Harry Wiltshire won the swim. Jan Frodeno did not win the swim. Frodeno shouldn’t have called Wiltshire out. Swim tactics are fair game. If Wiltshire finished #43 on the swim, I’d say he’s a prick for trying to blow up Frodeno’s race, but he won that split with money on the line and he was also provoked apparently. Totally fair in my opinion.
I actually think this is untrue. If HW got a suspension previously for “impeding forward progress”, then no, some swim tactics have been proven to not be fair game. It seems that if you intentionally harass somebody enough to make them struggle in their turnover or line and that makes them lose time, then you are no longer competing within the rules of triathlon. Now in water polo, basketball, soccer, football, sure it’s part of the sport. But in endurance sports that are more of a solo effort, nope.
And as a parent (as most of us are) we should remember saying to children that what happened earlier is no reason to act poorly later.
But on the other side of the coin, we shouldn’t care who is a GC; nobody should be given preferential treatment and “gifted” a cleaner swim than anybody else. You never know what’s going to happen later in the day and who the eventual winner may be.