We’ve already focused on the potential damage too many one-dimensional courses could do to Olympic-distance triathlon – and the early indications for Los Angeles aren’t too promising.
Uber-biker Taylor Knibb has already said that even a home Games might not be enough to tempt her back to short course if the bike section ends up being predominantly flat and “around a parking lot in Long Beach”.
And when we spoke to Team GB medal winners Alex Yee, Beth Potter and Georgia Taylor-Brown recently, all of them stressed that interesting courses tend to make for more dynamic races – WTCS Weihai this season being a case in point.
The LA 2028 course still has to be fully determined, but British Triathlon’s Performance Director Mike Cavendish admits he’s currently scratching his head.
‘Courses are all becoming samey’
Speaking to TRI247 as we started to look ahead to the next Olympic cycle, he told us: “I think it’s something that, as a sport, not just for the Olympics and Paralympics, we’ve got to really start to address because the courses are all becoming samey.
“We saw with Paris, if you forget about the iconic backdrop, that the course itself had the potential to not be the most exciting.
“In the end the fact that there had been so much rain this summer meant that the current was so strong for the swim – it was double, triple what it was for the Test Event last year – that actually made it more exciting.
“There’s usually something that you can kind of put your finger on that you can really go after for an Olympic course. But at the moment, being blunt, we’re struggling to figure out what that is for LA.”
‘There are hills in LA’
“The only thing that at the moment we can see is the heat, because we know it’s going to be warm, but it’s not going to be Tokyo warm. We don’t think the water is going to be anywhere near as warm as Tokyo.
“We do hope that the organisers are able to make that course interesting and have some features that stand out – there are hills in LA. There is obviously going to be a sea swim, so ideally don’t put it in a sheltered harbour.
“Look at the hill on the bike course you had in Rio [straight out of T1], for example, it changes things immediately and then it just gives a point of interest and gives people something to go after, particularly if they aren’t the fastest runners.
“There are things that the organisers can do to make it interesting, because the last thing that you want, and this includes people like Alex [Yee] and Beth [Potter] – for whom people on the outside might think otherwise – is for it just to be a run-off.
“They don’t. They want it to be a proper race. They want to come out of it feeling like they’ve really, really been tested across swim, bike and run.
The same for the neutral, you don’t want it just to be a roll around on the bike and you get to the end and then it’s just the fastest runners running away.
“So they have to do something with LA in my opinion to make the course interesting enough so that it holds the casual spectators for whom maybe this is the first time they’ve seen a triathlon because it’s not going to be quite as iconic a backdrop as you had with Paris.”
‘Embarrassment of riches’
Continuing the look ahead to LA, the selection dilemmas – particularly for the women – underlined the incredible strength in depth that Team GB had in that sphere for Paris.
So Cavendish’s answer when asked how things are shaping up four years out from LA might just surprise.
He told us: “The irony, I would say, is that at the moment having looked at the data closely recently, I think our men’s future is looking slightly more rosy than our women.
“We’ve had an absolute embarrassment of riches for our women for a long time and I don’t yet know what people like Beth and Georgia [Taylor-Brown] are planning on doing long term. I’ve not sat down and had that conversation with them yet, but clearly I hope they’re still around.
“We have a group of women who are on our world-class programme at the moment, but there is a little bit of a gap behind that.
“Our men’s side is definitely stronger and Alex [Yee], as far as I’m aware, is not going anywhere. You’ve got Hugo [Milner] coming through, you’ve got Connor Bentley, who is a World Under 23 champion.
“You’ve got Hamish Reilly and we’ve got some others that are coming through from our men’s side who are probably a little bit closer and we think might be able to get a little bit quicker. So I’m actually pretty confident about where our men’s programme is going.
“We’ve still got some fantastic women but we’ve just got a little bit of a gap to close behind some of our more senior women.”
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