For the numbers:

Between now and 70.3 worlds Aug 27th (that's the only calendar of races that show up on the IM pro calendar page; that may be the last races that KQ's)

27 IM's
73 70.3's
(i simply counted up each event, if they are both on same date, so be it)

Total pro races among those events = 43 pro events (either single gender races or both m/f). That's not even half the IM events that IM produces have pro fields.

IM has shown you exactly what they'll do if they need to.

So if the question is- what will IM do to stay relevant with the pro's?

They have showed us what they'll do...they'll cut small pro purses to trim the fat and put it in the Kona prize purse pool. They aint stupid, in fact they have taken hay makers from everyone and yet they are still around.

Again IM isn't in the "pro development" business that PTO is about. IM needs the pros as an important cog in their overall business plan of key race relevance (IE big broadcast races), but they can easily cut pro races, and trim down their schedule while fattening the prize purses in those races.

That's what they'll do, they are doing it already.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Well to be frank, the PTO is not about pro development either. The money only goes to folks in the Top 50 of each gender from the Bonus pool. And the Opens are not opens they're invitationals, and you have to be ranked pretty high to get invited or pull off some results on a tear for a WC invite.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Yes totally but that’s the case for niche sports that have basically zero money coming into the sport. The line has to be drawn somewhere, so that’s why I said the top names will never get pinched out. It’s why there is such a huge divide in even like the top 100.

Which is why we see all these “omg pros getting paid” that last 2 years, 4 years and then it goes away to become legendary fodder that we drool over as “remember when”.

So when we have such an “boring” product to market to broadcasters and the PTO is trying to really market the characters and personalities of the athletes. more than just the racing. They want to push how much of a machine Blu is, they want to showcase that “motherhood” won’t stop you from chasing dreams, etc. Which is why SL’s “antics” against Long and LS was pushed so hard by PTO at CC. That was the fakest WWE style of contrived drama I’ve ever seen in the sport, it was made more impressive by Long truly getting his feelings hurt. And then 48 hours for them to exact their “revenge”; that’s gold Johnny! That “drama” is good for them, but then you have to capitalize on it.

That’s where I think we are going to be stuck. How do we get people to want to buy into the characters of our sport to then tune in for 3 hour events.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

I watch triathlon racing pretty consistently but I'm intrigued by LS vs a cat in an ice bath.

Yeah we've seen this before with RockNRoll running events. They gutted prize money years ago, faced some backlash, put a little prize money back in but their commitment to professional runners is almost zero. True elite runners don't go to those events & those events are doing fine without pros.

I think age groupers are gonna keep racing IM whether there are pros or not. That's actually dangerous because you can argue IM doesn't need pros. What happens if IM only puts prize money towards a handful of bigger races, as PTO grows. The top-end of the sport becomes even more focused on the very best athletes. We need the small purse races for developing pros to have a shot at making a living and to gain experience.

Something that might help is that this is a sport where you need to qualify for big IM events. PTO invites the highest ranked athletes to their events. It kind of works that way with IM but you have to earn a slot & can be a little further down the rankings and still get into a championship race. That at least keeps a certain number of races active so that you can qualify for the bigger races. But I can see a future where it's all majors like in running & the races just invite whoever they want. That would be a big shift to do away with the qualification system so maybe there's some built in protection for IM to keep some resources going towards pros.

PTO has shown that it will throw some money at much lower level races in the past. Most of it was in the Covid years (20-21) but I know that they put some money up for the White Lake Pro-Am in NC last year (maybe others that I just don't know about). Maybe they will continue to do so in the future and help out that 2nd level pro in order to garner future support from them as they move up the rankings.

They haven't been putting money up at independence races since 2021 (Rev3 Williamsburg and Deuces wild in the US). Last year's White Lake purse, as well as this year's race, is money put up by sponsors of the race. Other than allowing the race to earn rankings points, they don't have a stake in those types of races.

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Benjamin Deal - Professional - Instagram - TriRig - Lodi Cyclery
Deals on Wheels - Results, schedule, videos, sponsors

Thanks for the clarification Ben. My misunderstanding. Thanks for giving us the pro insight. I think that we all want PTO/IM/Whatever to work out for the betterment of all levels of professional triathlon.

When rev3 came in with their “ big money” purses IM countered by changing the qualification system. Suddenly it wasn’t an “win a race and you’re in”; it was basically your best 4 or 5 events scores and then then top x made it. So a guy racing 5 6th places likely was better places than a guy with 1 1st 5th and DNF.

But there was no $1mi dollar purses. I can’t remember what it was. It was a lot at the time (10 years ago) but it wasn’t this big.

So IM isn’t going to be able to stop pros from racing for $5mi bucks by changing the qualification criteria to force more wtc events to “qualify” for their top events, Top Pros at that point will truly say “see ya” if wtc said you had to race 5 events to qualify. So I think IM is smart enough to read the room, and if I was them, I’d just cut all races under $50k and lump it into 10 races. This will kill all “development” unfortunately and that is where I think there is no “win win” here. I think this will be IM’s forced hand move. IM won’t stick w status quo.

