Slowman wrote:
gravel is not a bubble. gravel is a cycling platform. just like road, timed-race, MTB. it's a response to a road surface. the question is whether it's a legitimate response. in my view, it is. its legitimacy would be in question if it was a contrived road surface. something that doesn't exist in very many places. snow cycling. sand cycling. which it kind of fat bike cycling. is that a ubiquitous road surface? i would say no. i'd say it's more like a regional, occasional road surface. gravel expands beyond even the surface, per se. gravel, in practice, means go-anywhere, do-anything and the technical response has been to make bikes that get from here to there faster, with more comfort, less effort. so, gravel is only going to increase. but for the purpose of this thread, i think the trend in triathlon is to reverse the roll-up, natl series, natl brand, consolidation model of the last decade. i suspect some of these races are going to go back to their original owners, or to new owners, who know how to grow them, to inject the secret sauce that makes them work. whether small local RDs (david daggett) or big local RDs (delmo, high 5 events, MESP), these local orgs are better at producing races in their local areas almost all the time. the only time a global muscle outlifts the locals is when a very muscular approach to race organization is needed (it's easier for ironman to get a course and produce a race of that magnitude).
Gravel racing as the bubble. I think that gravel bikes probably become the most popular platform, especially with disc wheels making so you have real easy interchange for purpose and can take the gravel bike on the road easy. I bought my Krypton specifically to buy another wheelset and take it out on the gravel. I'm just looking at this weirdly where you just cut your entire series by 50-60% and then increase your gravel series by 100% makes little sense to me, it's a massive pendulum swing in hopes of long term gain. Not sure that is there overall, maybe it is. I'm more of a layman in this world, but when LifeTime chose not to be USAT Sanctioned as a promoter, I didn't register for their race. Now, how this affects me, I was hoping this race was still going to be here this season because it would have been a part of my IMAZ plan.
Fleck wrote:
In the early going . . . everything has a bubble-like feel to it.
That's where we are at with Gravel right now
Look at Mud & Obstacle Racing/Events. Good grief. NOTHING grew like they grew starting about 10 years ago. The growth was insane! I met and talked to one of the founders for one of the big mud series (Not Spartan - one of the others) at a conference in the early days, and already back then he was telling me that they had to have an, "exit strategy". You know something is NOT sustainable when key people in a business are having those sorts of candid conversations with you!
News came last week that Spartan is buying the Tough Mudder Series. Red Frog Events that owned an ran the Warrior Dash series and a bunch of other events and Music Festivals - ceased operations last August!
There was a huge OCR promoter that went belly up the year after they Sponsored the Fiesta Bowl. I can tell you for a fact they actually didn't spend what that sponsorship was worth, but it was way more than they had. Battle Frog had a national collegiate series and championship televised on ESPN. Where are they now?
Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.
Last edited by:
TheStroBro: Jan 3, 20 10:06