Olympic qualification window closing in 6 months.

James Edgar was Ireland's highest scorer at Elite level in 2023 on the World Triathlon circuit winning 3 races. While the 3 wins were at Continental Cup level, and some of the result archive can be missing, this appears to be the first time an Irish athlete has achieved this in Elite World Triathlon international events in a single season.

Edgar goes into the winter break as the leading hope to qualify a place in the Paris Olympics. Projecting the points table to the end of the qualifying period he is currently in 5th place in the chase for the European continent, new flag, quota place having completed 1 less event than those ahead of him. 

This is likely to go down to the last weekend of racing and it will be interesting to see which races each athlete targets. Do you go to the 7 African Cup races with expectation of multiple podiums at perhaps 175 points plus each or try to get into higher scoring World Cups in the hope of scoring Top 10 results to get the equivalent points? The World Cups will be a lot more stacked but a podium and the points that come with it could make all the difference. Bitados and Payet have focused so far on the World Cups while the others have had a more mixed approach.

While Edgar is best placed in the chase for one route to Paris, Russell White leads the Irish team in the Olympic Points ranking having scored 3 Top 20s at World Cups this season. This route looks like taking 1900 points plus, with the last slot currently held at 1500. With no 1st period races to count on White would need to average around 225 points per race across 8 events to be in the mix, 11th place in World Cup Standard distance. It will probably take a couple of podiums to make this and of course he has hit this target before.

Erin McConnell was the only Irish competitor this year in an individual women's event eligible for Olympic ranking points so it is unlikely that there will be an attempt to qualify athletes via relays as you need 2 men and 2 women in the top 140 of this ranking. With 2 African Cup podiums in the last 2 years McConnell has shown she can score well in those races and with up to 7 chances in Africa next year she can make a move up the world rankings towards the new flag slot. 

Elizabeth Carr was the fastest runner in her last race, Agadir African Cup, beating 3 Top 100 athletes when finishing 2nd, including current new flag slot holder Ivana Kuriackova. Her run speed can put her in contention in all the African races next year but it is likely both her and McConnell will need Kuriackova and also Tilda Månsson to gain slots via Olympic ranking at the expense of non European athletes. This would put both closer to the top of the new flag scores.

Why do we focus on the African Cup events? Simply put it is the quality of field in the races set against the points available. Importantly they only count towards the world ranking, the route to the games via new flag.

Looking ahead the bet is that James Edgar makes a solid run at gaining the slot while Russell White ensures he is also eligible for selection if the slot is secured, leaving the selection at the discretion of the Triathlon Ireland selectors.

‍