My worst race ever … Gwen Jorgensen recaps WTCS Cagliari
The fire is still burning despite "worst swim ever"
It’s not hard to imagine that American 2016 Olympic gold medalist Gwen Jorgensen did not enjoy her time in Cagliari for last weekend’s World Triathlon Championship Series (WTCS) race. The American was one of the last women out of the water, and would eventually get lapped out of the bike about halfway through the ride. In a video posted on her YouTube channel (see below), Jorgensen described her “worst race ever.”
In the video Jorgensen said that the trip didn’t go well pretty much right from the start. She got caught in a thunderstorm while training on the first day, then over the next few days the entire family, including her mother who was there to help with her two children. As if that wasn’t enough, she was bit by a dog, too.
5 Things we learned from WTCS Cagliari … in words and pictures
Jorgensen said that even though the start of the swim was a challenge, that wasn’t ultimately the reason for her poor performance.
“Basically I just had a big mental mishap that day and messed up, and that’s what we got,” she said. “If you know me at all, if you’ve seen my past results this year, you would know that is not my best, physically.”
I’ve had a lot of tough conversations with my psychologist since then, and we’ve looked at what went wrong and how we can avoid them,” she continued, explaining that one of the things that she realized from the experience is that “I have been ignoring some mom guilt I have and I need to work on that. I need to ensure that I am doing well as a person to succeed.”
Olympic gold medalist Gwen Jorgensen returns to triathlon for run at Paris Games
She remains determined to continue with her Olympic dream. Her next race will be the World Triathlon Cup Huatulco later this month.
“I think the World Cup is a good level for me to race at right now,” she said. “For me I know that I don’t need to make any big changes in my training … I know that I have put in the work. I am exciting to keep going and give it another shot. I would not quit after a race like that. I think it would be easy to say I’m done, that’s it, it was horrible, but I think I need to continue until I have a race that I know is my potential.”
