Jonny Brownlee misses out on Paris Olympics selection

For the first time since 2004 and four Olympic Games, there will be no Brownlee brother competing in the triathlon in Paris.
 
With only one men’s spot alongside double-Olympic medal winner Alex Yee remaining, the GB selection panel decided to plump for Sam Dickinson ahead of Jonny Brownlee.
 
It marks an end to the Brownlees’ Olympic careers that have spanned from Alistair’s debut in Beijing 2008, to gold and bronze in London, gold and silver in Rio, and then relay gold for Jonny in Tokyo.  
 
The women’s discretionary selections see Georgia Taylor-Brown and Kate Waugh joining world champion Beth Potter, who secured automatic qualification last year.
 
If the men’s was a tight call, the women’s choice was so contentious an extended appeals process meant the original announcement due on Monday 10 June was pushed back until today.
 
The unlucky party to miss out is Sophie Coldwell, with the Commonwealth relay champion’s appeal over being left out in favour of Waugh taken to Sport Resolutions, a UK-based independent, not-for-profit, arbitration service.
 
It meant only four triathletes were present at the official Team GB ‘kitting out’ day on Tuesday 11 June that’s seen as the start of the Olympic experience by many athletes.
 
The nominated reserves in case of injury or illness are Brownlee and Coldwell, with no further athletes on standby at this point.

How was the GB women’s team decided?

With the chance to qualify automatically requiring podiums in the Paris test event and, additionally for non-Tokyo individual medallists, the World Series finale in Pontevedra in 2023, only Yee and Potter were able to make the grade, which meant selection decisions rolled over into 2024.
 
There were no more guaranteed spots on offer for podiums or first-past-the-post results against team-mates, but the athletes knew from the selection criteria that the World Series races would have a strong bearing, particularly Cagliari in Sardinia on 25 May.
 
While Potter was back on the podium in third place in Italy, the critical part was what was happening behind.
 
Tokyo individual silver medallist Taylor-Brown placed sixth, Coldwell finished seventh and Waugh came in 10th, with the final call in the hands of the three-man panel headed by performance director Mike Cavendish.
 
Ultimately, Taylor-Brown was picked and the third spot came down in favour of 2022 World U23 champion and last year’s runner-up in Pontevedra, Waugh.
 
Unlike in previous Olympics where there have been assigned domestique or pilot roles for GB athetes, all three of the selected women will be free to race for individual glory.
 
“When we have three who can win a medal on their day we don’t believe it’s our place to interfere,” Cavendish said.

“We will give them the same information and ability to go and do what they need to do and, in essence, may the best women win.”

How was the GB men’s team decided?

The men’s selection path took a different turn after no-one showed the form to suggest they were a likely individual medal contender.
 
Instead, both Dickinson and Brownlee were encouraged to head to a usually low-key continental cup race in Kielce, a two-round super-sprint contest to prove they should be picked for the relay.
 
Again, it wasn’t clear-cut that whoever finished higher would get the spot, but after both won their semi-finals, Dickinson out-sprinted Brownlee in the closing yards of the final to take the tape. Brownlee finished third.
 
“Sam’s made a significant step forward,” Cavendish said, explaining the selection. “He’s matured over the last 3-4 years. He’s done numerous relays for us since Tokyo. He’s robust in a way he hasn’t been before, and he’s outperformed Jonny, albeit only marginally, in that race in Kielce.
 
“Our challenge with Jonny was simply that through a combination of injury, illness, bad luck, race programming, he’s just not given us the evidence.
 
“Jonny is a legend of the sport, no-one needs me to tell them, but unfortunately – and Jonny wouldn’t expect us to – we can’t select on sentiment, and the slightly greater body of evidence in terms of current form and relay stature, and what we think we’re likely to see in Paris, Sam just had the edge. But it was incredibly close.”

“We expect Georgia to step forward”

With Taylor-Brown missing the key races in 2023 through a calf tear, it was decided she had shown enough form in 2024, with two podiums plus a sixth place in Sardinia to suggest her trajectory is the right one for Paris.
 
“She was the first of the three past the post [in Italy], obviously has the pedigree that others haven’t with multiple wins and podiums and is a reigning Olympic medallist having achieved that off horrendous preparation [Taylor-Brown was on crutches 12 weeks before Tokyo],” Cavendish said.
 
“It was probably always going to be a little bit easier for her, but she had to go out and perform and got closer to that podium. We know she is on her way back from a significant chunk of time out last year, and we expect her to step forward.”

The appeals process

At the time of interview, Cavendish declined to comment on the selection of Waugh over Coldwell. ”It’s in the process of appeal,” he explained last week.

“It’s a normal part of the selection process and we’ve just got to let those appeals play out.”

GB’s medal target in Paris

Cavendish said they won’t publicise a specific medal target for Paris, but the aim is to at least replicate the three medals won in Tokyo. “If we can improve on that it will be even better. We’re going into Paris with a male who, if not favourite, is very close to being favourite in Alex.
 
“Whichever three women end up being on the team, all are going to be in medal contention so we could win one, two or three medals there. And I would hope we are going to be in contention for a medal in the relay at the very least.”
 
Other than Yee and Dickinson as the only two men, the relay team has not been selected yet, nor the order in which the athletes will start the man-woman-man-woman race – a reverse of the gender order from Tokyo.
 
“We have got an idea, but we’ll see how the individual race goes, how they pull up and with injury and illness and all that type of stuff,” Cavendish added.

“It also depends on what sense we get of what the other countries are going to do, whether they are going to front load or whether they are going to back load. We have a plan a, plan b and plan c, and we’ve got to make a judgement call.
 
“All countries are probably saying that you simply have to make sure you are not out of the race on leg one.

“Our gut feeling is that countries will be looking to select athletes on that basis, people who are not going to get exposed on the swim-bike at the very least.
 
“If you look at what happened to the French in Tokyo, they had to do an enormous amount of chasing because they got exposed on leg one. Australia the same, and they were out of the race,
 
“We just need to make sure whatever way we go we’re bang in the race and as much as we do look at other teams, we don’t want to be too reactive.

“We are the defending champions, we’ll go onto the pontoon ranked No 1 and we’ve got to expect that teams will want to respond to us as well.”