Big loss for Leeds. Heard the rumour recently but wasn’t sure if it was correct.
Massive opportunity for her. Going to be an interesting Olympic Cycle!
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Interested to know what those new ascent academies are and where they will be based (if a central model).
TA don’t like anything too far away from the Gold Coast normally so I assume there will be a squad there. I believe Aaron and Non may still own a home in Wollongong so maybe she will be allowed base a group there. That is where the Jamie Turner group were based so it works.
there was some good talent racing last weekend in davenport. love that hill.
Very interesting results particularly on the junior men side. The favourite (defending champion Jack Woodberry from Tasmania) finished only fourth, with no automatic qualification. Will be interesting for selections to Wollongong. He’s still the favourite to make it as the 3rd pick but will have to crush it at the next qualifying race.
The winner (Jack Caldwell) has had an amazing improvement curve especially in the last 12 months or so. Super happy for him!
Junior females: Aspen Anderson keeps improving her swim. Although she had a better swim in Elwood a couple of weeks before Devonport. A huge talent for sure.
The thing with academy sport is you have full ass grown men at 12 and young boys at 14. There are massive advantages from developing early.
Woodberry benefitted from that and now as a last year junior the others have closed the gap and in some cases overtaken him.
Australia have some wonderful talent coming through their academies.
Ah, nope. Woodberry is still very young, think not yet turned 17. Born 2008. He is still quite small in height at least, compared to Caldwell, this years winner, who is a big guy, and a final year junior I think, 2006 born.
Both of them are grown ass! Some of the juniors racing the other day were tiny in comparison.
When my wife worked in the academies there were 2 lads the same age about 1 month between them. One was 6”1 at age 13 and one was 5”1. About 25kg difference between the two. Little C was never going to be better than big C as a junior but when they moved up to under U23 little C had developed physically and was whooping his butt.
You see it all the time at youth and junior level.
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Oh yes, i know we see it all the time. What i am saying is woodberry still has 2 more years after this as a junior and likely some height growth to go. He is a muscularly built kid but not tall yet for age.1st and 3rd from juniors will be out next year.
He may not grow taller. That said I think he’s far from having reached his peak. He just happens to still be not quite fast enough in the swim where he can be exposed in some races. That’s what happened in Devonport. He was impressive on the bike though, just couldn’t bridge the gap to the first pack on his own pretty much.
Yes, thought the same, Made up a lot of ground on the bike aline against a strong, working well front pack, but not quite enough. He has a couple of years to work on his swim while still a junior. May or may not improve enough, but i heard he now has joined a swim squad which is a start. Being from Tas there aren’t the big squads to work with from young age but is good he now, at least has an on deck swim coach and a geoup of junior swimmers around him.