I wish them luck but am not optimistic that they will be able to longterm meaningful change. The chief reason being that triathletes are by their nature egocentric type-A individuals.

Lets consider two issues that pros are currently concerned about - increasing prize purses and the Kona slot allocation. The former reaches across brands and the later is a WTC issue. Meaningful changes to these items effects the bottom line of the race organizers. Race organizers do not support these changes. If the pro ranks want to take a real stand on the issue, stop showing up at races, i.e. boycott. If enough pros do this it will help drive change. However, that will likely never happen and things will keep rocking along as they are.

Like I said initially. I wish them luck. However, unless they are ready to "walk" I'm not holding my breath.

Sure seemed like a lot of people did Lake Placid last weekend and I'm pretty certain IM Boulder did just fine with registering folks.

They (pros) have been down this path several times since the early '90s (PAC, USPTDC, others). Thus far, no joy.

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#swimmingmatters
Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.
The Doctor (#12)

 
What happened to Prota?

Except registration for LP took place last year before Ironman announced there would be no pros there, so it doesn't really act as a good measuring stick. Also, they just added female pro races back to LP and Wisconsin (both female fields while Canada and Chattanooga will be male races). Did they find less publicity/coverage from media with no pro field detracted from events? Maybe. Maybe not. I don't know their reasons for a lot of things, but you can't rule it out.

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Instagram | Team Kiwami North America

[/quote]The question is: If the pros walk, would there be any meaningful impact on the races?[/quote]


getting hundreds of pros to do that would never happen. Even if some pros walk big deal other ones would just become the new top pros now. The only place that they could stage a walk out would be Kona and I promise you that will never happen fully

I think (hope) it's just more of a way to gather a somewhat organized voice for the pros, which could be a good thing for all parties

The point of a pro union is not exactly "striking out against the man", but rather finding a better way to work with him

That said, I can only assume that the vast majority of pros were not consulted on this. I certainly didn't hear anything about it myself nor from any of the many many pros I know. There are some major issues with a lot of the stuff I read on their site, although I don't want to poo-poo the idea altogether. But starting with the idea of charging anywhere from $200-$600 for membership, PROTA was nowhere near that much and still didn't have hardly any members. I would never give $600 not knowing if or what any of that money would truly go towards. I am all for having a more organized voice, but the way most of this reads it's not at all a democracy. i'd much rather the governing bodies decide the standards as opposed to a small select group of pro friends

A "PTU Series" of grand slam events is a direct challenge to the KPR and the position of Kona as the premier race on the calendar.
WTC is not going to go for this at all....

I think the more unified voice is a huge thing. I've heard Messick say that he'd love a more centralized way to communicate with pros.

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Aaron Bales
Lansing Triathlon Team

You just proved my point from earlier in the thread, i.e. there will always be someone showing up to claim the prize because the suckers decided to take a stand and stay home.

We've been here before. In 1985, Molina, Dave and Mark boycotted the lack of prize money at Kona and didn't race. A field showed up and Tinley won the race.

 Correct I am agreeing with you. I do think it's very important to have a professional field though, I just don't think it's terribly important who exactly shows up. The only reason "names" are names, is because they are at the top of the sport. If the top of the sport goes away there will be a new top of the sport. That's what happens when the All-Stars retire, new people become the All-Stars. So in other words a walkout would be dumb ;-)

We've also seen at the very 1st ever ITU World Champs the men & women agree not to race unless the prize money was equal. Now one could say many of today's pro's lack the leadership of someone like Erin Baker and some of the others that organized that threat not to race.

The ITU equaled the prize money for the race and moving forward ever since.

It's been done, I just don't know if today's LC pro's on the whole have the backbone that the pro's of yesteryear did for something like this.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Is this a rhetorical question? Seriously. If it isn't...

Depends on who you ask. I'd had conversations with people over the last year to consider seeing what it would take to re-up it. Plans change. Responses were basically either...

- It was a great organization that needs leadership.

- You would be polishing a turd or pushing a turd down the gutter if you re-started it.

I think that it failed because of a lack of leadership and lack of interest.

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Brandon Marsh - Website | @BrandonMarshTX | RokaSports | 1stEndurance | ATC Bikeshop |

Interview with Rich Allen

http://therealstarky.libsyn.com/...-pro-triathlon-union

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-Of course it's 'effing hard, it's IRONMAN!
Team ZOOT
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already listened. dueling forums. I'd sworn off forums unless dealing with pros.

