BELOW
• Brigitte McMahon tops Jones for Olympic gold
• Harrop's coach says Harrop's the one to win
• Pontoon positions determined by ITU's new points list
• Hey, that NBC triathlon stuff looks familiar
• In-form Harrop and Lessing lead the "form charts"
September 16, Sydney, Australia (www.slowtwitch.com):
Brigitte McMahon and Magali Messmer played the Swiss spoilers in the Olympic women's triathlon, the race that was supposed to go to Sydney's own Michellie Jones, the silver medalist, and the other Australians.
McMahon and Messmer pulled off an international upset that had been alluded to back in April, when they were the 2-3 finishers, in that order, behind Jones in the ITU World Cup over the same course.
But this was the Olympics, with the whole world watching, and the 33-year-old McMahon from Baar, Switzerland -- and married to an American -- wanted the Olympic stage to herself. She stayed close on the swim, cycled with the leaders on the bike and asserted herself in the second half of the run -- just when it looked like Messmer, the more decorated Swiss, might steal the show.
McMahon made her ultimate move on the final downhill, leaving Jones looking at silver, and two seconds behind. McMahon won in 2:00:40, to Jones' 2:00:42. Messmer came third, ahead of the other surprise of the field, fourth-placing Joanna Zeiger of the USA. Australia's Loretta Harrop, second-ranked behind world No. 1 Jones, finished fifth after falling off the run pace, halfway through.
The race proved as brilliant and exciting as everyone had hoped it would. Few would have chosen McMahon as the Olympic champion, for she has not once in the last four seasons of racing, won an international-level triathlon outside of Switzerland. She is the ITU's No. 21-ranked triathlete.
She had hinted of greatness earlier this season, however. She was the runner-up twice in two World Cups: first in Sydney in April, then in Lausanne in August.
It was the showcase race of triathlon's short lifetime, as the Olympics' newest sport, and it was certainly the race of McMahon's whole life. "It was totally overwhelming," McMahon told the race announcers soon over the line. "he people were cheering the whole time; there was constant noise. The whole race was totally overwhelming.
"I heard them all cheering for Michellie. But I just did my race, ran it my way."
Jones may have been the crowd-pleaser as she upheld Australia's hopes around the course. But the real crowd-pleaser, in the end, was the women's fight to the finish. Bring on the men -- same time, same place, 24 hours from now!
THE EVENT AS IT HAPPENED HERE
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Harrop's coach says Harrop's the one to win
September 15, Sydney, Australia (www.slowtwitch.com):
Brett Sutton -- the coach that everybody loves to hate -- believes that he has quietly coached Loretta Harrop to a supremacy in the sport that, barring injury, should lead her to tonight's Olympic gold medal.
Australians Harrop and Sutton stuck together in the nearly-three years that the coach was ostracized at all levels for his admission and convicted for a sex offense in January 1999. Harrop, the ITU's No. 2-ranked triathlete behind Olympic teammate Michellie Jones, gave up her Triathlon Australia support in favor of working with the coach she has known since she was 12 years old.
On Saturday at 10am in Sydney (7pm in New York), Harrop will start the race with Sutton half-a-world away. He didn't even attempt to get credentials, and has stayed behind at his group's training camp in Switzerland while Harrop and his other athletes go it alone in the Olympics.
Sutton's bottom-line prediction from afar: "Loretta will hammer everyone for 40k on the bike and make them tired. Then her partner-in-crime, Nancy Kemp-Arendt, will run with her. This is the Olympics. They're not sitting around, playing in the pack. They will ride strong, and then run strong."
It's Luxembourg's Kemp-Arendt who is the darkhorse figure among everyone else's pre-race choices for the medal positions, namely Australia's Harrop, Jones and Nicole Hackett, and Canada's Carol Montgomery.
Jones is the media's pick to win, for she has the ITU's No. 1 ranking and won confidently in the ITU World Cup over the same course last April. Hackett is the youthful (22) world champion, and Montgomery the mature, two-sport talent who was closing fast on the short course in Perth.
