Here's my rant for the day. Maybe Alan will repost it over to TNO.
Just wondering if there has ever been any movement to also turn IM length triathlon into an Olympic sport and how others would feel about this.
I personally think there might be a lot of advantages of this. Here in Canada when Simon Whitfield won Olympic gold it was front page news, and I mean front page of the papers, not just the sports pages. When Reid/Bowden doubled at Hawaii this year it barely made the back page of the sports section.
There is also a lot more coverage of Oly tris on TV. All Kona gets is an hour of NBC once a year with most of it being personal interest stories and very little race coverage. Oly has become more of a mainstream sport while IM still is a cult fringe sport to a degree.
If IM was an Olympic sport I could see it as being the premier endurance race of the Olympic games and IM athletes would rank right up there with decathletes as being regarded as the best all round athletes.
I tend to think IM at the Olympics would be a huge step forward. What are your opinions?
Just wondering if there has ever been any movement to also turn IM length triathlon into an Olympic sport and how others would feel about this.
I personally think there might be a lot of advantages of this. Here in Canada when Simon Whitfield won Olympic gold it was front page news, and I mean front page of the papers, not just the sports pages. When Reid/Bowden doubled at Hawaii this year it barely made the back page of the sports section.
There is also a lot more coverage of Oly tris on TV. All Kona gets is an hour of NBC once a year with most of it being personal interest stories and very little race coverage. Oly has become more of a mainstream sport while IM still is a cult fringe sport to a degree.
If IM was an Olympic sport I could see it as being the premier endurance race of the Olympic games and IM athletes would rank right up there with decathletes as being regarded as the best all round athletes.
I tend to think IM at the Olympics would be a huge step forward. What are your opinions?