Author: Benjamin Eastman

Yesterday we looked into the Australian selection policy for the 2024 Olympic Games. Upon first glance, there is nothing too outlandish contained within. As with several other countries, emphasis has been placed on the Paris Test Event this August. A top-8 finish at the WTCS Final in Pontevedra could also earn an athlete automatic qualification; again, this is not dissimilar to other countries like Germany. Australia, however, has a delicate history when it comes to selection policies. At a number of major championships over the past two decades, there have…

Earlier this month Triathlon Australia released its Nomination Criteria for triathlon at the Paris Olympic Games. After the Australian selection and performance at the Tokyo Olympics descended into acrimony, Triathlon Australia will likely hope for smoother sailing this time around. How will the athletes be picked? As with a number of other countries, the Australian policy is demarcated by Automatic Nomination and Discretionary Nomination. To be automatically selected, an athlete must finish in the top-8 at the Paris Olympic Test Event this August. In the event that more than two…

At the weekend, WTCS athlete Ren Sato took on the CalfMan duathlon in his native Japan. The race consisted of a 5km run, 28.8km bike and another 5km run. Sato pieced together a solid performance to secure the win in relative comfort. Opening his race with a 5km time of 15:52, his subsequent splits were a 43:25 on the bike and then a 16:31 on the second run. On paper, the splits were decent early season showings. Sato is the reigning Asian champion from 2022 and has generally enjoyed slightly…

Jolien Vermeylen was not the only triathlete racing in the pool at the weekend. Lotte Miller of Norway also hopped in to take on some short course racing. Racing at the SSK Open in Stavanger, Norway, Miller took on the 1500m (25m). She put together an 18:18.75, swimming a well-constructed race. At the 400m mark, she hit 4:49.35 and at the 800m her time was 9:43.89. That second 400 was a 4:53.54 and showed Miller’s consistent pacing throughout. Indeed, the only time she swam over 1:13 per 100m pace was…

Last weekend, Hungarian athlete Gergely Kiss ran a new personal best time in the 3000m. Racing indoors in Budapest, Kiss recorded a time of 8:23.85. That knocked over 25 seconds off his previous best time which he set back in 2018. Running in the same field as Kiss was Csongor Lehmann, the 2021 world U23 champion. Lehmann ran a time of 8:23.42 which also represented a personal best. Although, his previous personal best was only half a second slower and was set back in 2020 (also indoors). It appears, then,…

Belgian athlete Jolien Vermeylen yesterday swam a 9:13.88 800m freestyle at the Flemish Swimming Championships in Antwerp. Held over long course (50m), Vermeylen swam an evenly split race, taking out the first half in a 4:34.51 and bringing home the second half in a 4:39.37. Her performance was enough to take the win by over 1.5 seconds. For good measure, she also added a speedy 1:14 breaststroke split in her team’s 4×100 medley relay. It is worth noting that Vermeylen dropped that split about 15 minutes after her 800m. Vermeylen’s…

In 2023, the way in which prize money will be paid out in the World Triathlon Championship Series will change. Moreover, the total amount to be paid to athletes will be rising this year. It was recently announced that World Triathlon’s Board has approved the distribution of prize money for this season. In 2022, WTCS events paid down to the top-20 athletes in the field. Moreover, at the WTCS Final in Abu Dhabi, the top-25 finishers received prize money. Previously, the most extensive source of prize money was the Bonus…

World Triathlon made public a number of changes to the 2023 calendar overnight. They come after the changes made in January that saw the addition of WTCS Cagliari and WTCS Montreal and the removal of the Bergen and Busselton World Cup events. The first change to affect the season is that the Yeongdo World Cup, scheduled for 6/7 May, has been pushed into the second half of the year. At this point, the exact new timing of the Yeongdo World Cup is unknown. It appears that the rationale for the…