No Olympic Selection Brings Will Clarke To The U.S.

Great Britain’s Will Clarke was controversially left off of the Olympic team, and he’ll come try non-drafting Olympic-distance and 70.3 races in the U.S. as a result.

Clarke, 27, was overlooked in favor of team-mate Stuart Hayes for the role of domestique to Alistair and Jonny Brownlee in the three-man GB team.

“I want to go and race people like Lance, try a different side of the sport for a while,” said Clarke.

“And if I’m good enough to challenge for medals at Rio 2016, I’ll be there.”

While the Brownlees have dominated Olympic-distance triathlon on a British and global level, Clarke felt well placed as the third-best triathlete in Britain heading into the 2012 season.

But British Triathlon’s selectors opted to take a domestique to the London Olympics, in Hayes – who will race specifically to help the Brownlees – rather than the third man in line based on performance alone.

“I figured I had a great year last year. I was ranked ninth in the world, I won world series silver in Hamburg. I thought I was right up there and comfortably the third-best British guy,” Clarke told BBC Sport.

Read more: Bbc.co.uk