This year, the World Junior Championships will be taking place in Hamburg, Germany.
As a result, the German Triathlon Union (DTU) have a high premium on medals at the home championships. After recent success at the Junior level, including Jule Behrens’ World Junior title in 2021, Germany will also be looking to maintain that form.
For German Junior athletes, the road to Hamburg is one of the most complicated routes in elite triathlon.
Today, Germany will be holding its elite performance tests in Leipzig. An array of Junior of athletes will be taking on a 400m swim and a 3000m run. The start to the run will be staggered according to the times produced in the swim.
This is a slightly different approach to the French Junior tests seen last weekend.
The top sixteen performers of each gender in Leipzig will then be invited to take part in another test on Tuesday (21st March). This second test will take place in Kienbaum, some 220km from Leipzig.
In Kienbaum, the sixteen athletes will participate in a broken Sprint distance triathlon. They will race a 750m swim in a 25m pool. The lanes will be randomly allocated prior to the test with two athletes per lane (the outside lanes will have only one athlete). An athlete is not allowed to swim on the feet of an athlete in their lane. Indeed, drafting in the swim can result in disqualification. Also note, an early start will receive a 3 second penalty.
Then, the athletes will dry themselves and have a 30-40 minute breather.
In a staggered order based on the swim results, they will then resume the test into T1 and hop onto their bikes for a 20km ride. A 5km run off the bike concludes the Sprint test.
The winner of the Kienbaum test, though, does not earn their slot at the World Junior Championships.
Instead, the top-3 finishers for each gender at the Kienbaum test will be selected to the European Junior Cup in Caorle in May. Should any additional slots be available, then the German Head Coach may fill them at their discretion.
Caorle will be contested over the Super Sprint format with athletes taking on a heat and final.
The three highest finishers in Caorle will then qualify for Hamburg if they make the A final. Alternatively, if an athlete makes a B final in Caorle but in doing so earns a quota slot for Hamburg, they may be selected for the World Championships.
For the German Juniors, then, the road to Hamburg starts today. With several hoops to jump through, we can only wish the best of luck to each athlete.
You can read the full policy document here.
