https://www.washingtonpost.com/...florida-coronavirus/

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Favorite Gear: Dimond | Cadex | Desoto Sport | Hoka One One

Here is the root of all our post truth problems:

“Myself and everyone I have talked to feels safe going to the event,” said Naomi Ventura of the nearby Ormond Beach Triathlon Club. “I think they have put the right protocols in place to keep us safe.”

They feel safe. But they aren't actually safe.

Why in the hell are pro triathletes considered essential?

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clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com

I'll start by saying I got into triathlon in 2010 & dove straight into the deep end. By August 2011, I was an Ironman. Now I've done 5 IMs, 12 or 13 half IM & close to 100 total triathlons in 10 years. I miss racing as much as anyone, but........

.....there isn't a damn thing about a triathlon or triathlon professionals that is essential.

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Pink? Maybe. Maybe not. You decide.

Generally speaking, every state that has a professional sports team has a professional sports team "exemption" for adult/senior sport.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

I laughed when I read that as well.

I found this document (one of many):

https://www.floridadisaster.org/...sential-services.pdf


There are so many exemptions in there that pretty much anyone can be considered essential, including:



ESSENTIAL ACTIVITIES•Attending religious services conducted in churches, synagogues and houses of worship•Participating in recreational activities (consistent with social distancing guidelines) such as walking, biking, hiking, fishing, hunting, running, or swimming•Taking care of pets•Caring for or otherwise assisting a loved one or friend

 

Meh, Florida aint scared. Bring it on. The chance of death from covid continues to shrink.

Florida ranks 13/14 (depending on where you look) in deaths per 1000 people. But we rank in the top 4/5 for having the oldest populace in the USA. A lot of these so called deaths from COVID are just old people wh were on the tipping point of death anyway. We don't call FL gods waiting room for nothing. We have entire cities of 55 and over down here. You can NOT buy a house in these places unless you are basically an old fart.

Triathletes will be fine.

Carry on, nothing to see here.

Pro triathletes are very essential and I don't think I've ever met one narcissistic pro in my life.

Do you think this is the only thing to be concerned about with COVID-19?

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Pink? Maybe. Maybe not. You decide.

Thank god, as long as the triathletes are fine, who cares about anyone else.

Kudos to True for her willingness to be interviewed for the article. I agree with her that the amount of prize $ makes this a difficult decision for some pros.

Whelp, I've read my limit of articles, no idea what it says.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Open the link in a private browser tab. Gets past the WAPO paywall.

Danke schoen.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

So what you are saying is that even following every single regulation put in place by the state scientist and medical experts, they still careless? Here i was thinking that if I wear a mask, social distance and follow the guidelines we all be o.k...

They don't "feel" safe, the doctors and scientist had told them that if they follow their instructions they will be.

Funny how 12 months ago nobody knew the difference between hepatitis A and B and now everybody is a virology expert thanks to the media.

Just my 2 cents.

The problem, in my eyes, is that whether or not the event follows guidelines and is safe, there are still hundreds of people traveling there for this event, which puts everyone at higher risk. Also keeping in mind those willing to travel during these times are likely more callous about this, taking less precautions and putting others at more risk. It is sad pros are being forced to choose to race for their livelihood by risking getting this potentially career ending virus from an AGer.

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808 > NYC > PDX > YVR
2024 Races: Taupo

Why would age groupers need to quarantine? Florida doesn't have any travel restrictions in places and even if they did, most people are probably coming from places that are lower risk than Florida

With all due respect to pro triathletes:

"Forced"? Not more forced that the walmart cashier, the Walgreens pharmacist or any first responder out there. Everyone is making that choice, not one day of the year but everyday in order to make a living in the world we are living.

I have traveled the last six months from coast to coast, there is pretty much no room for being careless anymore, follow the rules or get kick out of the plane or refused service.

Just my two cents.

I was thinking about the angle of pros being forced to travel to earn a living. In my professional life, I have lost several deals during this pandemic due to not being able to travel (14 day quarantine upon return, which is not going to work for what I need to do running my company). But even if I could travel, I am not sure it is the best option for myself or my employees "right now" and I have a potentially really large deal in a major hot zone in Asia. So it is a hard choice on what you choose to do to make money or not. Pretty well every pro athlete on the planet has to make this call on travel and exposure in some capacity to fans/hotels/trains/airports. All the protour riders just went through this in the Europe based pro cycling season.

