2024 Slowtwitch Awards: Women’s Long Course Athlete of the Year
Next up on our list of superlatives to close out the 2024 race season: Long Course Athlete of the Year. Unlike Triathlete of the Year, which is just awarded to a single athlete, we dole out separate awards for men and women in this category. We’ll lead off with the women’s award today, with the men later in the week.
Note that there is no double-dipping at this. With Taylor Knibb winning the voting for Triathlete of the Year, she is ineligible for this award.
Ryan: First, Kevin, I think we probably need to set some parameters as to how we define Long Course, because I’m sure that will ruffle a few feathers.
Kevin: You think? While I don’t necessarily agree with this, I think the PTO has pushed us into a world where T100 and up is now considered long distance. (Which, I note, is hilarious for an organization that was started to help full-distance IRONMAN athletes make more of a living – but that’s fodder for a completely different story or even a podcast!)
Ryan: Yeah. It comes down to thinking that there’s no need to divide up and have a 70.3/T100 distance award – and with World Triathlon dubbing T100 “long course,” we’ll follow along.
Going into the potential nominees, I still think the same case can be made for Kat Matthews that I made for her Triathlete of the Year nomination. Nobody raced more, and across more distances, than she did, and made an absolute killing in bonuses from the IRONMAN Pro Series victory and finishing 4th in the T100 standings. But I think there’s strong arguments for the two women who beat her on some of the larger stages: Ashleigh Gentle and Laura Philipp.
Gentle’s year was similar to that of Matthews; she raced 7 times and was on the podium for 5 of them. Head-to-head, Gentle and Matthews raced 5 times together, with Gentle coming out ahead 3 out of 5 times, including at the T100 Grand Final in Dubai. And although it doesn’t count for the purposes of this award, Gentle also extended her unbelievable win streak in Noosa.
As for Philipp: obviously, she emerged over Matthews in that duel at the IRONMAN World Championships in Nice to take her first world title. She also had her strong second place in Roth. When you race nine times in a year, and your worst finishing position is 7th, that’s an awfully strong campaign.
For me this comes down to Matthews and Philipp, and it’s not too dissimilar from the point I was trying to make for Triathlete of the Year: I think it’s important that you show the versatility of being able to race both T100/70.3 distance and 140.6. And that’s something that Gentle just has not done.
Kevin: For sure Kat needs to be considered the front-runner on this one. Some notes, though. There was one athlete who actually raced more than Kat last year – I did a profile on Els Visser yesterday. (I did note right off the bat in that piece that she wasn’t likely to be in the running for any Triathlete of the Year awards, but did enjoy a pretty spectacular season.) There’s another name I would add to the discussion – Anne Haug. If you asked me in July who was going to be the Triathlete of the Year, I would have been willing to bet it would be her. I was in Lanzarote when she broke Paula Newby Fraser’s long-standing course record, and wished I had made it to Roth to watch that otherworldly 8:02:38 performance. I truly couldn’t see any way she wasn’t going to win Nice at that point – I hope my beliefs didn’t jinx her.
Unfortunately, as amazing as those two performances were, the rest of the season wasn’t Triathlete of the Year worthy. (Yes, I am also asking myself why I even went down that road, but it just seemed weird not to have any mention of Haug in this mix!)
I agree on your Ashleigh Gentle points, Ryan. I don’t think she ends up ahead of either Kat or Laura based on her mostly T100, with a touch of 70.3 and a dash of Olympic-distance (Noosa) race season.
Which leaves us with the Kat / Laura debate for this one. I do believe there is an argument for giving Laura Philipp the award here. As you pointed out, her two “worst” performances were the pair of seventh-place finishes at T100 Lake Las Vegas and T100 Dubai, both of which came after her incredible day in Nice. It’s impressive to me she even made it to those races. People in North America have no idea how big a deal it is to be an IRONMAN world champion over in Germany. The sponsor and media requirements for her after winning Nice must have been nuts.
Philipp’s year was truly focussed on Nice, too. After the race she told me that she’d had it in her head that the race in Nice was her best shot at a world title from the day IRONMAN announced they would be heading there. So, I guess it comes down to what people think is most important when it comes to picking a Triathlete of the Year. Consistency? Being able to take the world title? A combination of the two?
Happy to hear any arguments, or simply send this to a vote!
Ryan: I think this one is awfully close. In my opinion, you have to give some additional weight to performing at both IRONMAN world championship races (and, for that matter, Dubai as well). But I suppose we can send it to a vote.
Voting time! Who’s your Women’s Long Course Athlete of the Year?
Vote in the poll.Taylor Knibb once again.
If she earned it she earned it. What is this, some sort of everyone gets a finisher’s medal??
I think I have a bigger problem that WT allows T100 to be designated “long course” than this vote.
I see we read the first couple of paragraphs of the article…
I read them, just don’t agree with them or your conclusions… (-;
Same as others, don’t really understand your choices for awards. Also think that (and this is going to me more and more the case in the future) we should have three distance categories for these awards: short course (with drafting), middle distance (essentially T100 and 70.3, but you could include other non-drafting stuff such as Laguna Phuket in this bucket), and finally long distance (Ironman, and the former Nice distance, or ITU long distance, but I’m not sure there are any left of this kind).
Long course women: Laura Philip or Kat Matthews
Long course men: Patrick Lange
Middle distance women: Taylor Knibb
Middle distance men: Marten Van Riel or Jelle Geens
Short distance women: Cassandre Beaugrand
Short distance men: Alex Yee
Easy Peasy and makes sense. Then if you want to do the Triathlete of the year overall, good luck.
We decided to follow along with what World Triathlon has done, establishing T100 as “long course” so it all winds up in the same bucket. You’ll see how the rest of this plays out.
Easy but complicated. I like the fact that we have to debate who is better: Beaugrand or Knibb. And I like the fact that we try to simplify triathlon. Outsiders think it is rather complicated.
out of interest if you accept that t100 is long course why not just take the pto ranking for best long course athlete
while not perfect it is the most objective criteria only issue 70.3 worlds still not added .
If the system worked properly, that would be great. But look at the men’s side.
Patrick Lange wins the IMWC and North American IM champs and is 18th.
There is a whole argument about winning a “series” vs winning the one big race.
Then there is the argument if PTO point allocation is actually the right measure.
Because:
(A) triathlon is boring enough without us saying “nah, let’s not argue, MS Excel will choose for us”
(B) the PTO ranking overweights T100 races. Ditlev won Roth (strength of field 92) by 15 minutes and got 96 points. Geens won T100 Lake Las Vegas by 38 seconds (SOF 94) and got 100 points. Roth was “only” a platinum race and T100 are all diamond status.
My like is an endorsement.
the system works well its just patrick had only 1 top long course athelte of the year race . and texas really was not a great race by him and frankfurt lets not even talk about it . and the strenght of field was 85 for texas and not a single top 10 2024 kona finisher apart from him .
3 races is kind of the perfect mix between one day event and a series.
otherwise yes ironman world champ winner is long course athelte of the year it is the race the towers far above any other race. and by default the winner of the ironman world champ did the best long course race of the year