…with long course triathlon talent these days. Women: Angela Duncan (70.3 monster and won Ironman Chattanooga) Magali Tisseyre (another 70.3 monster) and most notably Heather Wurtele (70.3 monster and multi time IM Champion). Men: Brent McMahon (won debut IM last year at AZ under 8 hours) Lionel Sanders (won debut IM last year at Florida without any difficulty, 70.3 monster, of recent fame for riding up Mt Lemmon in Tuscon and getting Strava KOMs which caused quite a hubbub on the internet) Trevor Wurtele (IM champ and 70.3 champ and Heather’s starter husband) and now Mr Jeffrey Symonds just won the first championship Ironman of 2015 by taking the title in Melbourne. That is a good amount of talent and I probably forgot someone.
Canadians are probably too calm and modest to get fired up about this lineup of top performing athletes. They should be hyped though. These are exciting days, these athletes could contend for the title at Kona. As you know I am generally quite derisive of Canada because of the people who live there BUT I will give them credit for producing this crop of top tier talent. Also most of these athletes seem pretty cool which is neat. It seems like most Canadians I meet are actually very neat individuals yet I maintain that the overall populace is reprehensible. This is a bizarre phenomenon that I do not fully understand but I will not be swayed from my anti-Canada belief system.
Unrelated, if you didn’t know it was Doug MacLean’s birthday the other day. Doug is my little brother and I wish him a very happy birthday and for 2015 to be another fabulous year for him. We may have different parents and he may be seven years my senior but as of now I am claiming him as a little brother.
Unrelated, my modeling peer and fellow QR PRsix rider Callum Millward made his Ironman debut at Melbourne. He put together a very smart day swimming and riding sensibly with the chase group and running mid 2:50s. It ain’t easy to go 8:14 your first time. Callum works in hand modeling while I obviously work in spokesmodeling so we are never vying for the same jobs. He rode his PRsix very well and his hands looked great the whole race.
Missy Franklin swam her 200 free at the NCAA meet in 1:39. If you’ve never swum a 200 under 1:40, just rest assured that is wicked fast. I believe she is leaving the NCAA to go pro as she preps for the 2016 Olympic Games. Good call Missy. Very few athletes are in a position to make more money as a pro than they make via scholarship but Missy is definitely of a caliber that the money would be way better as a pro. Get paid!

Maybe Sanders should sue him like Aru is suing Henderson?? I guess the key difference is Sanders probably has nothing to hide.

The author really should catch some flak for this though. Its natural to entertain those kinds of thoughts but to directly defame a fellow competitor with no suggestion of evidence is terrible form. I've been called a doper before based on good performance and it hits you right in the gut.

I guess the key difference is Sanders probably has nothing to hide.
.

From looking at his 2015 schedule, looks like maybe he is entering retirement. I only stumbled on to this because of a front page article on split nose saddles suggesting to look at photos from IM Chattanooga last year for lots of examples of very tight front ends. I saw a photo of that guy, and had never heard of him. I noticed he biked OK there but then ran a 3:55. I went to his website to see what his other results look like and this was the first thing I saw.

... With the cost refunded to the accusor if the accusation proves to be true?

I could totally get on board with that.

I'm not sure how it works in AM motorsport but the theme I was going with was testing costs money, easiest way to get mass testing is incentivise people to pay for testing. Ergo in this format it wouldn't be refunded as it's a sunk cost to pay for the test. I think in AM motorsport it does get refunded but the rebuild of the engine is on the owner of the car/bike hence there is no cost involved to the organiser and the money is just a deterrent to stop people stripping engines with no good reason.

I think as long as costs were low it would work well as a deterrent alone. On a professional level if it could be extended to out of competition testing it would work very well.

Iain

I'm not sure how it works in AM motorsport but the theme I was going with was testing costs money, easiest way to get mass testing is incentivise people to pay for testing. Ergo in this format it wouldn't be refunded as it's a sunk cost to pay for the test. I think in AM motorsport it does get refunded but the rebuild of the engine is on the owner of the car/bike hence there is no cost involved to the organiser and the money is just a deterrent to stop people stripping engines with no good reason.

I think as long as costs were low it would work well as a deterrent alone. On a professional level if it could be extended to out of competition testing it would work very well.

Iain

Kind of an ironic comment in this thread.

I'm not sure that I would endorse a system where the accusor is out of pocket even if they were right all along.
I think that it would lead to fewer people calling out fellow racers just because they don't care enough and don't want to be out of pocket.

Sure, if you hate some guy and think he's doping then you might not mind spending the cash.
But it will somewhat put people off outing people that they are pretty neutral towards.

Also, does the accusor have to name themselves publicly, or would they have the option to remain anonymous?

You literally didn't even read the article, did you? You just looked at the headline. If you had taken 3 minutes to actually read it, or even just READ THE FIRST SENTENCE, you'd see that he is highly complementary of everyone in there, and is happy that Canada is producing such great long course talent.

Devon is a sarcastic, ironic, dude. That's just his sense of humor, and his way of writing things is wayyyyy more entertaining than the usual boring articles we see that are full of cliches, dull "number geek stuff", excuses, and eyeroll-inducing humblebrags. He's pretty hilarious, and fun to read, in my opinion.

You literally didn't even read the article, did you? You just looked at the headline. If you had taken 3 minutes to actually read it, or even just READ THE FIRST SENTENCE, you'd see that he is highly complementary of everyone in there, and is happy that Canada is producing such great long course talent.

Devon is a sarcastic, ironic, dude. That's just his sense of humor, and his way of writing things is wayyyyy more entertaining than the usual boring articles we see that are full of cliches, dull "number geek stuff", excuses, and eyeroll-inducing humblebrags. He's pretty hilarious, and fun to read, in my opinion.

I have never heard of him and have zero visibility into his personality and we can't read jokes between his lines. What he wrote was a straight up accusation. If I was Lionel I'd be fuming mad at this guy. There were no jokes in his accusations. Full public apology better be forthcoming.