#148: Who will take the last spot?
Rankings of rankings.
All-sporters, I’m planning (I think) to move the newsletter to Thursday mornings instead of coming out on Wednesdays — because I need to shift the timing of the women’s sports newsletter and podcast I do in the first half of the week. Which has a ripple effect through my days. Would that ruin your whole week? Do you need your triathlon-ish fix on Wednesdays? Would a new day set you up for your weekend? Not that we aren’t mostly big picture people here, anyway.
- Kelly
Who is qualified and who isn’t
This upcoming weekend is the final qualifier for Women’s Kona and Men’s Nice. There is one — JUST ONE! — spot up for grabs at IM Kalmar (pro women) and IM Copenhagen (pro men).
This actually makes for the kind of high stakes that leads to exciting racing, but no one seems super excited about it, oddly. Other than individual athletes. I guess we’ll see. And, as far as I know, you won’t be able to watch — so by “see” I mean scroll social media after the finish.
Kalmar
Chelsea Sodaro just needs to validate (so that doesn’t count against the one spot up for grabs). I feel like odds are the spot goes to Nikki Barlett or Marlene de Boer, but really anyone could grab it, right?
Copenhagen
There are 50 (mostly European) guys going for this one — and I know Cody Beals turned down his spot before and probably still will turn down the spot, but I’m rooting for him to have a good race anyway.
Where are things at this point in the year?
Full Kona & Nice qualification lists to-date are at the bottom of Ironman’s pro athlete page — but TriRating has more detail
IM Pro Series rankings are a mix right now of who has how many races — so it’ll change drastically as people get down to the end of the season and clock their five events
And Julie Derron & Mika Noodt are currently leading the T100 standings, but those are also a bit of a mix of who has raced and who hasn’t yet (and I’m sure athletes are trying to figure out their schedules, with the last couple T100s a bit at odds with the IM & 70.3 world champs, and two of the T100s the day before WTCSs — though I understand there are at least three athletes who are going to do both the T100 and the WTCS race in the French Riviera)
3,900 age-group athletes in London
At least according to my counting of the results from the sprint, super sprint, 100km, and Olympic-distance: it was just under 4,000 amateurs across the T100 races in London this past weekend. And I really hope that’s enough to be profitable; I mean it should be. If it’s not, then there are other issues.
Plus, with the PTO based in London, they got the celebrities out in force. Or at least some of them. And, looking at the tracker over the weekend, it looked like every race organizer (Challenge, Ironman, T100, Supertri) had a relay team in the game. So that’s cute. For the record: It appears Team Supertri won.
On the pro side: the comebacks!
Lucy CB was incredibly emotional at the finish. It has to be extra special to win in front of lots of friends and family. And even though last week I said something like ‘never count Lucy out, but this isn’t really her distance,’ well. I think for everyone wondering if she’s healthy and fully returned, it’s not just that she won, it’s that she also had the fastest run time — and in a field full of good runners.
(I think it’s also a fair question if the game has risen to Taylor Knibb or if she’s in the midst of prepping for Kona and dealing with some niggles and all of that. Probably both.)
And then there’s Hayden Wilde’s return after his terrible crash earlier this year. He’s a genuinely interesting guy, who I think we’re all rooting for.
But, my absolute favorite thing out of the race was Jess Learmonth & Georgia TB’s recap.
From the rest of the races
XTERRA Czech: I recently learned that the Xterra World Cup series has a “no jokers” rule, so every World Cup counts to your series rankings. Which is tough. But that’s partially why you get repeat winners and battles (like the Forissier brothers — with Felix pulling ahead of Arthur in the standings) and why you get the occasional one-off big names coming into individual events (like Barbara Riveros winning the women’s race). Weird fact: I also learned on last week’s podcast that the French federation wouldn’t give the 3x XTERRA world champ a pro license for the road and made her do a 70.3 as an age-grouper first.
Lapu Lapu 70.3: There’s been some talk about drafting off the lead moto, but like I am so bored of this ongoing conversation. Like, wtf do you all want athletes to do.
