World Triathlon Individual Olympic Qualification Ranking Paris 2024 (americans):
1 Taylor Spivey 10 Taylor Knibb 15 Kirsten Kasper 24 Summer Rappaport
0 Gwen Jorgensen (her world triathlon rank is 354)
This may appear catastrophic for Jorgensen. It isn't. She can jump up many athletes in rankings in a season. It won't be easy, as she'll need to travel A LOT to chase ranking points to panic-rank (while sacrificing her family).
Process for making the team
Likely, two spots will be automatic qualifiers at two different races. A third spot will be discretionary based on results during the qualifying period. If the auto criteria is not met for the two auto spots (top 8 or better believe), then they will also become discretionary picks by USAT.
Chances at making the team
1st auto spot: Taylor Knibb will take one of the auto spots outright. She is that strong on the bike, she can dictate races anyway she wants off the front. She will get help to extend the gap on the bike from Duffy, Kingma, Coldwell, Spivey, or others. Knibb will grab the first spot and not risk it.
2nd auto spot: The other auto spot.... This is the big unknown. The time is there to get her rank up. She would need to crush BIG TIME this year.
But the reality of the sacrifice it will take is more difficult to weigh.
As this 2023 season wears on, she may readjust her life priorities, with two kids and a gold medal already. It is doable but it will be more challenging with the pull of her family now and the rough (very lame) lifestyle as a pro triathlete..... constant travel hassles, bike cases, breaking down and building up your bike for every race and bringing a ton of stuff on flights. It is ridiculous and cumbersome. The financial reward is about nill. It is blue collar stuff and not at all pampered. Comped hotel is about it.
If her fitness whips up, she could get this auto spot. I don't see any reason right now to think she can beat Spivey or Rappaport. Spivey is a very strong swim, bike, and runner. Rappaport a top swimmer who is getting better at bike handling but is already a great runner. Old Gwen would run either of them down. She is not old Gwen. Not yet.
3rd discretionary spot:
USAT will look at all races during the 2 year qualifying period to make this pick. If Gwen is on the up, and really getting some momentum by 2024, and the lifestyle hasn't broken her, this is her chance. She will need to get picked over others who never left triathlon, and sadly it is completely possible.
Chance at medaling if she makes the team:
I would concur, basically zero. The sport has super runners (if there is a large group off the bike). Beth Potter will be VERY scary by 2024. Potter broke the 5k RUNNING WORLD RECORD on the road (not ratified but the course was legit distance, confirmed by many). She will do serious damage this season. Old Gwen did not break any running world records. Neither did running-only Gwen. And the sport has uber bikers that will risk breaks to get away but who can also run fast off very hard bikes. american Taylor Knibb being one. Duffy, Coldwell, GTB, Spivey.
This should give you an idea of how hard it would be for Quigley to make this team if the "best triathlete in history" will have a hard time making it. Quigly has an even lower rank than Jorgensen who, herself, is essentially invisible right now in rankings.
How are CQ and GJ in anyway similar? Quigley is a young-ish world class 3000M runner that at least in theory could compete with the majority in the run in mixed. GJ is 38 with children? Apples and oranges to me. Im not saying CQ is a shoe in, Im just saying on paper she is way better positioned if she can find her old form.
You seem to be critical of her "failed" career? Why is a former gold medalist a terrible person for giving it one last shot again?
Her running career failed.
If her shot at making the 2024 team irritates you, this thread is not for you. If her shot at medaling again irritates you, this thread is REALLY not for you.
She has every chance to try. If she finds her old form by USAT's discretionary pick deadline, making the team is a sure thing. Let's see what happens.
To answer your question, she doesn't need "one last shot". Others who treat the sport more seriously by not leaving it for so long need their first shot before she gets another. I support others before I support Gwen.
BigMig19 wrote: Times have changed? So that makes everyone in history before now... not one of the best ever? You can only compare people to their contemporaries. Talent is talent, Prefontaine, Rodgers, Shorter, Tergat, all would be better with supershoes. Gwen would have been better too I assume. But comparing a 38 y/o with 2 kids thats been out of the sport for 7 years to todays athlete is weird ( with regard to the "best ever" question).
Yes, I hear what you are saying, for sure. But did you read my next post? I literally put Paula Newby-Frazer on the top of the Mount Rushmore of triathlon. Past athletes are still "the greats." Despite his slower PR, Dave Wottle is a better 800m runner than Boris Berian, I agree. I am not going only off times.
