With a million dollars up for grabs, Spain’s Javier Gomez has revealed that he wants to race all three races in the Challenge Triple Crown this year, in addition to defending his WTS title – but not the 70.3 Worlds.
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Speaking to 220 from the Canary Islands where he’s been training for this weekend’s Challenge Dubai, Gomez said that he does plan to race the Bahrain and Oman instalments of the recently announced Triple Crown series.
“That’s the idea. We’ll see how the first one goes but… Yeah, I’d like to do the three of them. I know it’s gonna be a long year but I always like new challenges and to do different things, not only the ITU Series. I know next year I’m going to be focused just on the Olympic Games and I won’t have much time to do this kind of racing so yeah, I’m just hoping to enjoy this year.”
ITU plans
Asked by 220 whether this means he’s decided his schedule for this year’s WTS races, he said that he will definitely do the first four – Abu Dhabi (7 March), Auckland (29 March), Gold Coast (11 April) and Cape Town (26 April) – and the last two, Edmonton and the Grand Final in Chicago.
“It depends on the results because I’ll probably miss Yokohama and then do London but I’m not sure. It depends how the first four go and then how I’m doing but definitely the last two, Edmonton and the Grand Final [Chicago], but in between I’m not sure.
“I’m not sure about Yokohama and Stockholm. If everything goes well I might not do those two or else I’ll do too many races this year.”
“I haven’t done anything in Ironman yet”
With such a busy calendar already decided – including the Olympic test event in Rio this August – it looks like 70.3 racers can breathe a sigh of relief, for now. Gomez tells us plans to skip the 70.3 Worlds in Austria this August, as he would need to race one more beforehand in order to qualify and validate his spot.
But that doesn’t mean that middle and long distance racing is off his radar: “I just go step-by-step right now and focus more on Olympic distance, enjoying some middle distance races every now and then, and when I eventually decide to try Ironman I will do my best and see how it goes.”
Despite many of the sport’s biggest names saying publicly that Gomez could be the next star of Ironman, he tells us that he’s taking nothing for granted. “I really appreciate the words of people who know a lot about the sport, like Greg [Welch] or Chris McCormack or some others, but I haven’t done anything in Ironman yet, you know. So we need to race first and see how it goes.”
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