Things We Noticed this Weekend: Pucon 70.3 and More

Triathlon Forum
1

Originally published at: Things We Noticed this Weekend: Pucon 70.3 and More - Slowtwitch News

It’s January – not usually the busiest time for triathlon news, but this weekend offered some interesting tidbits. Here are a few things that caught our attention from the weekend’s action.

1. Tyler Mislawchuk’s amazing long-distance debut

Anyone who has witnessed three-time Olympian Tyler Mislawchuk when he is “on” will acknowledge that the 30-year-old is unbelievably talented. So, it shouldn’t come as a shock that he’d make his long-distance debut in style, right? The big surprise from the weekend was how well Mislawchuk rode – after coming out of the water with the lead group, he finished the bike at the tail end of a group of nine, just nine seconds back from first. For a guy who wasn’t exactly renowned as a powerhouse on the bike at World Triathlon events over the years, Mislawchuk has obviously adapted well to riding on aero bars.

He then scorched through the day’s fastest run split (1:10:54) to take the win in 3:47:40. While it wasn’t exactly a stacked field, Mislawchuk did manage to outrun one of the sport’s premier runners, Jason West, for the win.

We’ll look forward to seeing how the Canadian fares in more competitive fields throughout 2025, but this is certainly an auspicious start to Mislawchuk’s long-distance career.

2. We told you Jason West was getting back on track

Not that we’re the types to say “I told you so,” but just saying that on Friday I posted a story on West and how he’s looking to put a tough 2024 behind him and turn things around in 2025.

Jason West Resets for 2025

West was part of that lead swim and bike group, then posted the second-fastest run split of the day (1:12:33) to take second in 3:49:08 in Pucon.

3. Cecelia Perez’s break-out bike

It was a small pro women’s field – six women finished – but the game changer in the women’s race was the Mexican champ’s impressive bike split. Cecelia Perez led the pro women out of the water and then had the fastest pro bike split by a lot – her 2:26:01 was 4:30 quicker than the next-fastest pro woman (Lea Riccoboni). Perez would then cruise to the win (4:27:09) by almost nine minutes over Chile’s own Macarena Salazar (4:36:00).

4. Alex Yee runs 28:07 10 km

Olympic gold medalist Alex Yee posted an impressive 28:07 at the Valencia 10K on the weekend. And, yes, I get that he “only” finished 30th and he was over a minute behind winner Andreas Almgren, who set a new European record of 26:53, but, still, 28:07 is plenty fast!

Believe it or not, Yee has run the distance faster – he ran 27:51:94 on the track in 2018. The run was no-doubt the beginning of his long build towards the London Marathon – our Short Course Triathlete of the Year will be making his marathon debut there in April.

2024 Slowtwitch Awards: Men’s Short Course Athlete of the Year

I think I am safe to say that Yee is the fastest Olympic triathlon gold medalist over 10 km – at least in World Athletics’ eyes. Running’s governing body lists Alistair Brownlee’s PBs as 28:32:48 on the track (April, 2013) and 29:15 on the road (Dec., 2011). Kristian Blummenfelt’s PB is listed at 29:42:71. (Yes, I did look up the other gold medalists. Jan Frodeno – 30:42 from 2005, Hamish Carter isn’t listed and Simon Whitfield – 30:12 in 2010.)

5. Magnus Ditlev aims for IRONMAN Pro Series

Magnus Ditlev on the bike at the IRONMAN World Championship Kona. Photo: Eric Wynn

We’ll have more on the various athletes who are making the IRONMAN Pro Series/ T100 World Triathlon Tour decisions right now, but this one caught us by surprise – Magnus Ditlev, who won the inaugural T100 race in Miami and took fourth in the series, says he’ll only focus on IRONMAN events this year. After finishing third in Nice in 2023 and second in Kona in 2024, he wants to go all in on chasing the world title.

Here’s the big question – and we’re hoping to catch up with Ditlev for more details – does this mean Roth won’t be on his schedule this year?

1 Like
2

70.3 is considered long distance? I always thought it was middle and long is 140.6.

3

Welcome to what happens when World Triathlon determines that T100 is long course.

AKA: Welcome to Triathlon, where the rules are made up and the titles don’t matter. :wink:

1 Like
4

Fair enough. Hope all is well Ryan.

1 Like
5

Well, I might be wrong, but I do remember reading s to few years back before there was a T100 that half distance was also included under the World Tri long course designation.

Back to the story – Alex Yee wins gold then says he’s going for the marathon. Is this is Gwen Jorgensen moment? He essentially said he wants to run(beat) the UK Olympic qualifying time for the marathon.

If he manages to 2:07, do we think he’ll go for the marathon in LA? That would be faster than a couple of the UK selections from Paris.

6

Allow me to spray a bit of koolade on your Mislawchuk, West and Perez parade.
(This assumes the Pucon bike course is the same as previous years and conditions did not make the bike exceptionally slow (can find no mention of this in the various reports).)

“how well Mislawchuk rode”
The men’s bike (2:09, pack of 9) was a blow dry if one compares it with Long’s 1:59 (2024) and Sanders 2:01 (2018). If Mislawchuk, West et al ride that slow in a competitive race they will be out of touch.
It’d be great to see Mislawchuk break in: as said: “an auspicious start”, but let’s not get too far ahead. And this was typical West 2024 cycling. I get that there were no bike weapons to push the pace and test them or break it up. I hope West has had time off since Taupo so unsurprised he ran slowly. I wonder why he was motivated to race so soon. A busy T100 tour schedule perhaps so getting a Marbella slot in case T100 2025 doesn’t go so well.

