Several ITU officials approached me at the recent ITU LD World Champs in Lorient, France and stated that the ITU indeed would declare a reversal of the decision of the distances of LD-champs. Les McDonald obviously have already told journalists in France about the decision that will be in affect after the ITU-congress in Hamburg.
So, the “experiment” with 3-80-20 as the ITU longdistance will only be a one-year deal and luckily from ´08 we´ll be back racing a real long distance of 4-120-30 again!
The reason for the change seem to have been the protests from both athletes (with the petition we started) and organizers so it seems that some hotblooded politicking from athletes do actually work sometimes!!
In 2006, the Grand Columbian was the Pan American LD Championships. We declined in 2007 due to the loss of the Nice Distance. We have applied to the ITU and hope to return with the Nice Distance and Pan American championships in 2008.
Good job, Jonas! Now start a petition for the swim to have 4500m
Yeah, I totally agree with you! However, I suspect that tradition goes a long way here with the old Nice race serving as the grandpa of this distance, hence the name often used “Nice-distance”
But again, if it´s supposed to be a triple olympic it´s totally illogical to not have 4500 m.
