Skip a Championship at your peril. Weekend Review.

Donnacha McCarthy and Sean Husband had a 3rd place finish in Magog in the World para Cup race. To be fair they finished in their ranking position but there are real positives to be taken by closing on all phases on the two pairings ahead compared to their last outing in France. And this time will not have been given freely as both the French teams ahead were racing for the win. They are back in action in Montreal at the weekend in a World para Series race.

Tom Williamson, normally seen racing in PTS5 on the World Para circuit was a late entry to the National Sprint Distance Championships in Lanesborough going all in on the draft legal race. Delighted to see this as a glance at the race histories of those he is competing against on the world stage shows regular racing in open events including points scores at Elite level on the World Triathlon Calendar. With second fastest swim and bike splits he wasn't there to make up numbers either and I’m sure will have learned from the experience and bring more to the Para races in the future. 

While some of us may have had a little moan about the numbers in the race before the start I’m sure Jack Kennedy was only thinking about his win and National Title at the end of the men’s race. Kennedy has had a lot of bad luck, injuries and illness thrown his way over his still short time in the sport and it was great to see him have his day in the sun. He came home behind Scotland's Cameron Kerr, well clear of the other contenders for the National award. Second was Evan Tosh with Sean McMahon in 3rd. Tosh has had an excellent year so far and if there is room to improve his swim, he lost about 30 seconds to the front on Saturday, he could be an interesting athlete to follow over the next couple of years. 

As someone who made a real mess of his best opportunity of a National Championship I would say these opportunities do not come around as often as you would like to hope. A good junior now might be thinking he or she has 10 or 15 more shots at this but the truth is we don't know what the next group coming is going to be like or how many one of the current seniors might like to win. It won't always clash with Hamburg.

Emma O’Brien had a dominant win in the women’s race. It looked a close race leaving T2 with Saoirse O’Brien right with her but the gap opened on the run for a clear win. Jemma Spears was an interesting entry, while assuring us it wasn’t anything serious, and she showed she still had her swim form, just 15 seconds off the lead pair, backed up with a solid bike and run to finish 4th on the day. What's next for the 2 O’Briens? Will we see a large group of Irish athletes go head to head this year at some point in the one French Grand Prix or a European Cup perhaps. 

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We should give a special mention Lanesboro Triathlon Club who have consistently supported draft legal racing over the years. Yes it would be great to see a multi lap circuit particularly for nationals, but we remain grateful to those clubs who are committed to the format and hopefully some day they will have the resources to develop their races further.

It was certainly a tough weekend for Ireland’s Elites on the international front. Luke McCarron again had an ok swim but lost time on the bike to finish down the field in Canada. He races again in Montreal this coming weekend. James Edgar had a relatively poor swim near the back of the field in Hamburg, although only 4 seconds off David Cantero who ended up 8th. But to be honest he was never in the race. He ends up in a small group losing 80-90 seconds on those ahead and rolls out a 16.09 to finish his day.

I got asked many times in Lanesborough about the Mixed team relay and who should start and what I thought the order might be. The truth is I’ve been there before and it is not easy. Often of course there is no right answer and it just depends on the variables of the day. There are only so many elite swimmers out there who are also elite runners and vice versa. I had spent many a cold dark winter night in Santry watching Becky Woods breeze through 4 and 800 repeats and when she started doing triathlons it was obvious to me she could be a fast relay runner with good bike riding skills. But which is more possible, get 300m swim speed into a runner or 1km run speed into a swimmer. And can someone like a Becky Woods, with sub 2.10 800m run speed, commit to just 1 or 2 opportunities per year and hope that others get it right too, or do they remain focused on other probably more stable opportunities. 

Erin McConnell is the obvious right answer for Ireland. Conventional wisdom says send out the fast swimmer, get them in the pack and this gives you the best result at the end of the day. Of course it's a bit more complicated than that. Each leg is timed to the handover, not the bike mount. McConnell had another front pack swim, or potentially front pack swim as she has the same swim time as Rosa Tapia of Mexico who makes it. Tapia proceeds to have a processional bike ride at the back of the group not even being asked to contribute. Meanwhile McConnell does a lap on her own and more work in the chase pack which ultimately comes into transition on the wheels of the leaders. It was one of those days that goes in your favour. The front group didn't drill it and the chase group kept working. Within a couple of hundred meters McConnell's training partner Alissa Konig of Switzerland is already moving away from the chase pack and  through the front group as they head for a 5th place finish while McConnell struggles, and she will likely have known from many training sessions exactly how much she would lose to Konig over the 1.75km, running about 15s per km slower.

The obvious question at this point is if you do not need a front pack swimmer and the chase group is going to catch up then would a faster runner be able to make that group? Maybe. Hollie Elliott appears this year to be the faster runner and swims well. Emma O’Brien is possibly the fastest runner currently active, could she have made it? I don't know and that's the beauty of sport. We can have these discussions from the outside and besides the fact I am personally invested in the success of many of these athletes and desperate for them to do well it remains just a discussion and hindsight is always right. The chase is not always going to make it and the selectors have much more information than we have to make those decisions. 

What I do firmly believe though is that you keep going out there, trying and learning. Keep toeing the line and bringing what you have to the start. McConnell remains the consensus right answer until we are shown otherwise, even if I, with  history as mentioned earlier, might go another route sometimes.

As it was James Edgar had probably had a hard enough day on Saturday not to be diving into the water 3 seconds behind the Italian Crociani who had the fastest swim in the World Series race the day before. Edgar never made it back into the race proper and ultimately Ireland were lapped out along with Denmark and Mexico with Austria not starting. Another chance this weekend coming in the European Championships.

World Para Series and European Sprint and Relay championships keep the show on the road this weekend and we will have a look at those over the coming days.

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