing.