Olympic update: The road to Paris

There’s been lots of talk about big triathlon events in 2024, and it’s almost funny that, for now, there has been seemingly little noise about the upcoming Paris Olympics. The announcement of the new T100 World Triathlon Tour last week sucked up a lot of the “big event anticipation” for triathlon, but it won’t be long before things start to heat up on the Olympic front – next week we’ll see the first World Triathlon events of 2024 starting up, signalling the hunt for Paris qualification getting started.

Events

There will be three triathlon events at the Olympics in Paris. The men’s individual race takes place on July 30, the women’s individual event on July 31, with the mixed relay taking place on August 5.

The individual races will each feature 55 athletes. Any country that has two men and two women qualified will be eligible to have a team in the mixed relay.

For the individual race, athletes must be born on or before Dec. 21, 2006 (they’ll be at least 18) and to be part of the mixed relay they need to be born on or before Dec. 31, 2009 (at least 15).

Qualification process

We’ll try to keep all this as simple and understandable as possible, but if you want to do a deep dive into the various paths to Olympic qualification, you can check out this document from World Triathlon.

Athletes have from now until the end of the qualification window on May 27 to earn Olympic qualifying points. (You can see the Olympic qualification rankings here.) There’s also a path to making it to the Games through the Mixed Relay, and there are a number of competitions at which countries can qualify two men and two women for the Games through that avenue.

While athletes are out there earning qualifying points, the spots they earn actually go to their country, which means the final selection is determined by the national governing body. A country can have up to a maximum of three qualifiers if they have three athletes ranked in the top 30 of the World Triathlon Individual Olympic Qualification Ranking.

In terms of the “pathway” to qualifying, athletes can qualify as part of a mixed relay team or based on their ranking. Here’s how all that breaks down:

• Host country – 2 men and 2 women (France)
• 2022 and 2023 Mixed Relay World Champions – 4 men and 4 women per country – Great Britain (2022) and Germany (2023)
• 2024 Mixed Relay Qualification – 4 men and 4 women (top two teams at that race, which takes place in May.)
• Mixed Relay Olympic Qualification Ranking – 12 men and 12 women. (These are the top six teams in the ranking at the end of the qualifying period.)
• Individual Rankings – 26 spots per gender (with that maximum of three per country, this can roll down)
• Universality – 2 men and 2 women. These spots are designed to encourage participation from countries that normally wouldn’t be able to qualify.
• New Flags – 5 men and 5 women. This category is to “ensure continental representation. “The highest ranked NOC not yet qualified will obtain one quota place for their NOC.”

(Yes, I know I said I was going to try and keep all this simple. That’s the best I could do – sorry.)

Qualifiers

Remember I mentioned that athletes were earning spots for their countries, right. That means that even though you might be one of the highest ranked athletes, you’re still at the whim of your National Governing Body (NGB) to go to the Games. Countries typically come up with qualifying criteria that will guarantee an athlete a spot on the Olympic team. Heading into last year’s Paris Test Event we outlined some of the various country’s qualifying standards – you can check them out in the story below.

Olympic qualifying on the line at Paris Test Event

Based on all that, here are a few of the names that have either been confirmed, or appear to be the likely recipients of their country’s picks:

• France: 2023 world champ Dorian Coninx, WTCS and Paris Test Event runner up Cassandre Beaugrand, Championship finals bronze medalist Pierre Le Corre. (Currently 2022 world champ Leo Bergere hasn’t met the automatic qualifying criteria.)
• Great Britain: Paris Test Event champs Beth Potter (also the WTCS champion) and Alex Yee have both been named to the British squad.
• Germany: Laura Lindemann, Lisa Tertsch and Nina Eim have all nailed their spots for Paris. Lasse Luhrs and Tim Hellwig met the qualification standard, too. Germany will likely have a third men’s spot to hand out.
• Netherlands: Maya King and Rachel Klamer have met the country’s qualifying criteria. (Klamer’s husband, Richard Murray, who competed for South Africa in Rio and Tokyo, appears likely to be on track to represent his new country in Paris.)
• USA: Taylor Knibb and Morgan Pearson both nailed their Paris spots thanks to top finishes at the Paris Test Event. There are five American women in the top 50 of the Olympic ranking, including 2016 gold medalist Gwen Jorgensen, Tokyo bronze medalist Katie Zaferes and third-ranked Taylor Spivey.
• Brazil: Manoel Messias met the qualifying criteria.
• Hungary: Csongor Lehmann has met his country’s standard.
• Canada appears on track to qualify two men and two women, which would also allow the country to compete in the Mixed Relay. Leading the way in the standings right now are Tyler Mislawchuk, Charles Paquet, Emy Legault and Dominika Jamnicky. Two-time Olympian Amelie Kretz is coming back from injury and will hopefully be healthy enough to make another run at the Games this spring.

 

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Eiffel Tower in the medals

As we reported yesterday, the Olympic medals to be handed out in Paris will include some recycled metal sourced from a “metal warehouse in Paris by the company responsible for maintaining the 330-metre landmark.”

Paris 2024 Olympic medals to feature pieces of the Eiffel Tower

Paralympic Triathlon

The Paralympic triathlon will take place on Sept. 1 – the PTS2, PTS3, PTS4 and PTS5, with the PTVI and PTWC categories taking place on Sept.2.

The top nine athletes in the Paralympic Rankings after July 1, 2024 automatically qualify for the Games. (Since the women’s PTS3 is not a medal event, it will be the top nine in the PTS4 category and the top five in the PTS3 ranking.) There will also be 16 slots filled through the Bipartite Commission Invitations – those are decided by IPC and World Triathlon.

There’s a maximum of two athletes per country allowed in each event.

You can find the current qualification standards here.