Ashley Gentle just showcased you can say “who’s IM” after what $300k winnings without a single wtc event. That’s just how good the pto events are.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

yeah, i'd had the same thought myself. i started tri as a kid in the 90s, so maybe i'm nostalgic, but:

what if instead of trying to make their own (somewhat uninspiring) 'opens' from scratch, the PTO could have bought some existing classics? say:
-alcatraz
-st croix
-noosa
-phuket
or something like that. maybe a mid-distance european classic too (nice, i'm looking at you).

you turn those into your 'classic' circuit races, with big money, hot competition, great coverage. all those races are (were) photogenic, popular, have deep legacies, and are well-run. then you could still put on collins cup or have a rotating PTO world champs that takes place in a different location over a different distance each year.

gold, jerry!

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____________________________________
https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

That's a good idea. I wonder what it would be worth to those race directors to sell. I would think if you gave them a 10yr contract and said we want you to put on the race with more resources and we'll double your take own pay, it's a no Brainer. Seems like that would still be a good way for them to level up the pto exposure. There is undoubtedly a lot of triathletes who never heard of the pto.

Another idea is running a pto race at AG Nats after or before the AG races. Built in thousands of spectators.

We have here in Southern Ontario two unique races, Welland and Kingston which are 2km swim, 56km bike, and 15km run. Multisport Canada just has to stretch the bike a bit and they will be PTO length races. (Adding 3km in Welland would be simple. The cycling may be a challenge.)

I would be more interested in PTO races if they did some age group point system so you can see how you did at the end of the year.

The PTO ranking system (which btw will have some changes in 2023) seems perfectly suitable for rolling out to the amateur ranks. The database is there (though adding all AG results would be a piece of work, but rolling). The AIT mechanism and data are there - I would keep the ranked events just to those where there's a PRO field (in gender). A bonus % could be adopted for scores earned in PTO Tour associated 'open' races.

Thorsten posted this analysis of PROs revenue and sources (prizes and direct end-of-year bonuses) and I've pasted his general observations below:
https://www.trirating.com/...athlon-money-list-2/
Some trirating.com observations:

• Ironman prize money is up compared to 2019 by 35%, but that is mostly due to two World Championship events in 2022, each paying US$ 750.000. Still, the average purse per event has gone up from 77k in 2019 to 124k in 2022.
• Prize money for 70.3s is still down (-27%), mainly because of the reduced number of Pro events. The average purse has slightly increased from 30k to 37k per event.
• As in previous years, PTO money continues to increase significantly (+57% compared to 2020). While in 2020 they also supported smaller, existing events to be able to provide a Pro prize purse, they are now focused on their own events and the yearly bonus. Each PTO event pays more than one million US$.
  (Note: An earlier version of this post showed a slightly higher total for the PTO – they have notified me of a small error that has now been corrected.)
• Challenge money is also slightly down (-11%), and they have fewer events on their calendar. The average Challenge race pays just over 40k per event.
• WTCS numbers are slightly down because there was one fewer event than in 2019. Not including their bonus payment of 750k, the average WTCS event pays 166k.
• SuperLeague is another well-paying short-course series – they have slightly increased their money over 2019, paying 137k per event plus a series bonus. They also have “Arena Games” events and series with additional money (not included here).
• The number of independent races that are included has increased significantly. Some of it has to do with events getting more visibility, but there are also a number of events that have increased their prize money to be included in the PTO World Rankings (minimum of US$ 10k prize purse), so this can also be partially attributed to the PTO.
  

I don't know if you've raced there recently but K-town has fallen off of a [*insert expletive of your choice here*] cliff the last few years compared to its hayday (used to be one of my favorite races), to the point that unless things change big time Im not coming back.

Welland seems to be ~500 participants (all events) and barrelman ~800 (PTO Canadian and US open seem to be ~500 for age groupers). Possible, but probably not worth the hassle of dealing with local RDs.

But Esprit is probably pushing ~3k participants over the entire weekend, the course could be pretty close to the 100k distances and with the F1 course media coverage/integration should be easy (very clash like), we know that the city of montreal is open to hosting big races (WTS, UCI). It seems like a no-brainer to me. Early sept might not be the optimal time to pull this one off tho as they do have to work around the F1 season

TTF would maybe be harder to do with a bit more reluctance from the city to close down sections of major highways for even longer. But also a city that people are more likely to want to visit over edmonton, coverage would be harder than esprit but surely the same as dallas and edmonton (shots of racing with the CN tower in the background would look awesome), and 1.5k+ participants in the single day. What they have done there is pretty remarkable to say the least and could be something great.

Wanted to sign up for the Canadian age group event, but have now selected another event.

I’m giving it until the end of the month. Last years event was a week before 70.3 Calgary. I know multiple people that did the 70.3 last year and were hoping to do the PTO Edmonton event this year, but a few of them are tired of waiting as well.

US open in Milwaukee Aug 4-5 as per PTO website

So, combining it with Age Group Nationals?

Wow. It's already hosting AG nationals and youth/junior nationals that weekend, too. Glad I booked my hotel room a while back.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cn169uBKfmG/
Only a fortnight before Singapore.

Another boring, flat course in the rotation.

At least hopefully people will show up to watch.

I wish PTO spread its races out a little more, can't imagine everyone doing Milwaukee and Singapore and than 70.3 worlds and hoping to peak for all three in Aug?

As someone pointed out earlier, IM can easily just fold all their pro races into 6-8 events a year and still draw the biggest crowd, biggest losers will be the tier 2 pros as they won;t have that many races to race and establish themselves

Safe to assume there will be no PTO specific AG racing taking place (100KM)? No mention of AG racing on their website for the US Open, and no mention of the expected "unprecedented demand"