pre-selcetions

[candyman]

Very interesting to see you guys taking the pre-selection route for European Champs, obviously looking at results the 5 in question deserve their spots but it raises some interesting questions.

What races are they pre-selected for? (eg sprint, relay etc)

Do they have to participate in trials?

What happens if they have some injury/illness difficulties? (granted this is probably just as much an issue with teams selected form trials)

Not sure if I think it is a good idea or not, I can see how it would help the athletes in question with their preparation but more so if they were pre-selected for particular disciplines so they could focus their preparation.

Be very interested to hear what some of the borderline possible team members thought.

[harry]

i'm a borderline possible team member.
and i think it is a good move. as well as the reason they gave of allowing athletes to be focussed and not have to taper for selection races etc it sends out a message about the importance of winning a medal on the world stage and it means nothing silly can happen like craney not being selected.

i expect the uk based athletes at least will still run the selection races or at least the JK. and it still leaves 4 + 3 places in the team for us to fight out.

if anyone wins a medal in estonia then i expect they would be pre-selected for woc and i would be happy with that. but the level for pre-selection should be really high, medals or many top-tens so that we can all have confidence in the selection policy.

another thing to bear in mind is that all those pre-selected have done well at sprint distance at some time (not they most of them would say they are sprint specialists) and there is a difficulty with the UK fixtures prior to estonia that means it might not be possible to have a sprint selection race. this partly solves that problem.

[gg]

fantastic for people like me and nick...

not that i am complaining, those three guys all deserve their spots