B_Doughtie wrote:
Was this the year AB made the front group. jB and Gomez didn’t. So AB told the front group of 3 “be right back”. Went and got JB and proceeded to drop Gomez, allowing both brothers to make it into front group.
It might have been the most magnificent show of power move in the sport.
Drop yourself, pull someone back to the front all in the matter of 5 mins.
Tommy Zaferes has a funny story about how AB “behaves” in the front group. He told the story rhat AB rolled up to TZ “pull or your out” when it was like 6 of them in front group at Wtcs race (probably 2014-2016 time frame). TZ is on the limit just to hold the wheels in front pack mind you. AB gave him 1 more warning. TZ couldn’t pull through so AB went to the front for a quick acceleration and off the back Tommy went. Now mind you, TZ wasn’t mad or upset. He said the amazing part was that he not only told him he was going to drop him, but to go and do it like it was nothing. That dude could ride a bike.
That was peak Brownlee era. Say what you want about his fragility of late when it comes to injury, but when he was on his game, he was really playing triathlon with the field, and was utterly dominant, not afraid to work for the outcome that he wanted. You don't see as much of this in the elite fields anymore with more parity...
In terms of Sunderland, the biggest factor will be the frigid swim and the cooler air temperatures. That's a big wild card in terms of how people's bodies respond out of the water early into the bike. On paper it seems like this is primed for GJ to score a decent result, depending on how she responds to the conditions. There are a few that could go clear on the bike, mostly the french trio of Beaugrand, Lombardi and Perrieault... The other key factor is that this is a sprint distance, so if anyone has a poor swim and someone injects pace on the bike, they could be hooped, especially with the frigid water temps, and the uncertainty about how people will respond to it (likely to be wetsuit mandatory conditions, and depending on air-temps combined with the water-temps on race day, it could be nearing the threshold for cancelling the swim). I suspect that the races will be wide open, which will make for good viewing, but the unfortunate scheduling of the event in respect to the Paris Test event, means that many big names are giving it a pass to focus on trying to secure an auto-selection for the Olympics two weeks later at the test event...
In terms of why Sunderland, likely a lot has to do with what municipality was willing to put up the cash to host the event. As others have mentioned, with the current economic climate, and the cost of putting on these events, GB looks to be giving the WTCS a pass next season (which is too bad with the strength of some of their current athletes).
We harp on how vanilla some of the courses are, but the reality is that with the costs of putting on events at that level, it tends to be the same limited set of venues that are willing to invest in hosting the events, and the odd time that new cities emerge, they want to show-off some of the key landmarks of the city, and are not necessarily conducive to interesting courses. Will be interesting to see what the WTCS calendar looks like next year around the OG...