But this was a thread about "can Gwen come back and compete." I hope she can, but I don't think it is possible give how the sport has changed.
This post was edited 3 minutes after it was posted.
Reason provided:
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World Triathlon Individual Olympic Qualification Ranking Paris 2024 (americans):
1 Taylor Spivey 10 Taylor Knibb 15 Kirsten Kasper 24 Summer Rappaport
0 Gwen Jorgensen (her world triathlon rank is 354)
This may appear catastrophic for Jorgensen. It isn't. She can jump up many athletes in rankings in a season. It won't be easy, as she'll need to travel A LOT to chase ranking points to panic-rank (while sacrificing her family).
Realistically she can't chase points. She needs to spend 6 months getting in tri shape. Her way to make the team is that 3rd pick by showing she is in great form at the end of this season and next. She isn't going to get enough points but if you can say I beat the 3rd and 4th people 3 times convincingly you have a good argument for the slot.
The question is what type of shape she will be in 6 months. She gave birth like 4 months ago. This race could have been on like 6 weeks of decent training. It is reasonable to expect decent improvements going forward but enough to be competitive? Time will tell. A race in like 3 months should tell us a lot.
World Triathlon Individual Olympic Qualification Ranking Paris 2024 (americans):
1 Taylor Spivey 10 Taylor Knibb 15 Kirsten Kasper 24 Summer Rappaport
0 Gwen Jorgensen (her world triathlon rank is 354)
This may appear catastrophic for Jorgensen. It isn't. She can jump up many athletes in rankings in a season. It won't be easy, as she'll need to travel A LOT to chase ranking points to panic-rank (while sacrificing her family).
Realistically she can't chase points. She needs to spend 6 months getting in tri shape. Her way to make the team is that 3rd pick by showing she is in great form at the end of this season and next. She isn't going to get enough points but if you can say I beat the 3rd and 4th people 3 times convincingly you have a good argument for the slot.
The question is what type of shape she will be in 6 months. She gave birth like 4 months ago. This race could have been on like 6 weeks of decent training. It is reasonable to expect decent improvements going forward but enough to be competitive? Time will tell. A race in like 3 months should tell us a lot.
She's fit now. Not old Gwen but not starting from scratch. She has hit the ground running. She needs to do a full, not a sprint. See where strength is.
The 3rd discretionary Oly spot decision is not made end of this year. It's made next year, late Spring / early Summer, giving her many more months. Lots of time.
We won't know where she really is until she gets WTS starts and at the full distance. But....... world cups do have some WTS athletes racing, just not WTS depth. Even if she races mostly world cups, it's still a reasonable indication where she'd be in WTS races (if it is a full distance).
The difference is ranking points. Much less offered at world cups than WTS.
The previous poster summed it up pretty well. She was dominant during her peak, but not “the best ever”. The sport has moved on in her absence. There is no way she wins another individual medal. Just making the team would be a huge accomplishment.
Well that may be as I admit I don’t know much about this but I do know that Gwen will be 38 in April 2024 so for her to be compared even to herself at age 30 winning Gold in 2016 may be asking a bit much. So perhaps winning a Gold would still be possible if she were to be 30 next year instead of 38.
This for sure. But even if she could magically get back to her fitness from 8 years ago, a medal wouldn’t be a guarantee. The rest of the world has gotten a lot better in that time.
She was a very good and successful short course triathlete. To be the best in history she has to be someone like Jan Fredeno who won it both short course (Olympic gold) and long course (Ironman Kona).
Is give the nod to Chrissie Wellington personally for best female triathlete in history. She does have a shorter course youth woeld gold but I don't believe there is a female triathlete with an Olympic medal and a tap three in Kona but if someone knows of such a person let me know.
Why would triathlon be so much different 7 years later? Whatever technology is so much different - she gets to use just like everyone else.
thats a terrible take - do you think T&F hasn't progressed apart from the shoes? Look at all the Mile times nowadays, the sport moves on, same with Triathlon
I think people are making a false equivalency with Gwen's return. Yes she [gold]medalled, a long time ago in sports-terms, but this is not her returning in her previous shape across all disciplines, she has lurched between bad performances, just had time off for her 2nd child, and now is returning to Tri' not as an honest attempt but as one last swing at trying to keep her career going.