Kemp-Arendt will be a factor in the swim, as she was a swimmer in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. What her American and Australian competitors don't know is that she has had a tremendous, 12-month buildup to Sydney, training with Sutton, alongside Harrop, in Switzerland.
Here is how Sutton sees the women's race unfolding:
"There will be a pack of four or five: Loretta, Nikky (Hackett), Nancy and Sheila Taormina (USA): They are the four predominent swimmers. Magali Messmer (SUI) will sit in on the back because it's a wetsuit swim, and Joelle Franzmann (GER) has the ability to hang on there, as well.
"I don't see anyone outside those four or five having the weaponry, even with wetsuits, to stay with them in the water. There will be 30 to 40 seconds back to the main group, a nice gap. What people don't realize is that, before in Sydney, there was quite a lot of bouy-cutting. Not this time; they've made it so you can't cut any time out.
"The Sydney course is quite unique in that the bike transition is so close to the swim, rather than having a 600-yard run to the bikes. We will probably see two groups of seven on the bikes ... the only way you'd have a huge pack is if it's bad weather. They had 60 in the bike pack in April, but that's not the nature of the course. That would happen again only if there's an accident up front, or if there's heavy rain and everyone is cautious.
"Then I see Loretta and Nikky leading the bike. Nancy is extremely strong there, too. There is no way the second pack will pedal up to them: They will ride the course faster, about five of them, a maximum of seven.
"The winner will come from this first pack, barring no injuries. I expect they will have 2-1/2 minutes off the bike. And if that does happen, Carol is the only one who can run them down.
"But if Carol (who is also racing the 10,000 meters in athletics) is in good 10k form, then this triathlon won't suit her. She'll be freezing, because the water in the harbor will be 15-1/2 degrees. It's going to be cold, coming out of the water, and the wind chill factor will be huge. McQuarrie Street is a windtunnel. And if Carol's at her 32:10 running pace, if the cold doesn't get her, she could be the one to come out of the second pack for a medal.
"Even if there's a pack of 20 up front, Loretta will still outrun everyone. Even if Carol is on form and going well, she can't pull back two minutes out of Loretta or Nancy. And if she's not there, I'm quietly confident that Loretta would outrun Michellie in a straight 10k.
"This sport is about being strong. You can feel fresh and sprinty, but the last 5k on this course is when you find something. The run is tough. You're coming off a jerky bike ride, there are two hills on each lap, plus two screaming descents. You're out of the seat a lot, and your body won't get a chance to rest.
"Michellie has done well on this course, but Loretta also handled it well two years ago."
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Pontoon positions determined by ITU's new points list
September 15, Sydney, Australia (www.slowtwitch.com):
The International Triathlon Union finally updated its world rankings lists on Wednesday, much to the surprise of the 100 top-ranked triathletes who make up the Olympic fields for Saturday's and Sunday's races.
After going nearly 4-1/2 months with nary a peep about ITU points, the ITU unveiled its latest lists -- and got scolded by the assembled athletes and media who expected a draw for the pontoon starting slots based on the May 1 rankings.
That is, after all, what the SOCOG handbook advised would be used. Most of the athletes spent their summer focusing on training, rather than racing for precious points -- which they had already fought for, for the last four seasons.
Not that the new rankings list made much difference. The ITU went, name by name, down the new list as the top-15 chose their starting slots on the pontoon in order, followed by the rest. But world champion Nicole Hackett was certainly rankled when she learned she had slipped from No. 11 in May to No. 17 in September.
Still, by a stroke of luck, Hackett ended up mid-pontoon (27th slot), next to the one considered the strongest swimmer in the race, Australia's Loretta Harrop (26), herself two slots away from USA's Sheila Taormina (24). Michellie Jones (39), Australia's popular pre-race favorite, is down the line, not too far from USA's Jennifer Gutierrez (41) and Canada's Carol Montgomery (45). The two Swiss who were 2-3 behind Jones at the ITU World Cup in Sydney in April, Magali Messmer and Brigitte McMahon, have chosen to swim their own race, away from the packs, in slots 1 and 2.
