According to the Guardian today “Brownlees chances of going to Toyko were dashed because he was disqualified” not “because he’s running injured and was way off the pace for the second race in 2 weeks” or because “he hasn’t performed at this level since the last Olympics” 
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Yep, the DQ is neither here nor there in terms of going to Tokyo. It was a bit sad really seeing him jog round clearly not run fit.
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Has he been run fit since that IM he actually managed to finish (was it Western Aus or something?).
Pulled on the last 1 or 2 challenge events as well didn’t he?
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He did some ITU races at the back end of last year and was going ok, finished 2nd to Luis in the last one
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He said on Twitter last night that he needs an ankle operation and has been trying to get by for about 3 months. Not sure if he’ll be able to have it now and get fit for Kona?
You’d have thought that the old Bahrain team connections would’ve been able to organise that by now 
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Good to see Beth Potter come in 7th after Yokohama. She was really doubting herself.
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Really it’s a case of him now of hoping his body holds up better as a pure longer and slower athlete to get maybe 2/3 more years in.
Very unlikely he can feature in Kona this year, presumably he delayed the Op as it took too much time out to give him an Olympic shot. By delaying he’ll have massively cut Kona run prep time if he has it now.
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LCB was seriously impressive. Strung the swim out as expected, scratchy technically but looked plenty strong enough to be competitive on the bike and a more than decent 10k.
If she sticks around in ITU and gets serious about improving the skillset she will make the races very interesting and has a real shot of Paris.
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if that’s Ali B’s just WT race, it’d be a sad way to go out…
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She literally missed out on a podium due to poor transitions. I’m working on the assumption there that if she was able to get out of T1 with the leading trio, she would have held onto the wheels. Which, on the run side of things, is a huge shock.
Only Duffy put serious time into LCB, which given her lack of short course pedigree is astounding.
Kingma 34:59
Learmonth 35:08
Coldwell 35:17
Duffy 33:47
LCB 35:07
You’ve got to think if she was in that leading group of four off the bike, she’d have possibly also had that extra tenth of a percent extra motivation to dig even deeper.
I really didn’t think she had a chance of factoring at short course, but this has proven to everyone she can. She’s going to completely change the dynamics of racing, and with her swim is always going to be near the pointy end if she can speed up her transitions.
Agree on her “style” though. She has a proper pedal mashing cycling style, which is very in vogue for Ironman, but I don’t think is quite as helpful for short course. Similar to the run. She’s very low cadence compared to the rest.
As for Alex, wow. If we did have a third spot, I’d almost take Ali just to chaperone Alex to T2! By far and away GB’s best shot
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He has a rib cage distortion or something. You can see it in nearly all his photos. The right side as you look at him has a really pronounced section.
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I think she’d have had a better chance at being there, but would have had to have burned a lot of bikkies to be up there and not run as well. I wonder whether making the (smart) decision to not try to get on the the wheels and destroy herself totally meant that she could ride at a more flat pace rather than the surging and attacking, and that gave her more room for the run.
I reckon it’s a it of a stretch to say that she will completely change the dynamics of the racing. She’s a sharp end swimmer - not quite as dominant as I think we’d all thought - and a solid runner, but I don’t think she’s going to be gamechangingly dominant. If we went back to non-drafting Olympic distance - she’d be alarmingly quick, I fear.
Her transition speed is no surprise - just check out the Challenge Miami blooper reel. 
Learning to do a flying mount a few days beforehand also…
Personally I think there was more lost in the dead turns. She was always fighting to get back on - but as one of the commentators said, if we could see their power files she’d probably have had the highest output.
Either way, these are all things sorted out by focussing on ITU racing.
I suspect she could use more of a winners mindset - but perhaps the sports psychology is different in women. I’m often hearing bike racing tactics are different between men and women due to that.
I think the gap that front swim pack pulled out is bigger than I’ve seen before. You normally see Jess trying to do something like that, yet this time she was just hanging on. The pace of that swim effectively ended the race for a whole raft of big names. Duffy ran over a minute faster than the front three, yet was still over a minute down.
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I think LCB changes dynamics by ripping the swim apart, leaving smaller groups. That’s what put the 3 who ended on the podium up the road.
AB and the other men hoping to do similar had no swimmer capable/willing to do that to the field and thus no swim lead to work with and could only make an insignificant 8 or 9 secs on the hill out of T1 which was always going to be shut down.
The other thing, could Ali claim his swim dunk was justified because McQueen’s swim stroke was so disgustingly, infuriatingly easy looking…
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Have to say the run finish was genius! Great weekend of racing.
Saw the swans on the TV coverage 
. They just drifted serenely out of the way of the oncoming swimmers!
Just another sign of a changing of the guard. It might have been OK back in the day, but ITU realise that open water biff is not only dangerous, but a big obstacle to getting people into the sport. AB has made a few enemies on the circuit for being ruthless, can’t argue with his results, but times have changed.
The course made for some great racing. Not sure we can hope for the same in Tokyo, which might suit Yee just fine. The women might struggle to outrun Duffy though.
Worth the effort, well done. Outstanding event.
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