Success at Malaga Para World Cup and chance of more in Taranto, Italy.

Donnacha McCarthy and guide Sean Husband had an excellent 2nd place, only 10 seconds off the win. In a race where the Top 5 finished in order of their ranking going into the event matching they did what they were supposed to do and also came closer on time to the winner than in previous encounters. They go into their off-season in equal 9th place on the Paralympic rankings, the final place to secure an automatic slot for Ireland in Paris. 

Cassie Cava was the only athlete in the PTS3 class but the real story for her is finishing faster than all the PTS4 athletes. With no PTS3 class in the Paralympics, athletes must qualify via the PTS4 classification. Race times are combined to give the final results for ranking purposes with the Top 5 PTS3 athletes gaining slots for their countries. With this win, and the points for S4 ranking, Cava goes into 4th place for now among the S3 athletes, with another opportunity to score this weekend in Italy. Her times match up well against most of those competing and while a win in the S4 this weekend may be out of reach, a Top 5 overall could well be possible. Paris is very much on the horizon, and with no other Irish athlete in her class a nomination to Paralympics Ireland should be straightforward if she can hold this ranking. Nomination policies have not been released yet for the Paralympic Games but the Olympic policies are available on the OFI website.

While Chloe MacCombe has had the better results to date we probably hadn’t seen the full potential of her sister Judith and I’ve thought there might not be much between them in performance terms. In Malaga Judith had Eimear Nicholls as her guide in a World Cup for the 1st time and they had an impressive 3rd place. Their time, just over 5 minutes off Susana Rodriguez, was competitive with athletes ranked well ahead of Judith on both world and Paralympic rankings which is a good indicator going forward. They also go again this weekend in Italy and it will be interesting to see if, with a race at this level done together, they can find some more time. Another medal is definitely possible.

The breakout performance of the weekend was Tom Williamson in the PTS5 class. 6th place, and only 2 minutes off winner Filipe Marques, the current world number 7, in his first international triathlon shows a big future is ahead for Williamson. He was less than 30 seconds behind the athlete holding 11th place on the Paris rankings and beat the man ranked 9th. He goes into this weekend ranked 10th of the 11 starters but can be expected to beat that.

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