#89: Now, you wait for the call

What if your job came down to one day every four years.

issue #89: May 29, 2024

All-sporters, last night I went to an MLB game that ended with one run in the 10th, and let me tell you a secret: Baseball is objectively boring. If that shit can be a massive money-maker, then all triathlon needs to go mainstream is too many beers and hot dogs.

One quick thing: We have a new podcast series, Croissants & Commentary, building up to the Olympics — covering a different topic each week to Paris (and then we’ll be on-the-ground in France). Listen on the Feisty Women’s Performance feed. First episode is on the state of women’s sports.

And the other big news: Wildflower Triathlon is coming back — whether just for one big hurrah next year or in a more long-term non-water-dependent way. I talked to long-time RD Colleen Bousman, who has bought back the event assets from Motiv Sports, and I’m opening up this Q&A with her to everyone (which went out to paying subscribers this past weekend) so we can get the word out!

Mark your calendars for May 2025.

Q&A: Wildflower Tri's Race Director

Now, onto the main topic of the week: Olympic qualification and selection.

- Kelly

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The Olympics waiting game

The Olympics are brutal. Olympic qualification is brutal. Every athlete who makes a run at the Olympics has a story, has a reason, has tried their hardest, and many of them simply won’t make it because there’s only so many spots. Brutal.

Having watched enough people go through this over the years, I feel like that needs to be said at the start here: So many times what and who you ultimately see at the Games is the outcome of some tiny races or events you’ve never heard of that you couldn’t have even watched if you wanted to. One athlete doesn’t make it because they were DQ’d at a World Cup last year when they followed the leading runner on a slight wrong turn. Another athlete does make it only because they managed to barely outsprint someone else, who had a 10-second penalty for not dropping their goggles in the equipment box — and that one spot difference bumps them just high enough to earn the Olympic start.

It’s all full of stories like this. If you want to go deep weeds, Chelsea’s podcast this week gets into absolutely all the athletes who pulled it off, who didn’t, who raced around the world for the last two-year qualification period.

But now it’s done. Qualification period is over.

The mixed relay teams are finalized — which was a bit of a mess too, because of the cancellation of the mixed relay back in Abu Dhabi, so some of the countries who were planning to make their bid there misplayed their hand. The final determination of quota spots is finished. (Bermuda qualified three athletes, which is really something for a country of 63,000 people.)

And now the athletes on the teams where the final spots will be picked by a selection committee — which is most of the teams — wait. They wait for the call. Most decisions will be made this week or early next. So, we wait.

As promised, after WTCS Cagliari this past weekend, here are my picks for the three most stressful teams to make:

U.S. women: Taylor Spivey’s a shoo-in, and then I think you go with Katie Zaferes because of the head-to-head results against Kirsten or Gwen over the last 18 months. (To join Taylor Knibb on the team.)

GB women: While Kate Waugh is excellent and will be a medal contender in 2028, I think it’s Georgia Taylor-Brown and Sophie Coldwell this time around. (To join Beth Potter on the team.)

French men: Whew, oof, um. Pierre Le Corre confirmed is spot in Cagliari, so he’s a lock (and good for him, because he had a hard road and they were definitely gonna kick him out if he didn’t cross every t). Big Q now is: You have three spots and four guys who could medal — and one of them has a broken wrist (Dorian Coninx), so do you pass him over or not? I think (think) if it was me I’d leave Dorian in and trust he’ll be healthy in time and I’d probably pick Vince Luis over Leo Bergere (even though Leo’s had better recent results) mostly because of the relay and because Vince could potentially change the dynamic of the race if he’s on form.

But: There are no bad choices or great ones.

One last thought: Can anyone beat Alex Yee or Hayden Wilde? Right now, it seems like probably not. They were in a league of their own in Cagliari. On the women’s side, the big bikers (I’m thinking of Flora, here, of course) seem to know they’re going to have to be smart and strategic to get the right breakaway to take their best shot at winning in Paris over Beth Potter or Cassandre Beaugrand. And it could happen. But on the men’s side, I don’t think anyone’s cracked any kind of a code to beat those two — other than the fact that the French men will die trying.

Photo: World Triathlon

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Best of the rest of the results

• Kraichgau 70.3: Laura Philipp was back on top, but I think the athlete everyone was looking at was Jess Learmonth making her move to long-course in her first race after having a kid (and getting 2nd).

Results: WTCS Cagliari, Kraichgau 70.3, Challenge St. Polten

Mark your calendars

• IM Hamburg: The next big full on the Ironman Pro Series calendar is this weekend. Women only. Kat Matthews is going for it (and has pulled out of T100 - SF because of the one-week turnaround) and Jackie Hering is making her return to full IM distance (which has to be because of the points available in the Pro Series).

  • WATCH: Saturday at 9 p.m. PT/midnight ET on Outside Watch or proseries.ironman.com

• Switzerland 70.3: Youri Keulen is headlining the start list.

