All your points are bang on. I think there are many areas in triathlon that have been improving via trial and error and experimentation. In track it was largely resolved by the mid 1970’s so we have only seen minimal improvenments mainly via depth of fiend and tweak to training approaches. Largely the athletes are no better today in track than ages ago (Butch Reynolds moved the 400m world record three times in a year to 1988, and since then it has moved from 43.29 in 1988 to 43.03 in 2016 and has not changed since 2016). In triathlon just like track the athletes are not better. There may be more good athletes (depth of field increased), but the top people are roughly similar like in other sports. We’re just seeing gains from all the other variables mainly from equipment and some just coming from more fast guys and girls going head to head and pushing each other.
I think we’re actually seeing a better field at the top - athletes are starting triathlon as their main sport and also doing IM distance right out of the gate. Whereas before athletes would take a roundabout way of getting to IM distance, and if they started in Triathlon, it would be at he Olympic distance.
Laidlow started out as a long course Triathlete.
From this, I’d wager that there’s still further to go on the women’s side - the top 2 athletes (Matthews, Phillip) started tri as adults. Can you imagine how good Matthews would be if she started at 14? Knibb’s really the only one of the top tier who started young and she spent all that time chasing the Olympics.
I think the issue with 2024 was that they had construction sites and I guess getting licence in time would have too much of an issue. No idea what the excuse is for 2025 tho.