In Dan’s Athens tactics article he mentions that Lew Kidder suggests that in the future USOC/USAT will be recruiting top swimmers for the Olympic tri team. Is this because elite swimmers already have a large aerobic training base, or is there some other reason?
I’m very new to this, but from watching the Men’s race it would appear that being able to swim off the front doesn’t provide much benefit as you’re left to do a lot of bike work on your own as the pack chases you down. Am I being too simplistic?
I think the aerobic base and simply the ability is the major factor. Lew will likely chime in here as I’ve no doubt over-simplified it.
Nearly every athlete knows how to run
Nearly every athlete knows how to ride a bike
If you take an elite swimmer with their technique and aerobic capacity and put in some bike and swim workouts you’ll get a competitive triathlete, but an elite runner, or elite cyclist may not even know how to swim, let survive the aquatic guantlet of a triathlon start. Teaching those athletes how to swim is just a much more daunting task.
I don’t think I could ever be competitive in triathlon because I cannot swim in the sense that I could survive, but not complete the distance in a competive time. running a 34 minute 10k or a 54 minute 40k can’t help me when I don’t make it to T1.
i think part of it has to do with the high amounts of training that swimmers are already accustomed to before making the transition to triathlon. elite age-group swimmers will practice for upwards to 3-4 hours a day, 6 days a week, all year-round. in addition, when such athletes reach their 20’s, or graduate college, their swimming years will likely be done, unless they are olympic level swimmers. therefore if they want to continue competing, triathlon becomes a viable option for them to do so, and it makes it more feasible to recruit from this base, rather than from elite runners and cyclists. a runner or cyclist are more likely to train, compete, and continue their development into their 20s. swimmers usually have peaked by their college years, and there really isn’t much professional opportunities (unless you’re a michael phelps) to continue to swim at that level.
SuperDave has it right. In ITU-style racing, you have to be a very fast swimmer or your race is done before you reach T1. Some people think Kate Allen, for example, is just a “runner” - but this “runner” swam 51 minutes at Ironman Austria last year. And even with that kind of ability, she barely made the main chase pack in Athens.
That said, it’s still good to look for elite runners who had some significant swimming in their background. It’s just that they are quite hard to find. Based on nothing more than a short bio posted on the University of Colorado athletic department website, however, here’s one interesting possibility:
UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO
Sara Gorton. Class of 2005. 5’8”. Eighth place in 2000 NCAA Div. I XC Championship. Member, U.S. Junior National XC Team which competed in Belfast. PR’s in HS: 2:11 for 800 meter run, 10:23 for two-mile run, 4:51 for mile run. Letter winner in swimming as freshman in HS.
Watching the Women’s Olympic tri was strange (I saw it live in Japan where they broadcasted the whole race live for 2 hours plus, luckily without NBC’s useless chatter). But why in the heck are these supposedly experienced draft-legal pros not using their HEADS? The finish could have been easily predicted: “top swimmers get all tired out working practically by themselves and get caught by fast runner(s) resting in main pack.”
As soon as the bike leg settled in, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to see what was likely going to happen. If we are going to accept the draft-legal format, then shouldn’t we coach the athletes to use their brains and race appropriately for the format? But it doesn’t seem that that is what is happening. This was the Olympics where some of the fastest runners in triathlon were competing. For example, why wouldn’t Sheila and Loretta drop back 30 seconds to join with Barb and Susan so that at least those four can work together, put some serious time between them and the main pack, and perhaps not finish the ride exhausted (which might happen working in two’s).
These are pros who are supposed to know their stuff and yet they seem to persist using non-drafting tactics in draft legal races. Not that Steve Larsen is the big authority here, but he has a point when he observes, “It’s a shame to see such well-conditioned athletes ignoring or, even worse, failing to comprehend such basic, basic tactical elements.”
I think that the lead women would have gotten a huge benefit from riding as 4 instead of 2. In the men’s race the packs were more fragmented but each had at least 5 or 6 riders in them. The women’s race appeared to have the two separate pairs working their asses off and then a huge pack of women riding in a group that looked pretty casual about their efforts whenever I saw them on camera. I think that is why all of the winners in the men’s race were able to come from the lead pack but the women weren’t quite able to pull it off. In a draft legal race your swim needs to be fantastic so that you can be in the lead group or you’re done. The format has changed the type of athlete required to win at the elite ITU level so the days of being a super biker and making back the 2 minutes that you may have lost on the swim are gone. The format also hurts the super swimmers who may be able to build a 45 second - 1 minute lead out of the water since there is no oncentive to expend the energy to do this anymore. Basically you need a former swimmer that is not too big and hope that they are natural runners who can learn to bike. I coach a girl on my highschool track and cross-country teams that placed 5th at the provincial championships in the 3000m last spring who would be perfect for this type of racing. She swims about 16 hours a week with the local swim club and I just get her on the track a few times for some run fitness and she has excellent results.