It is really tough, and I don't think any of us should judge pro athletes in any sport for going into a hot zone to earn a living. That is just what we are all living through. Some people get to work from home. Others have to be physically onsite and if they don't go onsite they can't make a penny.

This is not the first sporting event to attract visitors to a specific area. I get it. Its Florida so let's just pile on Florida and their Governor. There have been hundreds of sporting events all over country since June. Soccer and Lacrosse have had hundreds of tournaments in places like Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Colorado, Maryland, etc. Some of these tournaments attract well over a thousand people to them.

And a professional triathlete as essential is no more outlandish than allowing pot shops to remain open or a Jamba Juice, or a dry cleaner, or a coffee shop. At least the triathlete is working outdoors.

I just learned something, I thought those things were just for porn!

I haven't heard any experts saying that by following the guidelines we'd all be safe. What I have heard them saying is that it reduces the risk, and slows the rate of infection. Safer, but not "safe"...

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"I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10, and I don't know why!"

I frankly could care less about Sarah True's opinion given she's not on the start list. How about interviewing athletes who raced previously in Daytona and have been invited by PTO to race.

The whole article hinges on that there's some sort of ethical trade off because professional athletes are suddenly being offered an actual paycheck.

Was Ironman not deserving of the same criticism for hosting its Florida race with an identical number of registrants ?

Challenge Family and PTO have frankly just done a much better job of marketing and promoting the event.

There's no pressure to race or feel excluded if you're not invited. Despite it being billed, athlete's won't be walking away from Daytona calling themselves a world champion in some obscure middle distance.

"Safe" is a big word for a scientist, they will never say that, even with 99% effective vaccine, they will still tell you that you are not "safe". If you are waiting for that is going to be a long wait...

From the WAPO comment section:

"Oh for heaven's sake. People are dying, triathlons are so low on the priority list. Get a grip...."

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"They know f_ck-all over at Slowtwitch"
- Lionel Sanders

There have been hundreds of sporting events all over country since June. Soccer and Lacrosse have had hundreds of tournaments in places like Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Colorado, Maryland, etc. Some of these tournaments attract well over a thousand people to them.

And a professional triathlete as essential is no more outlandish than allowing pot shops to remain open or a Jamba Juice, or a dry cleaner, or a coffee shop. At least the triathlete is working outdoors.


I shift wildly back and forth on this every day. Part of me respects the details of the science of all this, and the other looks at a ton of anecdotal*, info and now some studies based some larger data sets, like this Japanese Study released this week looking at running races/events in Japan - https://runningmagazine.ca/...9-linked-to-running/ - 787 running races and over 700,000 participants and only one positive case!

Swimming Canada produced this short PSA this week as well - over 300,000 individual swim sessions since July in Canada - not one positive case - https://www.youtube.com/...amp;feature=youtu.be

*Not scientific and purely anecdotal, I asked on my Facebook page two weeks ago, if any runners or cyclists, many of whom had been running and riding in smaller groups, all summer, knew of ANY positive transmissions from running and cycling - not one answer "Yes" or knew of any in the greater running and cycling communities that they were in!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

My assumption, which could be incorrect, is that the author tried to interview such athletes and couldn't get anyone willing to be interviewed for publication. If the author didn't make that attempt, that's poor journalism.

Those 2 countries have done a much better job than the US of A in managing this pandemic. Especially looking at current numbers..........

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Pink? Maybe. Maybe not. You decide.

Considering the author quoted Sutton and was not transparent about being a TriSutto athlete, and the positive story he wrote about travelling to an Ironman race for the NYT, I would guess this was just clickbait with a quick freelance paycheck.

How about 'safe ENOUGH'.

If you want 100% safety you're going to need to seal yourself off from the rest of humanity. Both metaphorically and literally. You'll be 100% aafe from Covid.
But then you'll die from suffocation in that sealed room.
Or die from starvation (as there's risk in going getting food).
Or die from drowning in your own P + S as you couldn't risk going to a bathroom.

