Your Complete Paralympics Triathlon Preview
Your Complete Paralympics Triathlon Preview
Mark your calendars for late/early tonight.
With the paratri races starting in ~12 hours, here’s your mini-guide so you’re ready to watch tonight or press record and catch up in the morning! I also made a 90-second video preview, if you hate reading.
Your preview of the tri
When to watch
UPDATE: All the races have now been pushed one more day to Monday (same times) because of water quality issues. Same protocol for Monday (ie. if the tests come back bad at 4 a.m. they’ll push to Tuesday), but Tuesday is the last day they can postpone to. So if it’s no good to swim by Tuesday, then it’s a duathlon.
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Because of concerns about weather and the Seine (always the Seine!), the races were all moved to run one-after-another on Sunday morning — which is late tonight in the U.S. They were then pushed by a day again.
Wheelchair - men: Monday, 8:15 a.m. Paris time (2:15 a.m. ET)
Wheelchair - women: Monday, 8:20 a.m Paris time (2:20 a.m. ET)
PTS3 - men: Monday, 9:25 a.m. Paris time (3:25 a.m. ET)
PTS2 - men: Monday, 9:30 a.m. Paris time (3:30 a.m. ET)
PTS2 - women: Monday, 9:35 a.m. Paris time (3:35 a.m. ET)
Visually impaired - men: Monday, 12 p.m. Paris time (6 a.m. ET)
Visually impaired - women: Monday, 12:05 p.m. Paris time (6:05 a.m. ET)
PTS5 - men: Monday, 12:20 p.m. Paris time (6:20 a.m. ET)
PTS4 - men: Monday, 12:25 p.m. Paris time (6:25 a.m. ET)
PTS5 - women: Monday, 12:35 p.m. Paris time (6:35 a.m. ET)
PTS4 - women: Monday, 12:40 p.m. Paris time (6:40 a.m. ET)
How to watch
In the U.S. your best bet is Peacock. In Canada, I believe it’s streaming on CBC; in most countries it’s on whatever platform was the Olympic broadcaster.
The course
Paralympics always races a sprint distance — which means it’s significantly more condensed than the Olympic course, but (minus a handful of changes) it is still quite similar.
SWIM: One lap of 750m — probably. The whole situation with the Seine (as Tim explained to us) is that the current is so strong there’s concern about forward progress, given athlete speeds, on the return. That meant there have been various ‘Plan B’ scenarios outlined, depending on current strength, where athletes would be dropped off upriver and swim back.
Currently, however, we’re sticking with Plan A. Currently, the race will move forward with the original looped river swim. Which should favor some of stronger swimmers, and in the categories with varying headstarts and impairment levels could also mix things up.
BIKE: One of the key differences in the course is that the T1 is not up on the bridge (with so many steps!), but down at the water. Athletes will then transition at water level, bike along that frontage road along the river to get up to street level, and then continue on the five-loop course. From there, it is five condensed loops for 20 kilometers total.
While most athletes ride TT bikes in paratri — because it is NOT draft-legal and the fields are significantly smaller for each category, the wheelchair athletes have noted that the changing terrain (cobbles, no cobbles, back and forth) creates an extra challenge for them.
RUN: Unlike in the Olympics, the bike and run courses do NOT overlap. (There also is no pulling lapped athletes, because of how the categories overlap and interact.) That means that once the athletes run along the river and cross over it, the rest of the run course takes place almost entirely on the south side of the Seine.
Three loops of flat and fast pavement for the 5K — finishing in the same fashion, with a turn onto the Pont Alexandre bridge.
The categories & contenders
A quick primer on paratri classification: Categories are numbered 2 to 5 based on physical impairments — with 2 being the most impaired and 5 being the least. Athletes are classified (it’s a whole process!) into their category in order to create a level of fairness. That means that different athletes in the same category might have very different disabilities (one may be a below-the-knee amputee, while another is missing their arm from the elbow), but the goal is to group them at about the same level of physical ability. (Yes, athletes can change classifications over time, especially if a disease progress. And, yes, it is complicated.)
