Of course, but no denying that Luis is back. He absolutely attacked from the gun, lead the entire swim and broke the top swimmers, hammered the bike and organized them to stay away, and now will lead this race to the very end, maybe getting caught very late, or maybe winning. No denying he is on form

I dont know if he'll win but Luis podium will be a hella good day for him for sure.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Say good bye to all the favorites, they lost ground on last lap. Day for the underdogs!!

This is going to be one hell of a finish to. see if he holds on for the W.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

9 seconds and looks like he is still holding form. The lead chasers are going backwards, and they will have a massive sprint for top 5

blum is so damn impressive.

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“The answer is hard work. What are you doing on Christmas Eve? Are you riding your bike? January 1st – are you riding your bike?”- Lance Armstrong

Really good W and race for Luis.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Blummenfelt 6 and Iden 9.
Not bad for the Norwegians 1 week from St.G and 4 weeks from Kona.

Ok race over, how did my guys do again? WIth Kona and 70.3 worlds in their legs, I would say not too bad beating most of the rested field, and my boy Luis was on fire!!

Luis w a great interview. Talks about how important the "between the ears" is for athletics. He did an interview. about 4 years ago talking about his life and how much pressure he has being the top Frenchman. I thought it was one of the best interviews an athlete has ever given. I believe it was on the Greg Bennett podcast.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

A few people are gonna look at today and think that is the template to keep AY and KB off the podium. One interested onlooker will be JB. Easier said than done though.

The French should make sure that the Paris bike course is as tough and technical as possible. A potential non wetsuit, freshwater swim with a current, onto a tough bike course with aero bars banned? That will push the swim liability of AY and KB to the limit. GI likely won't be a factor.

Can the French federation make 2 courses? One that is super tough for the men and then the women just race 1 straight 40km drag road with no turns, no downhills, just 1 straight road to keep Beaugrand at the front. (kidding of course).

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

So good to see him return to the top. I also heard that interview and, despite being British so automatically favouring Yee/Brownlees, love to see Luis do well. He’s had a lot of misfortune in the last two years, he has every right to be emotional after that win.

A few people are gonna look at today and think that is the template to keep AY and KB off the podium. One interested onlooker will be JB. Easier said than done though.//

Same template as the one Allistar adopted many years ago. Its just that you need the right particular athletes to pull it off, and today showed that there are there. SO some of the other front pack swimmers who got dropped today, and some that weren't there, well probably heading to the pool right now for some 100's on the minute!!!


Now hope the women can do the same exact thing, really pulling for Spivey and Knibb to have a good one today. just hope spivey has gotten over her cold from last week.

I think we need to see a few more ITU races post LC, but I have a suspicion KBs swim has suffered a bit since moving up. Leaves him slightly exposed in these races. In the build up to Tokyo he would be in the +0:2X behind at T1, whereas now it seems to be back to well above 0:30-40 secs. Maybe with more specifics that won't be as much of an issue.

That is a fantastic result for Yee considering everything he has gone through the past few weeks.

I think we need to see a few more ITU races post LC, but I have a suspicion KBs swim has suffered a bit since moving up.

Well if his swim has suffered, then so has 80% of the ITU field. IT seemed pretty obvious(to me) that the front swimmers just took the swim to a new level, meaning Vincent Luis did. He single handily broke the will of the top 20 guys, and split them to just him and 2 others, only letting 5 more reconnect after a murderous chase to get back on the feet. Hard to pin a slower swim on Iden and Blu, because all of the favorites were right there with them too. I would say that all the chasers swam normal times, just the leaders were the ones on a different pace.


Of course everyone now knows it is back to the old Killer B strategy, so everyone will be swimming their butts off to be able to compete and either get in that break, or limit the loss


Blu was right there with Yee and all the other favorites he is usually with, just the game has changed as of today

The game hasn't changed. This simply goes back to the same ole debate we always have. When an course has teeth, it creates much better racing dynamics. When swim courses are in protected waters and on urban non-tech courses, we almost always have 40 guys racing with their hair on fire out of T2. When we have courses we teeth (ocean swell, non wetsuit swim, hard. hilly bike), it can actually show the "depth" of the sport in that it's not just a runners race. Take today for example, Blu and Iden ran shoulder to shoulder with the fastest itu athlete and didn't even get a top 5. That showcases depth.

eta: this wasn't even an full field front of pack swimmers race roster today either.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

I think you are omitting several key discussion points.

1. The field was depleted, which generally plays into the hands of the stronger swimmers
2. Blu/Iden are coming off the back of a very long focus on Kona
3. Anyone who raced St George/Kona is going to be carrying a LOT of fatigue
4. The game changes every season, it moves on and improves

Everyone focuses on improving their swim, nothing new. Being in the break isn’t always necessary to win. Yee has won 3 WTCS races this year and I don’t remember him being in the lead pack coming out of the swim for any of them.

There are numerous ways to win a WTCS race. Hayden and Alex are fighting out for WC and I wouldn’t class either of those as a front pack swimmer.

I have seen the draft course maps for the Paris test event in August and it has domestique written all over it, which might negate the strong swimmers.

Could not agree more. Perhaps there is no need to overthink racing formats, simply make the course hard and the race resolves by itself. When the current gold and silver Olympic medalists can only finish 4th and 5th, you know it was a tough field.

Can't help but think that Paris organizers might be searching for a super tough course, which many of us would really appreciate.

Kudos to Luis, great result after such a tough season.

Some folks wonder why the Norwegians don't stay in long course, this is why. Competition is too easy for them in mid and long course. Whereas, winning a medal in 2024 is going to be extremely difficult.

I think ITU is more "fun" overall in terms of you race the same set of athletes 10 times a year through the various races, you go to the same itu after parties with the gals, etc. It's basically the same 80 people that make up the traveling circus of itu racing. And all while doing this on someone's else dime for the overwhelming majority of athletes.....yes please

It's also just better racing, race in and race out, even if the course is "boring" for majority of the events (it's not really fair to compare itu to LC because LC just can't race the same number of races obviously). ITU is just a super sweet gig if you can finish in the money most of the time, if you can't, well atleast you can know that your travel was paid for by your federation for most athletes (and yes there are others who won't get funded at all, and 27th place while great to be 27th in an WCTS is just another weekend of putting $4k on the credit card to deal with 5 years from now).

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Duffy needs to finish higher than 6th to improve her ranking and will overtake GTB is she wins
Potter needs to finish higher than 10th to improve her ranking and overtake Baugrand
Spivey needs to finish higher than 6th to improve her ranking and additionally beat Potter by 1 place to over take her

Going to be a close podium for the women

Linn has got a mount line penalty.

Looks like Potter is riding to the front of the 2nd pack this time, hopefully she will react to any attacks.

Knibb 40 seconds back is a bit of a surprise but a long way to go. Fatigued from Saint George?

DAMN it when U.S. change the time clocks, I was thinking we have 20 more mins til the Women race, and already on lap 2 when I check in.

(have no clue how the race swim shook out)....knibb is 40s back solo apparently. Duffy and Kingma off the front on a ~8 girl chase pack.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

It still must be cool as hell when 99.9% of the crowd is cheering for YOU at a home race.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II