burnthesheep wrote:
Another case against age groups versus categories.........just sayin.
Imagine this argument down at the local golf course for the tournament. Well, Webb Simpson has shown back up at his childhood golf club to play in the 18-34 age group.
But, that wouldn't be how it works there. He'd play in the top flight, or category, and still win.
I wish people would start to see how silly it is from other game and sport's perspective.
As for relays though, I wouldn't care. I think relays should just be "open" and whatever goes. Maybe have two relay categories by skill or something.
Definitely something that people are really polarized on. Some people value being able to compete with people who are "ranked" higher in something. I know that is me. I always wanted to pushed, challenged, etc. Others not so much, they think you shouldn't be able to compete for some reason - I don't really get that argument personally. If pros were banned, well that would be completely different argument but it isn't like I am taking their Kona spot, I wasn't competing in 18-34 per se. I was still categorized as a professional in a separate category.
Regardless, and I have said this before, but I learned so much about pro's, our marketability etc that day. That day was the day I had the epiphany that it wasn't about being a pro... it really was about the first person to be across the finish line. Being local there were many people who were very familiar with me, but there were 100x of spectators who were supporting others, or just general Madison folk who had no idea. No idea I was a professional, no idea that there was no prize purse unlike prior years. They just saw it as the first person to cross the line.
Although there was a time before where Ironman operated the same way, you could easily make an argument on how much Ironman devalues the pros when they have 1 pro race for either male/female, 1 amateur. In that race the community sees the pro and the amateur who "won" as equal. You could say the amateur is elevated to the status of the professional, but 99.99% of the people don't know there is anything different between the male/female winner in regards to their professional / amateur status. Even the people who do sponsorship don't really care, a win is a win to them.
Golf is a very different sport as I don't think you have sponsors supporting Webb Simpson to the tune of a PGA event at his local backyard event. At the end of the day, the landscape totally changed in triathlon. Given it's sort of unique status as a participant sport and with the coming of age of social media the pro in general has been sort of devalued along the way. Triathlon is an extremely low-reward sport financially, frankly, I am surprised we don't see more pros doing non-pro prize races to raise their profile. But then I know why, because 95% of all pros have another job and they don't really care except for getting their racing fix and they want to compete against the best or maybe for some because they want to race more cheaply. The pro is just a label. It allows one to compete in events with a prize-purse greater than $5,000 and with a special set of rules, with a special set of oversight (ie officials, doping, etc).
For me, till this day, I have never heard from Edward Schmitt (3rd place finisher, 2nd amatuer). There was no offer to return the first overall male banner. That banner is technically mine but seeing is I don't keep trophies it isn't a big deal, however I do have a
few (emphasis few) fans that collect stuff and it would have be nice to send it to one of them. And if it wasn't mine, it was certainly Rudy Kashar's who actually finished second and was the first amateur. The Wisconsin State Journal wrote a nice story that unfortunately read like I "bandited" the race. Only to try to correct it the following day but only to get the story even more wrong IMHO. I didn't get an apology for Ironman. There was nothing (to my knowledge) that wasn't kosher on my part and Ironman got an extra $800 that they wouldn't have had if I hadn't raced. In typical fashion, the only positive thing to come from this for me was it brought some attention to the issue and got Ironman to more formally come up with a procedure on how to handle it going forward which was linked above. I received a considerable amount of flak from a few age-groupers over the issue too which is never healthy in terms of stress recovery etc.
At the end of the day humans are social creatures and I love to participate, talk, laugh, share experiences etc. But traveling to pro events is costly, time-consuming, and hardly ever financially rewarding. When I can sleep in my own bed, walk a block to the race start and compete at a shared goal with 2,500 hundred other motivated people I'll take it. It would be nice if we had more races that pros were willing to do without prize purses but it just doesn't happen. Fwiw, the two others years it hasn't been a male pro event I have volunteered to help athletes and being a competitive person I was, I always tried to be the best volunteer possible and tried to jog with every athlete a few steps so I could make a better and more seamless hand-off at the aid station.
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