More London WCS quotes
We also had a few words with Americans Matt Chrabot and Greg Bennett about the big race on the calendar. With Olympic spots on the line this race in London is huge but of these two athletes only Chrabot is racing here.
Matt Chrabot
Chrabot broke into prominence in 2009 with wins at the USA Elite Championship and the ITU World Cup in Huatulco. Last year he had a 9th at Sydney, 19th at Seoul, 14th in Madrid, 4th in Kitzbuhel and 16th at Budapest. This year he crashed in Sydney, was 37th at Kitzbuhel and is trying to regain his 2010 form.
ST: Today it's rained heavily. I saw the video of the Sydney World Championship Series race this year. Tough day for you where you crashed in the rain and DNF'd. How might rain affect Sunday's race?
Matt Chrabot: I think there is a 50/50 shot for rain on Sunday. Sydney was awful. That course was awful. The corner where I went down in Sydney was a rough corner, at an intersection where there was a lot of oil. But here it's nice to do an ITU race without a lot of 180s. It's a little more breakaway friendly.
ST: How different is the London course this year?
Matt: This is a new course for the most part. Last year It was eight laps in [Hyde] Park. Now we are going out of the park. Longer laps – and there are more turns.
ST: How do you prepare for this bike course?
Matt: To prepare I did some more crit-style training in Colorado Springs. Hard cornering. Sprinting in and out of corners. One good thing is there are no 180 degree turns so we don't have to hit the brakes hard and come to a complete stop. Which is real nice.
ST: Rounding corners with good strong bikers who are ready and willing to go make sense for a breakaway?
Matt: With a group; you can get a 5 or 10 second gap quickly. So with the cornering at this race, it will be a good idea to make some hard efforts on the bike.
ST: To what degree do you taper for an important race like this?
Matt: Lot of guys are coming into this race as close to 100 percent as possible. No one is trying to train through this race. The last two weeks I've been kind of easing back a little bit. More rest days in between. I had some hared sessions a week ago. But I really scaled back this week, trying to be as sharp as I can. I was still doing some anaerobic bursts in the pool this week. But nothing that is too taxing on the body.
ST: What did you learn from USAT Nationals last September – where you were running with Brendan Sexton, Jarrod Shoemaker and Tim O'Donnell?
Matt: That race in particular I was coming off three weeks of racing in a row. I got 16th in Budapest and took 9th in a French grand prix and right after I flew into Tuscaloosa. I was aiming at the podium but finished one spot off. Tuscaloosa was not so important in terms of national team status. It was nice to have international caliber athletes like Brendan Sexton show up and win it. USAT always encourages our national athletes to make a good race. They do not want a Continental Cup caliber racer to walk away with a national title. I put in a real strong race but Brendan Sexton, Jarrod Shoemaker and Tim O'Donnell all beat me. So 4th i Tuscaloosa wasn’t bad.
ST: How do you see your race develop if it is to go your way?
Matt: A lot of these guys have been training real hard on the run. If you can get creative and try to make something happen on the bike, that would probably be my best bet to take the spot. Last year in London some guys peeled away. Stuart Hayes ended up getting 8th in the race. I don’t know what the time gap was off the bike. He did the same and won at Kitzbuhel the year before. So it helps to have a good course. This course isn’t perfect but it is a lot better than what the ITU could have come up with. Some thought was put into this course design.
ST: Think at all about competing with Hunter and Jarrod for that spots?
Matt: It's in the back of my mind. [Hunter and I] are still going to dinner together and going on bike rides together. We are not totally peacocking each other. But yeah in the back of my mind it is there. At most three of us will go. Two if something happens where we don’t solidify a three person team by not scoring enough ITU points.
ST: Over-racing to gain national points to earn three men's spots for the Olympics really hurt Hunter in 2000 and Matt Reed in 2008.
Matt: Hunter had a tough time in 2000. He had to do that. But Matt could have done more ITU points races leading up to 2008. He did a lot of North American races for his sponsors in the first half of the qualifying period and only scored 150 points. At the end he had over 3000 points, so he really had to back half it real hard. This time, Jarrod, Hunter and myself all scored a lot of points early so we got a bit more of a backup plan this time.
ST: Hunter has won big races, Jarrod has won world titles. But on the day, none of that can help you. What in the past has given you the confidence to compete at the highest level and beat those guys?
Matt: The past years I've been having a strong second half of the my seasons. Now that I am in the second half, I am ready to unleash and let loose.
ST: It is possible no American men will place in the top 9 here in London? If so what happens next in the Olympic chase?
Matt: Yes. There are no American qualifiers in Beijing [at the ITU WCS Grand Final this September]. And so the race here in London the only thing matters is top 9. If you don’t do that show up at the next race in qualifying race in the spring. We are hoping to find a WCS race or come up with a new race — kind of like what we came up with in Washington DC in 2009. They really want to come up with a race on home US soil — not somewhere a 20 hour flight away.
ST: What has been your best races that gives you the confidence to come against and Jarrod with all their successes?
Matt: I am a fighter. I give don't give up. Like when I won US Nationals in 2009 in Tuscaloosa. Same thing when I won the Huatulco World Cup in Mexico in 2009. Those were breakthrough performances.
ST: You have a 31 to 33 minute run, and you are a first pack swimmer and a strong biker.
Matt: My swim and bike are definitely there. I've been trying to shore up my run this year. So I am going to try to make it happen on race day. Just unleash the same guy that came out and wreaked havoc a year ago.
Greg Bennett
Bennett is one of the most decorated triathletes of all time, earning a record $500,000 for a perfect season winning the Life Time Fitness / Toyota Cup Series and for his 4th place finish at the 2004 Olympics. Recently, he gained American citizenship and made his goal to finish off his career with an Olympic start as he nears age 40. Despite several good finishes in WCS races, he did not have enough points to start at London.
ST: Greg why are you not on start line here?
Greg Bennett: The way the ITU Olympic point systems work, I'm not prepared to do all the cherry picking. Either race the big guys or what's the point? I still have a chance in spring and I will do those races. I just haven't done all the points races they want. The ITU program does it is terrible, the way they make all the athletes go round and do all the little points races. That's crazy. It should be the world's best doing top level racing.
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