The three most common questions I've been asked as a Triathlon Coach

1. Can I get to the Olympics?
2. Can I qualify for the Hawaii Ironman?
3. Can I qualify for the Age- group Worlds?

Here are the answers.

1. It depends.
2. It depends.
3. It depends.

So what does it depend on?

I'll answer the first question in this post. Qualifying for the Olympic team is going to come down to five things.

1. How old you are now
2. How naturally talented you are
3. How hard you can work while staying out of hospital
4. Where your current baseline is
5. How good a racer you are

So if you want to go to London in 2012, you need to be ......

• Under 26 and preferably under 20
• Have been successful in a competitive swimming program as a teenager .... you've probably have competed at Sectional or Junior National level
• A good medium distance runner. Generally, a 4:30 miler will do better than an 18 minute 5k runner.
• Be capable of training 30 - 40 hours a week for the next four years
• Adapt well to the training regime
• Injury free
• Capable of making the right decisions in races

Notice I haven't said anything about cycling.

To be honest, four years is long enough to become a decent 40k time triallist/ one-hour road racer even if you've never been on a racing bike before. Unfortunately, the same isn't true of swimming and, to some extent, running.