HuffNPuff wrote:
Sadly Dev, if the IM label can only draw 200 in St Croix a stictly local event would be lucky to get over 50. It might not even be economically viable. This is a shame for the economy of St Croix.
I am not so sold on that. I'll explain why. Long before it was an Mdot event, the St. Croix tri was a big season starting event and they would get a ton of pros over. That basically put the event on the map (with the requisite prize money and TV coverage) before the Kona slots came along. After that St. Croix kept th pro field and added the Kona slots many years later. By then it became like a world championship caliber with a really fast pro field, but with a local race feel. But the coolest part was everyone could hang out with the pros in a resort and have a big party.
The problem aside from taking away the Kona slots, is that WTC made this a non pro field. If you had a pro field, big prize purse and lots of interaction between pros and athletes, athletes will still go (ex Roth, or many of the Challenge events in Europe). With no pro field, AND no Kona slots, its less of a show, then it becomes an age grouper only race for 70.3 World's slots. People don't care enough for 70.3 World's slots to go to St. Croix when they can just go to a local 70.3. Can a big party race with a stacked pro field and good prize money compete for athletes with other races? I THINK with a pointy pro field it can but without one it cannot. Am I assigning too much value to a big pro race without Kona slots? Maybe I am. Maybe today's triathlete does not care about the pro field at all. In the past, new events were able to "launch" with big prize money and a big pro field.
I bet you St. George 70.3 dies a slow death if you remove the pro field/North America championships. Then it becomes like Silverman 1 year after 70.3. Worlds, there were a bunch of us at Silverman for one of the toughest 70.3's out there (harder than Vegas Worlds). But it had no pro field. By the next year, no pro field, and then after that it was dead.
Without being part of the IM circuit, maybe Tom can experiment going back to the roots and raise some prize money for a stacked pro field and re launch the whole thing and see if it flies? Worth the experiment if they can pull up prize money budget from local govts to enhance tourism. I'd say killing the pro field had as much to do with the reduction as Kona slots. Getting liberated from WTC, you won't get back the Kona slots, but you can get back the pro field. Maybe avoid the May 5th weekend, althogh a tradititonal weekend and steer clear of St. George and go a bit earlier so you can get a stacked pro field. Then package up the show and give it a roll.