Can we talk about Hayden Wilde’s maneuver to fix his chain and chase back on for a second, that was hella impressive. It was. Well done by him. Do you think the front group let him back in intentionally? I do not. I think had Blu or a Brownless been there HW would have finished off the podium. The group had no leader.
And yes, GTB was a beast. chasing back onto the US and the Kiwis, then gapping them to be able to serve the penalty that Dickinson got, and still holding onto the silver.
Taking nothing away from GTB, but my take away was that the US 100% made the right choice leaving Summer off the relay at the games. I cannot believe how bad she looked on the bike and in transition. Even when GTB caught her, she kept going out of the draft zone. There was even a stretch where it looked like she decided she was going to take a pull. Why did she possibly think she should do that?
. Kevin McDowell is also returning to form, other than the hideous, un-aerodynamic moustache…
He looked out of shape to me.
. It’s also worth giving the Canadian team a shout out, with a different look team, and Mislawchuk racing subpar ailed by a stomach bug from Huatulco,
hard to believe but it has been 3 years since the Tokoyo test event. Mislawchuk hasn’t been in the top tier since then. He needs to find it again.
To be fair, apparently due to the wind, the elastics on Summer’s shoes snapped before her leg for the relay, not that I think that is why her mount was bad, since it was not the first time… McDowell looked fairly fit, but it may not have been the best idea of keeping him fresh for the MTR, since he did look rusty. It was still a feat for GTB to come back on someone with Summer’s run ability on that leg, even if her T1 made the feat more achievable…
I don’t know that Spivey will change nationalities this olympic cycle, despite her frustration with USAT. If she was going to swtich to race for Canada, she would have been racing under the World Tri flag this year. I suspect if she switches, it will be to France, but she’ll need to get hitched to Vincent Luis to speed that process along, and it’s likely too late for Paris (and to be clear I wasn’t suggesting that she was switching because the french need her, more that she was pissed at not getting selected for Tokyo by the US). The Canadian federation is coming out of the mess at the end of the olympic cycle and is in the process of replacing many key roles, so once people are up and running, hopefully things will be improved (on the plus side, we’re seeing more Canadians racing internationally (i.e. WTCS, World Cup, and Conti cups) than we have for many years, which should help with building more depth in the program than in recent years).
Kasper’s form looks to be coming back, but according to the broadcast from Montreal, she missed day 2 of the eliminator and the MTR due to a positive COVID test, which with the rules in Quebec means 5 day quarantine. Tyler Mislawchuk hasn’t been MIA since the Tokyo test event. He won Huatulco last year, but then got injured in Tokyo. He still managed a 6th at Abu Dhabi last year, and just missed the win at Huatulco a few weeks back, so he has been there or thereabouts. He was definitely off form in Montreal, but apparently picked up a stomach bug after the race in Huatulco. We’ll get a better sense of his form against a top field on Saturday in Hamburg.
As others have suggested, it’s a bit early to speculate for the Olympics, since a lot can happen in the next two years. That said, the rankings are pretty wide open. for the Men’s side for Tokyo, if memory serves people needed at least 4 races to achieve a score that would get them over the eligibility bar for selection. And those looking to earn auto spots for their countries were closer to 6 or 7 races (the max was 9 (4 and 5 from the two windows). On the women’s side, with 2 really strong results you could crack the eligibility barrier, but for most it was at least 2-4 races to hit that bar, and then 5 races or more to earn a spot for your federation. All this to say, even if people aren’t racing a lot now, it doesn’t mean they are out of the realm of possibility for gaining OG selection. That is more a matter of how each federation lays out their process, and how much is auto-qualification, vs. discretionary selection from anyone meeting the minimum bar.
I suspect there will be some drama in a few NFs, like US, GB, France (because of their depth), NZ, SUI (because of their politics)… I also suspect that some federations may change their nomination processes from the last cycle to try and resolve any ickiness from last time (but there’s the eternal battle between complete transparency through auto selection, vs. better flexibility to field your best team (i.e. more discretionary selections), as the more flexible approach tends to be ickier, and result in more appeals of selections).
Definitely excited for the Hamburg races, so many world tri athletes/world tri accounts have been inundating us with videos of people being waterboarded with Erdinger (it would be a good way to go, if they weren’t using the 0.0 on the podiums), that I’m ready just to see the racing… Hopefully nobody drinks from their shoe this time…