And I just learned about The World Games. Which are a REAL THING. Held every four years (right now in China) and ~4,000 athletes compete in all the sports that are not currently contested in the Olympics. This includes things that are going to make their Olympic debut (flag football), but also things that are not on the Olympic agenda (tug of war, which Taiwan is the 6x champions in) — both sports and disciplines. And under the World Tri banner, we are contesting….duathlon!
Results: T100 - London, Lapu Lapu 70.3, Rio de Janeiero 70.3, XTERRA Czech World Cup
The -ish
The rest of the news you should know about from our sports this week.
Marten Van Riel is officially on the injured reserve list now. (Instagram)
Jan Frodeno was going to do the OCC at UTMB, but then found out you have to, like, qualify — though I’m sure someone would have given him a spot — and now he’s gonna do it next year. (Instagram)
No idea why a man doing a triathlon in jean shorts is the story that’s gone viral out of our sport this week, but there you are. (New York Post)
And. This guy used his phone to film himself while racing IM Leeds (for a marketing reel for his business), and then was, I dunno, surprised to get DQ’d. (Instagram)
And in other Instagram Ironman kerfuffles I wish I didn’t know about, people are evidently giving this woman a hard time for getting a M-dot tattoo after doing a 70.3 — which is, so very obviously, not a thing worth giving someone a hard time about. Is getting a M-dot tattoo after a full or a half something I would do? No. But there are lots of tattoos I wouldn’t get and it doesn’t matter because I’m not the one getting them. (Instagram)
Kate Courtney broke the course record at Leadville 100 mountain bike race, and it was all over my IG. Because she came back from wrist surgery eight weeks ago, because the top two women both broke the 10-year-old record even on what was supposed to be a slow day, and because it was live streamed for the first time. And also because Kate is very very popular — which made me think of the story I wrote about her right before she won her world title, and how she told me then that she wasn’t sure sometimes why she put so much effort into Instagram. But then she would see it reach some little girl and get that girl out on bikes or make her feel like she could do stuff too. So. Instagram isn’t all terrible. Sometimes. (Instagram/espnW)
In the world of in-the-weeds gravel stuff: There was also a lot of debate about putting drop bars on mountain bikes for the race. Which I’m just going to trust Ben about when he says it’s dumb. (Youtube)
Also the power analysis of Pauline’s Tour de France Femmes win. (Velo)
This is a thoroughly depressing story about how the anti-doping process failed pro cyclist Lizzy Banks — not speaking to whether it was contamination, like she says, or not; but speaking to the fact that even with a UK ruling that it was contamination, the WADA appeals and tribunal system simply does not adequately provide athletes with a fair process. I think, in short, many people just don’t realize the system errs on the side of assumed guilt and your ability to fight that assumption is almost non-existent. And, while this might not be a huge problem, it is a problem if athletes start to feel that the system has failed them. Because when people feel a system has failed, they go two directions: They either try to fix the system, or they fuck all and burn the system to the ground and you don’t know what will fill that vacuum. (See also: The world right now.) (Lizzy Banks)
And hey: Breaking down barriers. The first woman to sign with the pro-doping Enhance Games. See: Our Q&A with the Enhanced Games founder. (SwimSwam/Triathlonish)
An interesting survey on the state of trail running right now. ( )
Kilian Jornet’s new project is to summit all the 14,000ft peaks in the continental U.S. (Outside Run)
The research being conducted at Norseman continues to be cutting-edge, though I suppose it has to be. (Slowtwitch)
The Brownlee Fitness coaching platform is now in the U.S., which I think means there’s now a U.S.-based coach (Sid) and potentially U.S. camps down the road. (Brownlee Fitness)
U.S. Track & Field Nationals got 1.2 million viewers on NBC, and it consistently gets around those numbers on NBC—with track meets getting much much lower numbers on other platforms. And, I will never stop making this point: For all that people are super dismissive of broadcast TV, it is still the main way people watch sports. (The Sports Examiner)
Rowdy Gaines is doubling down on the criticism of USA Swimming (leadership, not athletes). (Instagram)
An episode worth listening to on the 1x podcast. (Spotify)
One last thing
😭 Watch the video.
Always an interesting read with lots of food for thought.