According to a social media post by her coach Julian Nagi it sounds like Emily rode about 90% of the bike course with a mechanical issue. He didn't go into details of what the mechanical issue was, but needless to say no mechanical issue is good, it can't have helped her bike speed. The fact she raced with a mechanical makes her over all result even more impressive.
The other interesting development is that sometime yesterday Susie Cheetham lodged a protest against one of the top three women from the race. Her allegation was that the top three women received unfair advantage by both drafting and motopacing off the officials' motor bikes. She was apparently able to back up her protest with both photographic and video evidence.
Her accusation obviously had some weight because the organisers upheld her protest. They have said that they are unable to retrospectively penalise competitors, so instead they are awarding all the pro women from 4th place back a 5 minute time bonus. Interesting decision.
This time bonus doesn't change the result of the race, Susie Cheetham is still 4th and Emily is still 5th, but it shrinks the margins right down. The official results haven't been updated but I think Cheetham will now be about 7 minutes off the win and 4 minutes off the podium and Emily will be 10 minutes from the win and 7 minutes from the podium. Not bad margins at all.
In her post Cheetham makes the point that while the 5 minute bonus is appreciated, she feels that the advantage given by the drafting and motopacing was much greater as getting off the bike 9 minutes back and getting off 14 minutes back are very different things. Her suggestion being that if she had been only 9 minutes back at the end of the ride she would have paced the run differently.
That sort of speculation is understandable, however it starts getting into some dodgy territory very quickly with countless hypothetical race scenarios possible. It is really pretty impossible to know what would have happened, there are no right answers there. In the end I think the organisers did the right thing and their decision seems to have been welcomed by most people. The predominant view on social media seems to be that acknowledging the drafting and awarding the time bonus was a fair and even handed way of dealing with the issue. Something of a win there.
Obviously it is unfortunate that the drafting occurred at all. I have been withholding judgement as I haven't seen any of the footage in question. However, I think the fact that the drafting occurred raises questions over the conduct of the athletes and officials in question. Hopefully it was just one of those things, but it is sad that the race was tainted by this sort of controversy. Given it did occur I think the way the organisers handled it is probably the best outcome in an sad situation.
Of course, with the mechanical on her bike and the drafting ahead, it is hard not to ponder what might have been for Emily. As mentioned last night, really the only blemish on her race was the 20 minutes she lost on the bike, however, now it sounds like not all of that 20 minutes was down to her. If those loses had only been 10 minutes, or even 5, what could have happened then. Like I said above, this sort of speculation quickly gets into dodgy territory, however, it does mean that I will be pretty keen to see what happens in the next race.
Other that Dimity Lee Duke, we haven't recently had a anyone (male or female) from WA who I think has the talent to make to Kona as a Pro (I am not counting Liz Blatchford here). With Emily I think that is about to change. I am always up for a wild prediction and so my prediction for Emily is that she will be racing at Kona next year. If it doesn't happen in 2019 we will see her in 2020 for sure. Watch this space.
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