There are 2 things. One is whether this type of activity is safe and second is the notion that this is the first large scale sporting event to occur. I was referring to the latter and pointing out a triathlon in Florida is not going to be the first large event.

Important to know. Thanks!

I was about to say that the last person on the planet that should be quoted on anything related to triathlon in a mainstream publication is Sutton. I was wondering why Sarah True was even interviewed in the first place and while reading I was wondering why she gets to pontificate about ethics of racing in a pandemic, when thousands of pro athlete across sports worldwide have travelled, raced/competed in during this pandemic.

Reading the article comments in the Washington Post article was mildly amusing. It was almost like the article was just a catalyst to get a combo of "anti triathletes+anti Florida" venom flowing online. Well, they achieved that!

Anyone who did IM Florida get Covid19 at the race?

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Yep,5,200 athletes quite happily competed at the various races on offer at Challenge Taiwan this past weekend and I am certain that nobody contacted Sarah True to ask her opinion about the Pro's racing at the PTO supported race down here in Oz on Sunday (or the other PTO supported race in Sth Africa). I ran the bike dismount zone for that race and seem to have escaped healthy enough to ride home afterwards.
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https://protriathletes.org/weekend-wrap-hervey-bay-100-and-peoples-triathlon/?fbclid=IwAR1ITPKRZ6-x91_lxknR0LWofh2Oy4rTrf5LpkIgb6Rksi9QE0DhSuScZxw

exactly to the point

being safe is very different from feeling safe

it is like your health: feeling healthy and being healthy

well, it is "safe ENOUGH" not "safe 100%"

Taiwan and Australia both have a very different Covid risk profile to the US. Taiwan has not had a local case for 200+ days and Australia has had only 22 locally acquired cases in the last week. Florida had 9000+ cases yesterday.

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I am well aware of the differences between the three countries and was partially joking but you may have missed the point (if you had indeed read the article) that two of the athletes from the Oz race and three of the athletes from the Sth African race are scheduled to fly into Florida for the Daytona race.I would value their opinions regarding to the Covid travel/race issues as they have actually been invited and Sarah True hasn't.

Yes I did read the article. I would be interested in the opinion of Watkinson and Salthouse as they are both travelling from locations with very low infection rates. They both will be required to complete 2 weeks quarantine when they return to NZ and Oz.

Right, that was the entire point Nick was making. Sarah True is the worst interviewee (well maybe second worst after Sutton). True has not received an invite to race, so of course she will be butt hurt about not getting an invite to even earn the paycheque. Salthouse would be a better person to select, or last year's winners (Sanders, Findlay).

But realistically if you interview an NFL player or MLB player or UCI cyclist about competing in a pandemic to earn their living, what the heck are they supposed to say. Of course the player who got "CUT" from the NFL will say, "The NFL ethically should not play during the pandemic" (Sarah True is in the category of the player that did not make the team/league).

Here are the quotes from True in the article:

“It’s an ethical decision we are all making whether or not to travel,” said True, who isn’t a PTO member and so would need an invitation to compete. “Where it gets complicated is when you have got a third party tipping the scale.”

True lamented the idea of “an athlete who may not necessarily travel deciding to travel because all of a sudden there’s something major at stake,” such as a million-dollar purse.

“We have to weigh individual risks and collective risks on one side,” she said. “But also, this is a professional opportunity — and that balance gets tilted when you have significant financial gain possible. Money always changes the equation.”

True has not yet received an invitation to the PTO race in Florida — and is not sure what she will do if one comes.

“We always have that risk assessment as athletes,” she said. “It’s just the stakes are higher in the middle of a global pandemic.”

Nuanced answers, IMHO, even when you take into account that she might have hoped to have received an invite by now.

If you're not gung ho on going to Daytona you're one of the worst interviews in triathlon?

Of course, the writer should have also interviewed pros who have decided to race in Daytona or at least noted that he tried and no other athletes would talk to him. That's on him, not True.

P.S. I was critical of her comments following the Frankfurt collapse, so I'm not a True fanboy.

This is not an issue that she will have to concern herself with.

