In the past Ive written about how long a sprint triathlon takes, but if you are ready for some speed, just wait until the 2012 Women’s Olympic Triathlon! This year’s US Olympic team members include Gwen Jorgensen, Sarah Haskins and Laura Bennett. So just how fast are these women?
Let’s take a look at their qualifying times to make the Olympic team **
Laura Bennet recently placed 3rd in the 2012 ITU World triathlon in San Diego. This was the final opportunity for US Olympians to qualify for remaining spots on the team. Laura’s results were an overall time of 2:00:11 (2 hours and 11 seconds). Split times for each distance were Swim 18:31, T1 00:58, Bike 1:04:54, T2 00:20, Run 35:28.
| Overall | Swim | T1 | Bike | T2 | Run |
| 02:00:11 | 00:18:31 | 00:00:58 | 01:04:54 | 00:00:20 | 00:35:28 |
Sara Haskins came in 8th overall int his race with the following times:
| Overall | Swim | T1 | Bike | T2 | Run |
| 02:00:56 | 00:18:30 | 00:01:04 | 01:04:48 | 00:00:28 | 00:36:07 |
Gwen Jorgensen was the first woman to make the US Women’s triathlon team by finishing in 2nd place in the 2011 ITU World Championship event in Londa with these times:
| Overall | Swim | T1 | Bike | T2 | Run |
| 02:00:41 | 00:19:40 | 00:00:42 | 01:05:57 | 00:00:40 | 00:33:43 |
**Qualifying for the US Olympic team in triathlon is a fairly complex process, but looking at their most recent representative races will give us an idea of how fast is fast.
Each of these women remarkably finished their qualifying races within 45 seconds of each other over a 51.5 k course (1.5k swim, 40k bike, 10k run). Interestingly, each women excelled in a different sport…Bennett being the fastest swimmer, Haskins being the fastest cyclist and Jorgensen being the fastest runner. When racing at this level, you can see that every second counts…the 20 second difference between the fastest & slowest transition times between these top 3 women add up to 40 seconds…which can be the difference betwene making the olympic team and not making it!
Later this weekend I’ll take a look at the men’s team qualifying times.
You can read more about these women at the USA Triathlon website. Hey…wouldn’t it be great if I could get an interview with them after the Olympics? We will work on it!!