The men's pontoon draw puts Australia's probable swim leader, Craig Walton, smack in the middle at 25. Kazakstan's Dimitry Gaag (26) could easily latch on, while Britain's Simon Lessing (41) and New Zealand's Hamish Carter (52) are elsewhere. Britain's flu-stricken (but improving) Andrew Johns (51) will line up on the edge, next to Carter. On the far side, Australia's Miles Stewart (3) prefers to go it alone.
The ITU's new ranking lists were made public for the first time at the pre-Olympic press conference, with athletes' new rankings shown next to their names on the pontoon draw. The two Chinese women, for example, are ranked No. 142 (Dan Wang) and no. 178 (Meng Shi) respectively.
But anyone not in Sydney wanting to glimpse at the new list might not get the chance. For one thing, the ITU's website at www.triathlon.worldsport.com, still shows rankings as of May 2 -- the list that qualified 48 women and 52 men for the Olympics.
ITU has actually set up a website separate of the worldsport.com arrangement, at www.triathlon.org, where the top-25 men and women only are displayed in the new rankings.
But what happens next in the rankings game is anyone's guess. The person at ITU who handled the points calculations, Loreen Barnett, is returning to her previous job soon after the Olympics -- and it's not clear who will take up the task now.
That, however, is not the ITU's current concern about its points lists, the primary purpose of which was to get athletes qualified for Sydney. As triathlon has not yet even been confirmed for the Athens Olympics in 2004, it would be premature for the ITU to continue giving its world-rankings list the Olympic-qualifying status it has held for the last four years.
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Hey, that NBC triathlon stuff looks familiar
September 15, Sydney, Australia (www.slowtwitch.com):
When NBC-TV airs its planned 60 minutes of the women's triathlon on Saturday, and its 50 minutes of the men's triathlon on Sunday, Olympic viewers can know that one of the producers behind the profiles is Lisa Lax -- a true fan of triathlon.
Lax is responsible for the content of the "Up Close and Personal"-type segments during the Olympics. She has also been one of the producers for more than 10 years of NBC's award-winning telecasts of the Hawaii Ironman.
The Olympic coverage will showcase Lax and her creative team, which was responsible for the profiles of nearly 100 international athletes with "stories."
Lax herself told Sports Illustrated magazine, about the tape-delayed broadcasts: "Our Olympic telecast is not about results. It's more about the sacrifices of the athletes."
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In-form Harrop and Lessing lead the "form charts"
September 14, Sydney, Australia (www.slowtwitch.com):
Australia's Loretta Harrop and Britain's Simon Lessing carry the most impressive racing records into the weekend's triathlons: Nobody else in the Olympic fields has a winning record against them since the beginning of 1999. That's according to the "form charts" that triathlon analyst John Walker has published today in advance of the weekend's races.
Working from the Triathlonlive.com database, Walker assembled the head-to-head records, from 1 January 1999 through August 2000, of every Olympic triathlete against one another. (The link to the two tables is found on the website http://www.triathloncentral.com/rank.html).
"Interestingly, Loretta Harrop and Simon Lessing are the only athletes who do not have a losing record to any other athlete," Walker said.
"Harrop has a winning record against every athlete she has competed against, except for Carla Moreno (1-1), and this includes her recent DNFs (that is how Moreno got her one win against Harrop).
"And Lessing has an even record against Hamish Carter (2-2), Conrad Stoltz (1-1) and Jose Merchan (1-1). All of those losses came as a result of Tiszaujvaros 1999 (19th) and Lausanne 2000 (although Carter did place 1 and 2 in those two races. Lessing has not raced against Peter Robertson in this time period."
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