I read the entire article. She sounds exactly like an athlete who did not make the cut for tryouts on any team and is complaining about the team that cut her. Layering her ethical soapbox too when pretty well every pro sport on the planet is trying to make a way to operate in some capacity safely. I think we all "get" that every pro sport inherently has to live on the edge of what may not be totally safe, but we can say the exact same thing about the Amazon delivery guy who brought all of us our last package, or all the guys at the local electricity utility keeping the internet on in our homes. Everyone who has to physically work in the real world takes a bit of risk so the rest of us can hide behind our screens and avoid the virus.

Now we can debate if ANY pro sport should be on, but this discussion has gone on in every society during wars and conflicts....what type of day to day life should continue to operate in a war zone/emergency zone....try to live some semblance of normal life or do nothing at all until whatever conflict or emergency is over or something in between. Is professional sport part of that or not? Clearly during WW1 and WW2 they did not run the Tour de France and in 2020 we did not run Kona even through we ran the Tour de France....The top flight French soccer team closed for the season in March, but English Premier League, Bundesliga, NBA, NHL managed to have the rest of their seasons.

So the answer is nuanced, but I don't think it is True's business to comment on the ethics of whether pro sport should happen and imply that she's on some higher moral high ground than her competitors.

This one was somewhat in the category of Jonathan Vaughters writing a letter to the UCI saying the last week of the Giro should be cancelled due to Covid19 while his team was still in the race (and not even having consulted his on guys on the ground in Italy). Vaughters is lucky the UCI does not give him the boot from their races next year. I am sure if there is any time in 2021 when Vaughters needs whatever favour from UCI, well he cut off that lifeline.

I disagree. This is a business decision for her just as you have discussed your business decisions during the pandemic. Do you agree that business decisions often involve ethics? I assume the Trues are still dependent on prize $ and sponsorships to pay the mortgage so I doubt she thinks she is on some higher moral ground than her competitors. She didn't say that she wouldn't compete if offered a spot, so she appears to have struggled regarding what to do if given the opportunity.

Generally it's pretty simple with sports. She's at the tail end of her career so it's a bit different. But if this is your career and you can compete, you compete.

Unless someone is committing theft as their career, I won't really look down upon from some moral high ground about what someone does to earn the money that allows them to buy food and pay rent. Every job is essential.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

I think the right term is less unsafe...

The measures that events have been putting them in place make the activities less unsafe than they would be otherwise, but anytime you are amassing a larger number of people and at times they will be in relatively close quarters, there is risk to the activity...

It is OK if she decides here personal business decisions and reasoning for them, and its OK to discuss mine. But its not OK for me to tell other businesses and employees what is OK according to my ethics even though they are doing something completely legal. If people are doing things illegal and against various government and federation guidelines, then by all means, voice your opinion.

And if your peers are doing legal things that are completely stupid from a public health angle because the stupid government allows it, then the people to beat up on are the government, not the people trying to earn a living inside the rules. Just beating up on others based on your own values never goes anywhere, because the other person always has a slightly different point of view.

Personally I'd like to see all Canadian people not allowed to travel to the US by any means for the next while, but that's what's not going on, because my government keeps allowing people to travel. If they implemented that, Lionel would not be able to race, but I don't hold it against Lionel for racing. I hold it against my government for allowing us to keep going to the US and messing up our public health, because the same people who find loopholes to travel are the exact same people who don't follow the quarantines when they come back (and I have family members in this category)

So if True would have used "I" rather than "we" you would have been OK with her comments?

Well then she would have rephrase with "My ethics don't allow me to travel because I feel I would endanger others". She can talk about herself all she wants. A lot of people would just read that and say, "fine don't get on a plane and enjoy your time at home".

But clearly she was not. She sounds resentful of others who are able and chose to race and is trying to say their ethics are not good. That's a different discussion.

Here's what I get when I change the first quote from We to I. “It’s an ethical decision I have to make whether or not to travel,” said True, who isn’t a PTO member and so would need an invitation to compete. “Where it gets complicated is when you have got a third party tipping the scale.”

That doesn't seem resentful of others but instead conflicted that because she needs $ to pay the mortgage she may have to consider doing something that she would prefer not to do during a pandemic because of her ethical beliefs. I think we can all identify with having that dilemma at some point in our lives.

I could be giving her too much credit. Sponsors seem to like her attitude at this point. It will be interesting to see how it goes for her in the next couple of years.