There are also VI or visually impaired categories — which are further categorized into three levels for how visually impaired the athlete is. And wheelchair or WC categories — also further split into two levels depending on the degree of impairment.
Both the VI and WC races then utilize a headstart system within their race, so that the athletes who are, for example, less visually impaired go later than the athletes who are fully blind.
Not every category is competed in every Paralympics. It’s based on how many athletes, countries, and what degree of competition there is. In Paris, the men have all the categories, but the women are missing PTS3. (That means a PTS3 female athlete who wants to compete would have to race up a category, against the athletes who are less impaired in the PTS4 division).
Fields are significantly smaller than Olympic competition (just 10-12 athletes usually), but there tends to be intense rivalries because of that. Here are a few of the highlights
PTS2:
For the U.S., this race is all about whether the women achieve another podium sweep (they did it before in 2016) with Hailey Danz, Allysa Seely, and Melissa Stockwell. Allysa and Hailey are defending gold and silver medalists from Tokyo, but Melissa beat both of them back in March (!) and Australia’s Anu Francis took second between Hailey & Allysa at last year’s world champs.
In the men’s race my sentimental favorite is Mo Lahna, just because omg he’s the best.
PTS3:
There is no women’s race. Men’s is making its debut. That means Spain’s Daniel Molina, who has only lost a race three times since 2017, will finally get his shot at a Paralympic medal.
PTS4:
This is the one the French crowds are gonna go nuts for, because you have Alexis Hanquniquant (who is basically a tall French celebrity who has won every race he’s entered since 2019). But, at last year’s test event, he only just beat another French guy, Pierre-Antoine Baele, by a handful of seconds. And there’s a third French guy too, but isn’t that enough home crowd screaming!
For the women, Kelly Elmlinger is the favorite — and true story, the boys on the U.S. national team one time thought “Kelly” was coming to dinner and they were so disappointed when it was me who showed up instead. But I think a lot of people are also pumped to see what 18-year-old Emma Myers can do, who is racing NCAA draft-legal tri this fall.
PTS5:
This is the one I’m excited about, because you have all three medalists from Tokyo returning (Lauren Steadman, Grace Norman, and Claire Cashmore) — but with some switches around in fortunes since then. Grace hasn’t lost a race in two years. While Lauren surpassed Claire, who was the British vet, at the last Paralympics, Claire has been on the rise again. And, plus, they’re all like friends and bridesmaids and went to school together, etc.
PTVI:
In the men’s race, a lot of people want to see GB’s Dave Ellis be able to finally have a smooth race after the broken chain in Tokyo. He’s gone back-and-forth in rankings with France’s Thibuat Rigaudeau. And I think it’s worth noting how fast these athletes have gotten that many of them now have to be guided by former or current able-bodied pros (like Ben Hoffman for the US team’s Owen Cravens).
The women’s race is a big potential upset. Spain’s Susana Rodriguez was nearly unbeatable (and also a doctor); she was on the cover of TIME, had a Barbie doll in her likeness, and had to recruit pro Sara Perez-Sala as her guide. But now we have a young Italian Francesca Tarentello, who has pulled off the upset in recent races and is such a good swimmer she’s almost able to make up the headstart deficit by the time they hit T1.
As a reminder: These events have headstarts so it always come down to a cat-mouse situation.
PTWC
Jetze Plat will be looking to defend his Paralympic triathlon title, road race and time trial cycling titles, and add a wheelchair marathon title in Paris. Which is a lot. But he’s so talented that he can do it.
And, the women’s race, the one that got replayed on NBC and ESPN and highlighted everywhere coming out of Tokyo — because it came down to an absolute sprint finish by inches on the final straightaway as Kendall Gretsch made up the headstart and overtook Lauren Parker at the line. Both of them are back and Lauren definitely wants to win this time.
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Hope that gives everyone a quick primer on some of my favorite storylines. Don’t forget to set your DVRs if you’re in the U.S. tonight!