World Triathlon and the World Beach Games.
Reading and understanding qualification documents and understanding ranking criteria can be quite straightforward. Occasionally though you can be fooled into reading something that isn't there when multiple policies are very alike. This certainly happened to me last weekend with the World Aquathlon rankings.
“Only athletes from the respective continent of the Continental Triathlon Championships will earn points.”
Having read the clause so many times in Olympic and World Ranking documents I believed it was in all policies but World Triathlon do not include it in their Multisport document. Is this a mistake in the drafting of the policy or perhaps just a conscious decision to try to improve numbers in duathlons and Aquathlons.
I may not be the only one to miss this as Shannon Kelly climbed 162 place into 22nd in the rankings to secure a slot for Ireland at the World beach Games, part of the Olympic movement, in Bali in August by winning the African Continental Championships and adding 300 points to the 28 she had from 3rd in the 2021 National Championships. Louisa Marie Midddleditch of Singapore also climbed into a qualification slot with 2nd place in the final event of the qualification period.
Kelly was adding to quite a positive weekend's racing in Sharm El Sheikh as she also finished 12th in the Continental cup event the day before, racing alongside Chloe Pollard who finished 16th, with Russell White 16th in the men's event.
This week Luke Mccarron travels to Poland looking to build back from what for him was not a great previous outing, while Kelly stays in Africa, this time Yasmine Hammamet in Tunisia, hoping for another step forward.
Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash
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