Ajax Bay wrote:
Transcendaus wrote:
lassekk wrote:
TheDuathlonShow wrote:
MattRnr wrote:
Bottles and bladders down your shirt is just goofy. Ban it!
👏 Yes. I'm on record as a shirt bottle hater. Have to be some rules to keep humans human-shaped on the bike and the bikes bike-shaped.
Of course it should be banned, it is uncomfortable, alienates average people and adds complexity where it should not. I think everyone will be happy this arms race will be stopped.
So let me get this straight - a $$$$$ custom made carbon fibre fuselage is fine in your view, but a $10 drink bottle stuffed down your top 'alienates average people' and amounts to an 'arms race'? Seriously??Come on!
Seriously, soo many triathletes have a perspective problem!
I don't have an issue with a bottle stuffed down an athlete's top. But sometimes competitors benefit from rules designed to make things sensible, and this issue is one such.
Uncomfortable, unsightly, unnecessary, of little drinking utility.
Upthread I have suggested a draft rule to address this useless trisuit stretching routine, but I'd ease this to allow a bottle of 750ml max to be inserted, to address the issue of cage breakage / Lucy Charles 'can't get it in, I'll drop it' scenarios.
The aero benefit would be minimal and not worth the hassle.
We saw Laidlow waddling to the T1 exit just now, supporting a bladder against his gut. Such a (@MattRnr) 'goofy' look.
Unsightly and goofy? We used to race in scungies and crop tops. We wear helmets straight out of Spaceballs. We regularly expel our stomach contents onto the side of race courses when we overindulge in the rolling buffet, and let's not forget we occasionally empty our bladders to warm up our wetsuits and combat drafting.
Nobody is forced to put a bottle down their top if they don't feel comfortable doing so, but people have been stuffing things down their tops since triathlon began - gels, Ventolin puffers, hats, broken helmet visors and sunglasses, punctured tubular tyres, running sticks, salt sticks,... heck even drink bottles! Nobody seemed to complain about it until someone discovered that it might inadvertently make some people slightly more aerodynamic.
Having coached hundreds of beginner triathletes over the last decade or so, there are enough damn rules in this sport for new entrants to get there heads around already without worrying about whether they'll get penalized for stuffing their nutrition in the wrong part of their suit. Let's prioritise simple, fair and cost-effective over pretty, because triathlon has
never been pretty.
B. Sport Coaching and Exercise Science
Triathlon Australia Performance (Level 2) Coach