As highlighted in our article on the WTCS selection policies of some of the elite triathlon nations, discretionary selection clauses are rife in the sport. The use of such discretionary picks in the spot, however, creates as many problems as it solves.
Discretionary selections have two traditional benefits. They help to re-introduce athletes that have suffered injury and hardship into the sport and they open a route into the elite end of the sport for prodigious talents with little by way of performance profile.
To a degree, there is a logic behind using discretionary picks to bring injured athletes back into the fold. Injuries are often par for the course across careers and the knowledge that you will be selected again after injury can relieve some of the mental stress of the recovery period.
Similarly, there can be a benefit to fast-tracking development of young athletes by entering them into WTCS races. In some cases this backfires as athletes are exposed to a level that is too high for them. However on other occasions it can pay off. By giving young athletes experience of the highest level of the sport, their development can be accelerated as they realise just how big the step to elite status can be.
In the last decade, an additional benefit has emerged, although one that is not used that often. In the London Olympics in 2012, the British team used “pilots”. A pilot, or domestique, essentially refers to an athlete that has been selected with the express goal of supporting another another in the field, whether by taking turns for them on the bike or trying to pace them in the swim.
British selection policies since 2012 have continued to create space for the selection of such pilots. In a broader sense, these pilots also exist in terms of securing a third Olympic slot in Paris. Such selections are made for the good of the team, not the quality of the race.
This is where the fundamental problem emerges. Discretionary picks take away from the concept that the race the audience is watching contains the best athletes in the sport.
Pilots are also an uncomfortable subject in what is typically an individual sport. Is national success more important than the athletic performance of all race participants? That is a question for the integrity of the event.
Using discretionary policies for athletes returning from injury may also not be the best way forward. There is no guarantee that athletes will come back at the same level. Maybe it would be better for them to have a more gradual return to the elite by building back through the ranks. It is no major inconvenience for an athlete to race World Cups after injury. If they have been truly been out for a long time, maybe that would be in their interest.
Now that World Triathlon have introduced a new maternity policy (starting from 2023), female athletes will also not be penalised for maternity breaks. As a result there will be no reliance upon discretionary picks for any woman that returns to the WTCS after childbirth.
Furthermore, when it comes to young athletes, discretionary selections that put them into WTCS races before they are ready can devalue the race itself. It was brilliant to see Tilda Mansson storm to the win at the Bergen World Cup, however it is rare to see athletes so young bolt from the blue at the WTCS level. Rather, it is customary for athletes to earn their stripes, just as Mansson herself did by taking a World Junior title and then a win in Bergen before making her WTCS debut.
There is one final point we come to when it comes to discretionary picks. They leave athletes almost entirely at the whims of coaches, performance directors and national federations. That is a recipe for favouritism and abuse.
Discretionary selection policies will always lack the transparency of pure performance criteria. When it comes to the WTCS, and by extension the Olympic Games, we are talking about athletes’ careers and livelihoods. Many athletes are dependent on the decisions of their national federation and so deserve as much transparency as possible.
In triathlon, there are more than enough opportunities to race for federations to design policies with clear and exact standards to reach before an athlete can participate in the WTCS. Whether athletes get to do so should realistically come down purely to the performance of the athletes and not the discretion of the national team management.
Perhaps a compromise could be to keep discretionary selections for Continental Cups and World Cups. That way, athletes can be picked to race themselves back to fitness after injury before rejoining the WTCS. Moreover young athletes can be tested at the international level and given the chance to earn the step up to the WTCS.
Once an athlete is good enough to race at the WTCS, in an ideal world their results should earn their start and nothing else.
After all, is that not in line with the spirit of the sport where improvements are earned through hard work and sacrifice in training?
