I think triathlon w/o pros would be boring as the pros show us what is possible. They give us a yardstick to measure our performances. I would say the same for swimming in the pool, running on the track, and cycling in the velodrome.

---

"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

Is Lionel still even a pro? I thought he went pro sometime last year, but now he's a youtube exercise, nutrition, and sleep influencer?

Answer to your question, the market will always have a prize purse in some races to attract the top influencers.

But if such a thing never happened, the elite racers would be even more focused on extracting money from sponsors with some of them actually providing value to earn it.

Ironman did this with their running races a little while back so I'm not really keen to giving them any ideas (I'm sure they would love to go age group only). The main difference was how small of a player they were in the running world. They more/less make up the pro triathlon circuit. But prize money still doesn't run super deep & is top heavy. This would effect top athletes. Those consistently on the podium would lose an income source and exposure for their sponsors. A lot of pros have full time jobs. The majority finish out of the money and have to pay their way to pro races.

If there is no smaller pool of pros then it would make out of competition PED testing hard/impossible if anyone could “win” the race and/or prize purse.

You would only be able to test the winner after the race and we all know most cheaters are smart enough to have it out of there system by then.

if the amount of the prize worth... there will be always "pros".

This^

Anyway, what's a pro? I heard once you need to get it from a national trathlon organization, is that correct?
(Seems the only thing in triathlon IM has no grip on?)

Maybe not much. The Tour de France was hard to find on TV in North America. An epic sporting event and one could much more easily find.... Golf. Meh.

Early on in the 80s we had NBC covering Ironman Hawaii and people got inspired. I don't see people getting inspired for triathlon these days by the pros. At least not new entrants.

---

They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

without pros you will get a decline in interest and a reduction in the number of articles and/or page inches done by mainstream and endurance sports focused media.

That may mean you go from 4 articles to 3 for a given race when it comes to town or you go from 25 paragraphs in the local paper to 20 or it could mean both.

I mean look at ST, the #1 online source for triathlon news/race results/all things triathlon. The coverage for non pro races pales to the coverage for races with pros.

No one cares who won the amateur race at whatever 70.3 was last weekend except for a small circle of people, maybe 12, maybe. A much larger circle cares who won the pro race.

WTC gets a lot more free publicity about it's races that have pro fields than without pro fields. IDK how much they'd have to pay to get = coverage if they didn't have a pro field but I bet it's something like $7,000. (I jest with that number bc it's much higher but in the scope of sports.......)

---

Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta