The decision isn't their fault, but a lot of the communication woes are. If they knew this was the call last week then they should have said so. Waiting until this week only locked in people to a lot of flights they otherwise wouldn't have taken. And even if they didn't know, they could have said that.

At IMMD last year they constantly updated the athletes on the state of the course and their efforts in a very similar situation. They said early on that the race was at risk, but they were doing their best to deal with the disaster. That honesty bought a lot of good PR. Additionally, IMMD offered transfers to all athletes that didn't make the trip. I expected that here too but oh well.

The part that bugs me now is hiding behind "care for the community." The community asked them to cancel the race. I would have been okay with that. And the part that drove it home for me was the $10k donation... better than nothing but it comes to about $2.50 per athlete. I'm guessing they just took what they saved on the personal not needed for the longer course and the extra hours they get back at the end of the day and threw it in a donation. No hit to the bottom line. But it's a business you say? I know. Given that I'd almost rather them go all in and can the race, keep our money, and not pretend to be concerned. Businesses need to care about customer care too though, at least a little.

And to hedge that a tad, I am sure the local teams care about their communities. I am not questioning them at all. I bet they feel as bad about this as some of the athletes do. I'm just assuming they aren't getting to call the big shots in this situation.

In the end it's all just venting though and it's only a race. But it sucks and I am not gonna throw people under the bus as assholes for venting the day they get this news, especially considering how the comms have been handled. Their heads will cool and they'll do what they can on race day, but you can't say WTC handled this well.