The risk for a Speed bronze has increased

Aleksandra Miroslaw travelled all the way to Salt Lake City where she won the Speed event while she chose not to participate in Boulder. This will be her only competition before the Olympics as she has not registered for Villars. Iuliia Kaplina skipped Boulder and Lead in Innsbruck while she won the Euro Cup in Speed. She is signed up for Speed in Villars but will not do Lead. It seems that some of the best Speed specialists have done their math and skip any competition preparation whatsoever in the other two disciplines.

This is of course a logical strategy as the winner of Speed will be #4 or #5 in Tokyo even if they are dead last in the other two disciplines. Based on the results in 2021, where the Tokyo Combined favourites have strengthened their positions in all three disciplines, the risk for a Speed specialist getting the bronze has increased. As a matter of fact, it only takes that two Speed specialists are Top-2 in Speed during the qualifications while the favourites deliver good results in all three disciplines. If both Miroslaw and Kaplina make it to the Top-8 final, there is a great chance/risk that one of them will take the bronze scoring 1 * 7 * 7 = 49. When it comes to the males, also the favourites have strengthened their positions in 2021 and that goes especially for Tomoa Narasaki who several times has done sub six seconds. In other words, he could win both the qualification and Final in Speed which will almost guarantee him a bronze and make him the big favourite for the gold.

On the other hand, with the new male world record and several training times close to five seconds, it just might be that the Olympics will make several guys doing close to five seconds in Tokyo.