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Thank You & RIP, Les McDonald
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Many newer triathletes will not know who Les McDonald is. I've learned with sadness, he died a short while ago.

I hope that everyone who see this will take the time to read Dan's great Eulogy on the front page - http://www.slowtwitch.com/...t_Has_Died_6546.html or, read what will be many tributes coming out in the next little while.

In short, Les, may be the most important man in the now moderate history of the sport of triathlon!

I never worked directly with Les, but I interacted with him a great deal, during my Vancouver years, when he was really working hard to get triathlon going, and, most importantly on the Olympic program.

I know he was controversial, and ruffled the feathers of more than a few people, but he accomplished what he set out to do - get triathlon in the Olympic Games! This was a game-changer for the sport as a whole!

I have fond memories, of long talks on the phone, even longer stories over beers, and receiving long faxes from Les, almost weekly updating me on all manner of, the inner workings of his plans/work to get triathlon in the Olympic Games.

He was a force of nature!

Thank you Les, for your extraordinary, and audacious (a favourite word of his) work. RIP!


Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog
Last edited by: Fleck: Sep 5, 17 12:09
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Re: Thank You & RIP, Les McDonald [Fleck] [ In reply to ]
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:(

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Re: Thank You & RIP, Les McDonald [realAB] [ In reply to ]
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I'm over here in Victoria in someways, ground-zero for what has gone on, some ways for triathlon in Canada for many years, and was out with a number of luminaries and pundits of the sport for beers last night. Of course there was the usual round table stories of Les McDonald stories! He was a polarizing figure, for sure.

Bottom line - as Dan Empfield pointed out in his piece, Les, almost single-handidly got triathlon into the Olympic Games! His approach and methodology, if that's what you can call it, rattled some/many, and ruffled feathers along the way! But, there is a VERY good case and argument that, no Les McDonald, no triathlon in the Olympic Games - at least on the time-line that did unfold.

Perhaps it would have made it in at some point after 2000, but looking back, there was a window of time when this could have happened, and it did happen. In then IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch, Les had a sympathetic ear, and the IOC was genuinely open to adding new sports of a certain kind. Despite it's popularity now, I wonder if triathlon would make it into the Olympic program today?


Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog
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Re: Thank You & RIP, Les McDonald [Fleck] [ In reply to ]
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My PhD dissertation was on how triathlon got onto the Olympic competition program in record time. Les granted complete access to everything ITU created. Nothing was off limits. Nothing was redacted (unlike USAT). His interpretation of the IOC Charter should be a model for new sports seeking Olympic recognition. He started from the ground up in each country, creating NGBs to meet the Charter's directives, he met every single IOC member to lobby for the sport and he battled IRONMAN and Tri-Fed/USAT when they seemed to deviate from his desire to get triathlon in the Games. Adopting the draft legal format was met with protests here in the States, but the rest of the world adapted quickly. He was a character. He had character.

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Re: Thank You & RIP, Les McDonald [LazyEP] [ In reply to ]
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My PhD dissertation was on how triathlon got onto the Olympic competition program in record time. Les granted complete access to everything ITU created. Nothing was off limits. Nothing was redacted (unlike USAT). His interpretation of the IOC Charter should be a model for new sports seeking Olympic recognition.


You probably have more incite into this than most.

Certainly a BIG part of this was Les's tenacity, audaciousness, and relentlessness - but I think this may have also been a time and place kind of thing as well. In Samaranch he had a sympathetic and understanding ear. Les also, did things that roiled the sport and made many hate him - the elimination of the no-drafting rules for the ITU races!


Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog
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Re: Thank You & RIP, Les McDonald [Fleck] [ In reply to ]
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"winning his age group at the Hawaiian Ironman 5 times " that right there should make him a ST legend! RIP
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