“Nearly every athlete knows how to run
Nearly every athlete knows how to ride a bike”
No for for your first point, and yes for your second point.
Indeed, everyone can run, but to become the runner you need to be to do well in, any triathlon, and ITU style racing in particular, you need to have some natural run talent and you have to be able to withstand the physical demands of training to run this fast ie being able to run 50+ miles/week. Not everyone can do that.
As for cycling, the sport of triathlon has proven that, you can take people with little or no cycling background and turn them into competant to very good triathlon cyclists. Note I say, triathlon cyclists.
In summery, what Lew and a number of other top coaches are looking for is top ranked swimmers, who have that run talent. Note that not all swimmers have this. For example Micheal Phelps is, out of the water, completely uncoordinated and I suspect not a good candidate to run a 30 min 10K.
So, if in the future USOC/USAT will be recruiting top college swimmers for the Olympic tri team, what is the point of the USAT draft legal junior development program?
There was a good article in “SWIM” magazine (the USMS magazine) this month about the womens US Olympic tri team. Each of the women who qualified for the Olympics had a very distinguished swimming career.
Elite swimmers seem to have a very high capability for hard training and athleticism. Be it from the years of development and training that they already have under their belt or because they are gifted to begin with. To achieve the distinguished swim careers that the womens Olympic tri team had accomplished a swimmer has to have talent. Training alone will not achieve this.
When you mention Steve Slattery’s acomplishments you should start with–2003 USA National Champion in the 3000 steeple chase. I believe he ran around 8:23ish.
Good point, I dont think there is value to a junior team. So we get a group of young ones well versed in draft legal triathlon, only to have high caliber collegiate runners and swimmers killem later. Whats the point? I did a race last year at the Clermont training center. There were droves of pay to play juniors there. I wonder if threy know the next olympians havent even picked up a bike yet.
Not every swimmer can run but you are much more likely to find a swimmer who can run than to find a runner who can swim. Also, swimmers come with a reserve of talent that allows them to remain competitive in tri swimming with a relatively minimal amount of work compared to what a runner would have to go through to get up to speed in swimming. Basically, a swimmer can turn tri training into a 2 1/2 event sport rather than 3 full events thus giving more time to work on running and cycling. Becasue of the unique talent it takes to be a fast swimmer, I don’t think the same would be true for an elite runner of cyclist coming into tri.
Also, of the 3 tri sports, competetive swimming is by far the most widely particpated in by US youth, the most organized and the most professionalized in terms of organization and coaching so it is a pretty easy place to scout and locate talent. There are literally 10’s of thousands of kids who are getting profesional coaching and serious training year in and year out. It is also a sport where organized competition ends at college graduation for all but a handful of international caliber swimmers whereas elite runners and cyclists are just getting started at that age. This leaves a pretty big talant pool available to recruit to triathlon. For example, there are probably about 10 - 20 women with roughly the same swimming talent as Sheila T. retiring from swimming at the age of 21 to 22 every year. Find the 2 or 3 who can run and want to take a shot at triathlon and you have yourselves the making of a great development program.
As the parent of a talented young athlete, I am really trying to gain an understanding of where the sport of triathlon is headed and how best to guide my daughter. When you speak of juniors in triathlon, many people say draft legal racing should be the focus. But draft legal racing is relatively unavailable to most kids in this country. And if the focus of the USOC/USAT will be recruiting college swimmers, maybe these kids would be better off focusing on their swimming!
So true about runners swimming. In high school - we’d have a run-swim event that was swimmers vs. cross country. Although it was a very short swim - the swimmers would always win. Without much run training, we swimmers ran o.k. - but those runners couldn’t swim at all…
I also know a bronze and silver olympic marathon medalist - I see them in our pool occasionally. You could spend years trying to teach them to swim a 25 minute mile and likely fail - but they sure can run. They can run in the pool pretty well, though.
Best triathlon training = swim from age 5 up - mega yardage for at least a couple years in there - then run cross country and swim in high school.