• T100 - SF: OK, this is actually next weekend (June 8), but since it’s my hometown race I should probably start my many thoughts a week early.

  • Course maps have been released — and, like I told you all, it’s not the actual Alcatraz course, it’s loops. The run is boring flat loops along Crissy Field, but the swim is for real and the bike is legit (that first climb up out of Crissy Field is really very not fun and they have to do it six times).

  • The men’s race starts at 6 a.m. Women at 6:45 a.m. I know we’re more outdoorsy and early here than, say, Miami, but trying to get spectators to the cold waterfront at 6 a.m. is still nutso. (Word is there will be coffee and donuts if you do make it out.)

  • There’s also talk about World Tri rules requiring booties and thermal caps because of the water temps. Which, like, sure, if they do they do. But (not to be that person) I’ve done that swim probably 15x and they’ve never required booties or caps for age-groupers — so it’d really be something if the pros have to wear them “for safety” and then the next day we have 1,500 age-groupers just out there doing whatever.

  • Start lists: A few updates (ie. Kat is out, for example). And we should all take bets on if we actually see a Javi v. Ali battle. IMO, though, the women’s race is probably the best we’ve had since Kona and maybe even beyond that once you factor in the half-specialists: Ashleigh, Taylor, Laura, Anne, Chelsea, Paula, Emma, India. Whoa.

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The -ish

The rest of the news you should know about from our sports this week.

• Word is Ironman offered free entries for another race to the athletes who DNF’d at Morro Bay (which we talked about last week). Of course, it’s probably a smart business and customer service move — given the high DNF numbers and poor communication about the swim conditions and general chaos. It’s also obviously an odd worm to try to put back in the can, at what point do you offer everyone free entries. My official position is: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (Reddit/Triathlonish)

• I thought this was an interesting point about how IM Ireland simply crushed this one athlete’s spirit to want to do another, “broke” her as she says, because how much is too much. And she had to turn off/delete all the comments because the internet always forgets that there are real people behind IG posts. Who knew. (Instagram)

• There’s been a controversy brewing about Spring Energy not having the actual number of carbs and calories it claims to have (which is one of those controversies I’ve been semi-ignoring), but Laura Green made a reel making fun of the super in-the-weeds details of the whole thing. So now I feel caught up. (Instagram)

• Tri Canada’s CEO is out after just 9 months. (Triathlon Magazine)

• New schools are still adding triathlon as a varsity sport, but I just don’t feel great at this point about its odds of really becoming an NCAA championship sport. (USAT)

• Taylor Knibb said she doesn’t plan to race the road race in the Olympics (told you), and I finally figured out why the whole US Cycling selection process was/is confusing me: The U.S. only qualified for two spots in the road race. So if she turns hers down officially, can they appoint someone else since they’ll be under the four athlete max? (Escape Collective/US Cycling/IOC)

• The Kenyans used the Pre Classic this past weekend as their 10,000m Olympic selection event. And so we got an insane 10K women’s race and a new world record of 28:54.15. Whole bunch of other stuff at the meet in Oregon, including the Josh v. Jacob trash-talking mile battle — which I am here for. (NBC/Citius)

• Demi Vollering won the overall, the points race, the mountain classification, and solo’d to a win in the final stage of the women’s Vuelta. (Bicycling)

• Tadej Pogačar made his Giro win look easy? Somehow. And this is a truly epic shot of skiers jumping over him as he raced up through the mountains. (Escape Collective/Instagram)

• Look, I am always going to be a person that believes we should err on the side of the accused — ie. on a scale, would you rather some guilty go free or some innocent get caught up? I’ll always pick some guilty should go free. And so when it comes to anti-doping, I do think sometimes it’s worth just understanding the pain-in-the-ass-ness of how the details actually work. I also think contamination and test sensitivity is probably something we’ve going to have to wrestle with more if and as our sports get legit about anti-doping — ie. just saying ‘athletes are responsible for everything in their bodies, too bad’ is probably not going to work forever. (See: Lizzy Banks’ story with UKAD finding her completely not at fault) (Twitter/Lizzy Banks)

• TrailCon is gonna be a conference on trail running (duh) between Broken Arrow and Western States up in Tahoe. (TrailCon)

• This was in my notes for the week simply as: “I told you durability was a thing to care about.” (Outside)

• And I don’t know that I’m going to start trying to eat poison oak leaves in order to build up sensitivity — since, also, it could kill you — but I get where he’s coming from. Given that this is the only person I’ve ever heard confirm my scalding shower relief remedy, I’m gonna guess if you live around here you get poison oak frequently enough that eating leaves starts to sound like a viable option. (Wall Street Journal)

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One last thing

World Tri’s TikTok is actually quite good fyi — though I dunno if I would label a video of the massive crash at Yokohama as “supervised by professionals.” I would agree, however, that you should not attempt.