Greg Bennett might have a surprise of two up his sleeve. The guy can swim, bike and run. The fact that he's already asked Lance to take it easy on him makes me think he's ready to put the hammer down.

Hugh

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Genetics load the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger.

And there you have it. The shake hands with Lance for $25,000 website has not been updated.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

Cunningham generally does Quassy.

Really not surprised to see a small pro-list. Honu is a smaller race, one that was recently bought, and lets face it, it only offers $15,000 in price money... 1st place alone at Quassy is more than the combined pool for Hawaii 70.3

That is also not to mention it is in HAWAII... so add flight, hotel and the rest of the race, if you are doing it as a pro, chances are if you WIN the race... you break even... most other pros will lose money

WTC should be embarrassed to put it's name on a race that only pays out $15,000 in total.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

Well there are almost 40 WTC / Ironman 70.3 races that only pay out $15K total. I think $15K race outnumber higher than 15K races by a 2:1 ratio...

Then again... The CrossFit Championship winner also makes $100K more than the Kona Ironman winner.

The number of $15,000 prize purse races only makes it worse.

I really enjoyed when WTC took over HyVee and dropped the winners take from $200,000 to $100,000.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

I had not seen that. I was really surprised when I saw the purchase, but not surprised to see the top prize drop, though I think it was something higher like $151,500 for top prize so they could get 5150 in there. $200K still sounds nicer. There is also 51,500 for "Lap bonuses" so I think the top person could still get 203,000 if they took both.

WTC is all about the $$$$ and selling entry fees.

If it was about being a "professional" sport, they could easily do the formula of few events, bigger purses and really have a solid and consistent Pro field.

They don't like this formula, because the Pros would get a bigger share of the field, and while this may make it a little more attractive to get a sponsor like Nike involved, they would miss out on all of the AGers ponying up for their races.

CrossFit Championship gets their prize purse mainly from Reebok who sponsors it.

To me the pros break down into a couple of categories... a few at the top who can make a decent living, and have a nice pool of sponsors as well.

Another much larger group who are fast, nice to have some prize money, but really work as coaches or some other related field for the majority of their income.

Others who have a very beneficial and supportive spouse or family and they can afford the training and travel

And lastly, probably a small group who went pro to avoid the sign-up hassles, found the Pro Membership cheaper in the end, though the intrusive drug testing is probably a pain as well.

Replying to this thread in general

1. Agreed with Maui5150 on the prize purse. Either this is a "local Hawaii race" or jack it up to being a marquis part of the series. This race should have $50K. It's in Kona. That alone can be used to build up the race
2. Relative to point 1, this race should not be in June. They should have it in March or April as it would sell out much earlier and it would be an early season race where the pros can all congregate, to combine "training camp" + racing. Jack up the prize money to $100K. This should be "the early season" race for WTC...not Galveston.
3. The depth of pro field as Maui5150 said, is weak due to Rev3, but it does not need to be. The prize money alone sucks.

As for the race, I am very interested to see what Greg Bennett does, more so that Lance. We've seen a few Lance performances now. I'm really interested in seeing Bennett's closing run speed.

Bennett was real strong Rev3 Knox, so will be interesting to see what he does. I favor him over Lance in this race.

Definitely agree on trying to move this earlier, but not too much earlier. March April may be better scheduling wise, but weather and surf wise, it can be tougher. You want to surf 20 foot monsters, you go to Hawaii in the winter... go out in summer, and lucky if you get above 3 footers a lot of time.

I am not sure how much the prize money affects Honu. It is always a race I wanted to do and probably will do, but I think it is a tough weekend in general with Alcatraz which seems to be a marque kind of "do it at least once" kind of race, and then Quassy has the purse. I think Quassy hits Mooseman a lot harder.

This to me is one of those "bastard child" sort of races where it probably would get more love / chance as an independent race than one of the ones WTC is unwilling to invest in.

Macca I think once was giving Joe Gambles advice, or said in general, that if you wanted to make money in Tris, you had to race in the US. The $15K races are extremely tough where 3rd is paying out $1250. That is almost (slightly sarcastic) the bike fee on American Airlines both ways...

If you stay mainland, you can at least say do Rev3 Quassy, then drive and do Eagleman, and pretty much are paying for gas, food and hotel.

One comment I think struck out with me when I have heard pros asked about it, would be guaranteed money. In some ways a race like Quassy may attract even more pros if they paid out a little less top end, and a little deeper into the field.

To put this in perspective even more. Race Quassy and finish 6th, you make more than winning Honu. Finish 8th, and you make as much as finishing 3rd at Honu. Finish 9th and 10th? You get paid, where Honu stops paying out at 5th.

Eagleman is at least a $50K race, so a $10K paycheck for the winner

I think a large part of that advice would be regarding gaining sponsorship. The athletes who base themselves in the US are far more likely to gain sponsorship from the Tri related companies.

I think the people who run Honu would be perfectly happy rolling back the amount of prize money to where it was a few years ago. No, that's not a typo. A female tier one pro a few years ago was looking for a race to start her come back after major surgery and was told that the race wouldn't suit her due to it's lack of prize money and lack of glory. She came anyway. The race was designed to appeal to age groupers and that's about it.

As for the time of the year, February would be better imo. I think June was picked just because it's starting to get into the hot season in that part of the coast. Then again, I also think the Challenge folks ought to have a 140.6 race out here around that time of the year too. :P

Early April is Lavaman Waikoloa time (Olympic length).

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The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits. -- A fake Albert Einstein "quote"