I don't think anyone would have very high expectations for any Track/Road athlete that had been out of the sport for 7 years - do you think Asbel Kiprop is going to win Oly Gold next year? No.
Idk if she's the GOAT but a gold medal certainly helps her case. I think the time away from the sport really hurts her case. I'm sure she has some regrets about leaving the sport, especially with the creation of PTO & bigger end of year bonuses for top athletes. She wasn't motivated enough to stay in the sport. Not great for one of your GOAT contenders. She would have been at her peak for 70.3 racing by now, instead of making her short course comeback.
What I'll say for Paris is that she still has a long way to go & that there are a lot of strong Team USA contenders that she has to jump. Maybe she'll end up on the relay. The 3rd place in New Zealand was solid but she raced a Continental Cup because she doesn't have any points -- World Cups & WTCS races have stronger fields. Ainsley Thorpe was 2nd in that race & then was 17th @ the 1st WTCS race of the season a week later. That bodes well. It mean Gwen is ready for WTCS racing & would have roughly been somewhere around 30th in that race (she beat 50th by a minute at the Continental Cup). Triathlon has only gotten more competitive since she has left. She's going to have to get her speed take out back. She was 10th out of the water in New Zealand. She would've been buried at the WTCS race off of that.
So, all in all, I'm optimistic about her return. Intrigued if/when she turns to long course. Not here for anybody bashing her for no reason. Be better than that.
Gwen has ZERO chance of getting an individual medal. The top triathletes nowadays are more complete than she was and the top two US triathletes, the Taylors, would absolutely dust her. However, the 3rd spot is legitimately in question and Gwen could help a relay team in the right circumstances if she returns to decent run form.
Why would triathlon be so much different 7 years later? Whatever technology is so much different - she gets to use just like everyone else.
I think just use a little bit of common sense here. You see see how women's running has been getting better & better over the last decade. A lot of the same things happening in T&F are happening in triathlon. There's just so much more development globally. Talent has gotten better & better in her 7 year absence. You have better front pack swimmers, & you have people who could be decent track runners. It will be hard for her to get her swim back to where it was. She is going to need to hold serve and be dominant on the run to have a shot but the women up front won't crater on the run if they have a lead on her.
As others have said, US talent is at an all-time high. Knibb, Spivey, Rappaport, Kasper, Zaferas, Sereno. These women haven't spent the last 7 years away from the sport.
One might compare triathlon to cycling - in that different races favor different kinds of athletes.
Gwen was very, very far from "the best" all round triathlete. Her cycling was pretty bad. If her race came down to the run, she was pretty dominant. Otherwise she was pretty irrelevant.
And she was a better runner 6 years ago- on triathlon training.
Her career at the top was too short. Had she remained in the triathlon, she would have had a chance. She is 8th all time in this ranking. Her wins and titles are way too few to vie for the title of best ever.
We have discussed, debated and, frankly, argued furiously about who should make it onto our top-12 female triathletes of all time list... do you agree with our chosen dozen?
Simply no. Flora Duffy has taken that title and can solidify it if she transitions to the mid distance non draft distance, which she has not been able to handle thus far. Gwen had her time and good luck to her trying to remain relevant but uneducated hyperbole from ESPN is unnecessary.
The sport has super runners (if there is a large group off the bike). Beth Potter will be VERY scary by 2024. Potter broke the 5k RUNNING WORLD RECORD on the road (not ratified but the course was legit distance, confirmed by many). She will do serious damage this season.
not to get side tracked but this is wildly inaccurate. The course was short.
- The course was started in a different place to when it had been previously officially measured (backed up by the Strava data of participants).
- Running in looped cycle-track circuits like this always throws up innaccurate GPS, and having done it the same myself, you end up with 5.1K or 5.2K for running a proper measured course. Strange everyone got 5K exactly on GPS here though..
- Beth went into the race apparently heavily fatigued (in her own words)
- She also the week before the race broke 3:00 for 1K for the first time in her life in a training session... now within a week she runs 14:41? no.
- Her 3000m PR is 8:53 from 2016, and hasn't gone sub9 since. In fact apart from this one race, her life time bests are 4:18, 4:46, 8:53, 15:24, 25:34, 32:03, 73:29 - does that strike you as someone with 14:41 potential?
