Belgium’s top sports director Tim Moriau and Belgian national coach Tine Deckers made it more or less impossible for top athlete Valery Barthelemy to go to the Paris Olympics as a reserve. In hindsight, this cost the Belgians very dearly, because due to Claire Michel falling ill, Belgium ended up not having a reserve to put up for the Mixed Team Relay, and as a result, the Belgian Hammers ended up having to miss out in Paris.
In a candid interview with 3athlon.be – the leading Belgian triathlon website – Barthelemy explains how the situation evolved. “I wanted to do everything for the Belgian Hammers, but there are limits,” she reveals, among other things. Halfway through the qualification process, Barthelemy had to deal with a qualification policy that Moriau ‘just adjusted’ and, in addition, the same Moriau and Deckers set the condition that if Barthelemy wanted to go to Paris as a reserve, she could no longer do Middle or Long Distance races in the run-up to the Games.
That condition is particularly remarkable, especially since a reserve for the Olympics has only a very small chance of actually being selected to race and so setting your season up for that is unrealistic, but especially since Marten van Riel was allowed to compete in the T100 in San Francisco and Jelle Geens in Ironman 70.3 Oceanside. Why there were double standards is unclear.
Some weeks before the Olympics, Valery Barthelemy won Challenge Quebec.