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Brandon Marsh - Website | @BrandonMarshTX | RokaSports | 1stEndurance | ATC Bikeshop |

I was watching Twitter and other social media last weekend, looking for tri news. There was almost zero popular talk about IMLP, to the point of where I had to double-check to make sure it was actually going on and wasn't cancelled or something. In comparison, the other races with pros were lighting up the boards. Looked pretty terrible for IMLP publicity from that perspective.

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Zen and the Art of Triathlon. Strava Workout Log
Interviews with Chris McCormack, Helle Frederikson, Angela Naeth, and many more.
http://www.zentriathlon.com

I think Brett is right, there must be some value in having a pro race from an attention standpoint, otherwise WTC would not be making a move to add a pro race back into IMLP and Wisconsin. WTC knows this, they are just tinkering with how much they need to invest to get that attention/value back, but like most businesses, they will only invest as much as is necessary. Hence the experiment of just adding one gender (and taking it from another race) so the investment remains equal.

The important thing about Kona in 1985 is that some pros still did show up to race, but the race took note of the absence of the top pros and instituted prize money the next year. So it worked. I disagree that anybody showing up at a "boycotted" Kona would just be seen as the new star, especially if the true top tier athletes did not go away, but went elsewhere. People aren't dumb, and if Mirinda, Kienle, Frodeno, Rief and the other top 10 Kona types raced Roth but boycotted Kona, people would know who the top athletes were and what the real World Championship was.

But for any of this to happen, I do think that the top pros (or at least some pros) need to start to talk with their feet; that's the only leverage they have. But as long as they all chase Kona points and show up anyway, its ridiculous to think that WTC is going to change things just for the sake of "doing the right thing." Its private equity, the only consideration is the bottom line. That's what drives me crazy about the 50 women to Kona movement (which I support). I heard Dede Griesbauer on TRS talking about how important the issue was to her at the same time she said she was chasing Kona points this year because it was personally important to her. If that's what the sentiment is (and I have yet to hear a female pro say she is going to refuse to do WTC races over this issue), this won't ever change.

the insurance only covers up to 45,000$ of medical bills….in the US that is laughable…a real accident would cost a lot more than that!

This. I can only name a few pros. Two I know personally and train with on occasion. Their participation has no bearing on what race I enter.

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"In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway." T Durden

what pro shows up to what race has no bearing whatsoever on what races i sign up for. BUT what pros are at what race DOES have a bearing on what race i am going to follow.

i personally know a few pros and have gotten to know (barely) a few others and i enjoy following them on race day while on the trainer. if it wasn't for my 7 friends racing IMLP i would not have cared for it in any way, shape, or form.

Long distance tri is far more a participative sport than a pro sport, but the biggest issue with it from a spectating / following it perspective is that it basically makes no sense, there are far to many events spread out geographically to have any hope of being able to determine who is fast relative to anyone else at any given point in the season. The only time you find out whats really going on is HA - the rest of it is a nonsense. Yes you can look at the points but from a spectating perspective its far more interesting to have watched the challenge event in Bahrain where everyone and their brother showed up to have a crack at the money than having those same individuals spread out over half a dozen events.

I suspect even the benchmarks for getting a pro-card relative to other sports are to low but part of the solution would be to massively restrict the Pro-races to one, maybe 2 per continent - one being ideal, to consolidate all the prize money to those events, to evenly distribute the pro-slots across them, to run them, in so far as its possible, within the same time frame for north and south hemisphere's so thats late summer / early summer south north to allow time to recover for HA and to rotate the venues of the pro-qualifying races on those continents year to year.

We always hear the "its the only sport where AG'ers get to race with pro's" but the truth is that in most events that are non-lap bikes, the last time most AG'ers see the pro's is as they head off for the swim.

Maybe pro's attract AG'ers to events but I'm not sure thats true, I'd be surprised if it has much bearing on it at all, or not so significantly that WTC is going to stop putting on events

The big issue here though is, as has been repeated ad nauseum, every time this comes up, that Pro's will act in their own self interest, not in the med or long term interests of their profession, so voting with their feet for HA, for example won't bother the WTC at all as someone will show up and make a big pay check

the much better solution would be to reach a consensus about developing a schedule that optimises field strength, prize money to give a better result for the viewing public and sponsors

After listening to TRS interview - honestly - I feel they've announced this 6 months too early. Whilst Rich's heart is clearly in the right place I'm just not sure he even understood what they're hoping to achieve, and the environment they are operating in?

I don't see this going any other way than that of Prota.