- Beth mentioned how her watch never had her on pace for anything below 15:20 "then I turned the corner and saw the finish already"
- Sweat Elite met up with her soon after to film a workout and she struggled to hit 2:30/800 for reps
It is akin to what has happened in running. Remember 7 years ago when 13:29 was a "amazing time" in the NCAA? Now it is "average" and there are like 4 people at every college who run that time.
Remember when a sub-4 was still considered a good NCAA mile time? Everything has changed. You can give Ben True and Chris Derrick the new shoes, but they are from a different era.
Triathlon is no different. Times have changed.
I beg to differ. Meanwhile Abdi (my generation) and Jake Riley (Derrick’s generation) both made the 2020 Olympic team.
Meb was competitive in 2000 and 2014 and the sport was very different.
To answer your first question, no, she isn't the greatest triathlete ever. She isn't even top 2 in short course. Duffy and Spirig both match her Olympic gold but both have done more than Gwen outside of the gold. Her two year peak was the best two year stretch ever but that was far too short. Duffy has beaten her largest WTCS win record and then went out and became the first woman ever to lead a race wire to wire. There then are all of the long course women who had better careers with many Kona wins and HM wins.
I don't understand why people are having such a hard time understanding how much better women's triathlon is today versus 2016. The top women all are the top swimmers who also are the top bikers who also can run. Can they run as fast as Gwen at her peak? No but Gwen never would be able to swim with the top women today, would get further dropped on the bike and then would be so far back the little bit she would be able to make up on the run wouldn't matter. She would be a worse Beaugrand who is a top swimmer who still cannot handle a hard 40K on the bike and still is not a factor in the Olympic distance (she must better at sprints and is best female on the relay). She never would have medaled in Tokyo because she never would have been able to swim with the lead women on the swim and the race was over if you weren't in the lead pack. Flora then ran 33 flat.
Her bid to make the Olympics is entirely hinged on conning USAT to give her the 3rd discretionary spot. She has ZERO chance of grabbing one of the two possible auto picks. However, as noted above, there are many women who are far superior to a 38-year old far ahead of her who can swim much better than she ever could (and swimming really matters now). The two Taylors, Rappaport, Kasper and Zafares all are ahead of her. She could pass Kasper but I don't see how she ever gets ahead of the other four. Don't forget that if she makes the team, it means that two of those four don't. She then would have to bump one of the other two who make the team off the relay. The only way any of this would happen is politics or major injuries to multiple women.
The sport has super runners (if there is a large group off the bike). Beth Potter will be VERY scary by 2024. Potter broke the 5k RUNNING WORLD RECORD on the road (not ratified but the course was legit distance, confirmed by many). She will do serious damage this season.
not to get side tracked but this is wildly inaccurate. The course was short.
- The course was started in a different place to when it had been previously officially measured (backed up by the Strava data of participants).
- Running in looped cycle-track circuits like this always throws up innaccurate GPS, and having done it the same myself, you end up with 5.1K or 5.2K for running a proper measured course. Strange everyone got 5K exactly on GPS here though..
- Beth went into the race apparently heavily fatigued (in her own words)
- She also the week before the race broke 3:00 for 1K for the first time in her life in a training session... now within a week she runs 14:41? no.
- Her 3000m PR is 8:53 from 2016, and hasn't gone sub9 since. In fact apart from this one race, her life time bests are 4:18, 4:46, 8:53, 15:24, 25:34, 32:03, 73:29 - does that strike you as someone with 14:41 potential?
- Beth mentioned how her watch never had her on pace for anything below 15:20 "then I turned the corner and saw the finish already"
- Sweat Elite met up with her soon after to film a workout and she struggled to hit 2:30/800 for reps
Some Stravas had it longer than 5k or spot on. Guess it depends..
Sweat Elite met up with Potter during a triathlon training block, not before her 5k record(ish) accomplishment. Did you look up Potter's run workouts from 2016 when she ran in the Rio Olympics? Start there, Sweat Elite triathlon block.
To the point, Jorgensen has never been close to doing anything Worldly for running alone. 9th at trials? National class, sure. Not an international team and certainly not Beth Potter. Beth Potter is an Olympic runner. Gwen is not.
Potter is still on the up and up, momentum wise, still getting faster in the water and stronger on the bike. It's a huge puzzle., learning to run REALLY fast in that puzzle takes time. Ask Gwen.
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