And that’s why the saying goes
Athletes don’t leave short course, the sport leaves them.
It’s not the FOP ability that makes itu so hard. It’s that there is so much depth among guys who get no credit from anyone that makes it so damn hard to push through. Him doing 40 starts is actually a fairly “long†development career type. Usually within 2-3 years you can kinda figure out how you truly are going to do.
USAT has a bunch of facts and figures on how they fund the development athletes based on early race results and projecting from there. West came from the collegiate club triathlon pathway, I’ve seen him racing for almost 10 years.
So if theoretically Yee, Wilde, and West leave T2 together in an Olympic distance race in a couple of weeks What’s the finishing order assuming they all expend the same amount of effort getting to T2. I’m guessing Yee, but would pay to watch it.