“the Mexican champ’s impressive [“break out”] bike split”
Perez rode 2:26, 6 minutes slower than Sanchez last year. Her ride time was close to average from her 2024 season’s 70.3s. But, hey, it’s early season and she only raced Taupo 4 weeks ago (#36 of 42 fastest on the bike). I appreciate you are writing copy.

Since we are “noticing things” I notice that the PTO have:

  1. quickly included the PTO Ranking scores in the results they publish and
  2. updated their rankings - on a Monday, whereas for the last two years we’ve had to ‘wait’ till Wednesday.
3 Likes
7

Ouch!

LOL

Anyway, still glad someone noticed Tyler’s middle distance debut. The only post I’d seen before on that was buried in the Jason West thread.

Also I knew people would fret over Ryan calling 70.3 “long distance” (2019 called, it wants its first world problems back) but to see that it was literally the first response to the article is a bit… sad.

Why did Tyler and Jason race Pucon? Another answer might be “to have an excuse of a long season when they get their asses handed to them in the fall”, but it’s not my answer, although I did write it, but it will sure as hell “have been my answer all along” if it turns out correct 9-10 months from now :rofl:

8

1.) I didn’t write the article. Kevin did. But we’re pretty much just gonna use what World Tri has gone and done by naming T100 “long course.” So, here we are.

2.) Why did Tyler and Jason race Pucon? Pretty simple answer is “bank some money at a smaller race and, well, most sponsor contracts don’t differentiate that much in bonus outcomes between 70.3 fields.”

3.) Ajax’s response is about exactly what I expected it to be – contrarian and arbitrarily inserts the PTO into the discussion.

(Yes, I am under caffeinated and cranky this morning.)

1 Like
9

well one of the best journalists we have in the sport, tim henning, calls it middle distance. and so does world triathlon in its rule book .

Common Triathlon Distances

Run Bike Run
Super Sprint 400m 10km 2.5km
Sprint 750m 20km 5km
Standard 1500m 40km 10km
Middle 2.5km 80km 20km
T100 2km 88km 20km
Long 4km 120km 30km
IRONMAN 3.8km 180km 42km

while world triathon cant get the distances right t 100 it calls t100 middle distance even if the bike was 8 k longer and the run 2 k longer it would still be middle distance

why to go to puccon would say can be fairly sure that pucon proactively searches for a few pro athetles and pays an solid appearance fee and has done that for approximately the last 30 years or so , to be honest i cant even remember when the race started but but it is quite likely in the top 3 of the longest running 70,3 races
and there is certainly worse places to be , than puccon in january

10

Arbitrarily inserting an extract from the World Tri Competition Rules (p127 of 208) below. Also I linked Tim Heming’s article on the tour series run by the organisation which must not be named in the Txxx 2025 thread: recommended.

Distance Swim Bike Run
Super Sprint Distance 250m to 500m 6.5km to 13km 1.7km to 3.5km
Sprint Distance Up to 750m Up to 20km Up to 5km
Standard Distance 1500m 40km 10km
Middle Distance 1900m to 2999m 80km to 90km 20km to 21km
Long Distance 3000m to 4000m 91km to 200km 22km to 42.2km
https://cms.triathlon.org/assets/6787d61d-3e54-49f1-86f7-f1b954817a3b/World-Triathlon_Competition-Rules_2024_20240917.pdf
11

I see this was directed at me, yeah, I asked an honest question, and received a great answer that I wasn’t aware or thought about.

If that’s sad, to you, then I’m unsure how to help you see past it.

12

To be fair - the Pucon story does make the races much more important and impressive sounding than the results themselves show. It actually doesn’t show Jason being back, being beaten and outrun handily by a debuting 70.3 athlete not known for bike prowess, and bike times on both men’s and women’s side were much slower than last year…except Matt Sharpe who was over a minute faster.

I wish we had a picture of Matt and Tyler together again. Best Canadian duo ever…

ETA - I know…you didn’t expect anything else from me either haha

2 Likes
13

You have no idea how many times I have thought, but not written, “Yup, these are our readers…” to close out a front page article.

At some point we’ll do a mailbag type article or podcast…

14

To be fair - a lot of articles come out and we are like…what are the editors seeing? :wink:

Appreciate the opportunity to debate topics near and dear to all of us…

15

Thankfully, the sport is triathlon…not cycling. Tyler’s overall time is faster than Lionel’s win and about a minute slower than Sam’s win on the same course. So, with a fast swim, a 2:09 and a 70 min half, he could have been in the mix. Based on Geen’s trajectory, it takes a few seasons for some of these ITU guys to really get the TT bike thingy dialed in.

1 Like
16

Absolutely. You’ll note that I commented on the senior editor’s description of Mislawchuk’s bike ride (not his excellent result).
As far as Geens is trajectory, not quite sure what you mean. Geens raced Oceanside in the middle of his Olympic prep, in order to qualify for Taupo. Then we’ve seen him race Tallinn, Zell-am-See, wins T100 LLV and then wins Taupo.
From Paris: 5 months max (not “a few seasons”). It’ll be great to see Mislawchuk get stuck in. I note he’s on the WTCS Abu Dhabi start list so perhaps Pucon was just a dabble.

17

No longer on that start list

18

I meant that he raced La Quinta back in 2021 as his first 70.3 and it did not as well as he would have expected… i.e. got a drafting penalty and frankly seemed to hard a time keeping up with the front of the race (Luis, Sanders). In social media he indicated this year that he had tried to race in a really aggressive position, but last year (2024) he worked with Bart Aernouts to dial in something a bit more comfortable.