Victoria Triathlete Brent McMahon qualifies for London 2012
The mathematics of the Canadian men’s triathlon situation may have been baffling to everyone except Brent McMahon.
The 31-year-old athlete from Victoria upped the total of Canadian Olympic entries into the men’s race at the London Games to a maximum three at Madrid Sunday.
How he did it was plain to him, if not others.
He didn’t win the race. The count of teammates sweating beside McMahon to help him in a domestique role was precisely zero. And the position he had to finish in Madrid’s World Championship Series race was undefined.
But McMahon had calculated in advance that he just had to finish ahead of Joao Pereira of Portugal, and he’d win an extra Olympic birth for Canada in the men’s Olympic triathlon race.
“At the end of the day, I needed to be one spot ahead of him – that was the mathematics,” said McMahon.