With that said, I also agree with her argument to not share her file, especially given how people can be jerks at times on ST. //

Yes Herbert is a German and English is his second language. But she could have been the hero here and choose not to go that route. Honestly since Jonnyo has been around so long here and knows the program, I'm surprised he did not council her to be that hero. All she had to do was admit what we all know happened, she got a draft assisted ride on a short course. She could have said it was unavoiadable as WTC did not provide any Marshalls for the lead women, and the start gap was just too short for a clean womens race. Had she said all that, it would not have mattered that her power profile looks like one from a road race, it would have been prefaced and accepted by just about everyone her, and she would be the hero for telling the truth.


But she chose to create this illusion that this was somehow a righteous ride, and other than a few K it was by the book. It was so easy, yet almost every pro in every sport always chooses the wrong path when this comes up. I like to go back to the Andy Pettit drug scandal and how he handled it and the world moved on the very next day on him. Does no one see that battling what we all know just makes things worse? And just admitting to whatever happened gets you more and not less fans??

You want match reports, I have those too. Being a dick to people isn't cool.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Ya, being a dick to someone, especially someone in your profession, well is not really cool..

"You need not interview another athlete again".

okay. thanks. so, you're aaron castro (who performed these interviews) and i get a sense of your interviewing style now. have you ever had a situation like this? and by "situation like this" i'll use the following analogy. i'm an angels fan, so american league. the highest batting average of someone to win the american league batting title - and let's just keep it to the time ironman has been alive - is .390. george brett. we've had about 500, give or take, ironman races in our sport's history. we just had the top 9 women's bike splits of all time recorded in the most recent race.

so, if you were interviewing the guy in 2018 who batted .426, with the 9th best batting average of this year .400, i think you'd have a tough time asking those questions of him without asking about the statistical absurdity of what just happened. especially - if i can make another analogy - against the backdrop of the abolishing of any officiating that encumbered the batter over the last half of the season.

i read the interview. and, mind you, herbert has interviewed, again my guess, about 400 athletes, including the best in the sport, men and women, via skype, phone, email, published here as text interviews and video interviews, and he interviews athletes either in english or in german, depending on the language they are most comfortable with (and then translates to english if conducted in german). we've served on slowtwitch about 600 million pages in the time herbert's been here. he isn't a rookie.

have you conducted an interview where you had to ask questions of someone who really did nothing wrong, that is, the subject in this case didn't bring this situation on herself, yet we have this absurd set of performances when set against the history of the sport. i listened to two of your interviews and i don't see anything on par with a no-win interview i would not (personally) have wanted to undertake.

i don't mean this to sound defensive. herbert has been on his game and off as an interviewer. as have i. as have others here on slowtwitch. we hit and we miss. happy to hear how we should have done it better, considering that email interviews often translate horribly but that was the available medium in this case.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Appreciate the feedback. I ask coaches and players difficult questions all the time. But not in this setting. I throw all my fast balls during post-match press conferences.

I read the interview with an open mind (like I do everything here, because I want to add knowledge about tri to my brain) and it came off as dickish. The fact that it was conducted over email as a back and fourth makes some more sense but I personally would want to build out questions and send them over rather than go one by one. Frying coaches and athletes when they screw up immeasurably on the field is completely in the green zone. You're stating the intent was not to be a jerk, but that's how it came off to multiple people in this thread to include myself. That's just the view from my foxhole.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

well said Slowman

Dan,

Thoughtful response - and great leadership - as always. I think the interview in question helps illustrate the challenge of communicating through the written word and email in particular as a medium. I can count a number of times in my profession in which I have seen a witness's emails read out of context, or without the intended tone or inflection that would have been obvious if they had been speaking, then leading to sometimes disastrous results for the writer or for the businesses for whom they work.

All of which is to say (being a bit verbose as lawyers sometime are :P) that I'm guessing Herbert had the best of intent, and to some of us (not me) it crossed the line in (to mix metaphors) a grey area. The notion that he should never do another interview is - it almost goes without saying - ridiculous. I'm sure you'll look back at this, decide on whether there are any ways to improve, and keep up the good work of being one of the best forums (fora?) across all sports. I'm not even a triathlete anymore, I'm just a pure roadie, and I still come here too damn much because of the great discourse! And articles like Herbert's add to it. So keep it up.

thank you for the feedback. i don't disagree with you. but i'm still glad he asked the questions. which may sound like a conundrum and maybe it is. but i just read the text of another interview we're about ready to publish and our interviewer asked pretty much the same questions. maybe this interview will sound better to your ears, but maybe it's also the responses from the subject that might this interview sound more congenial.

my interviewers bored in for both these interviews, and i'm proud of them both, tho perhaps we'll come away with some sort of takeaway that makes us better. and i also respect the athletes who're making the best of a tough situation that they didn't ask for.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

thank you for the kind words. esp coming from a roadie ;-)

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

There have been issues in the past

Edited to remove content that was addressed previously with an apology, of which I was admittedly unaware

Look at the data, re Alan Couzens.

You’re being lazy on this one given your personal anecdote/clouded memory via the PNF thread.

Maurice

And the relevance to this discussion? Nice red herring

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"There are two ways to slide easily through life- to believe everything and to doubt everything- both ways save us from thinking "- Korzbyski

How would you interview Israel Folau?

Is that true? That kind of changes how I few him.

how is that a ''red herring?" not saying it's relevant or not relevant, but i am curious how it fits in your thought process as being purposefully misleading or distracting given the context of this thread.

It was an interview with Beth Gerdes when she was pregnant I believe.

There have been interviews with her since and he wrote an apology after the fall out from it.

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Twitter - Instagram

https://www.babble.com/...s-everywhere-cringe/

Link to actual interview seems to have edited out the actual question. I am happy they did.

Edit: I wish to edit in so far as ST and herbert did apologize. And they did edit out this question in interview. And that means a lot. It means they listen. And take feedback seriously which is a good thing.

And Dan backing his employees is leadership 101. And I respect that.

I still stand by from the start as I said, it’s just a disappointing interview.

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@rhyspencer

I'm under the impression that the discussion as it stands now is about his writing and interviewing abilities specifically concerning this article and his overall ethos in regards as a contributor for the website. Whether he posted about abortion in another thread has no relevance to this discussion but purposely changes the focus on another discussion entirely. That is the definition of a red herring logical fallacy. How the whole discussion turned into a personal attack on his character is also a red herring. It's about this article- not about his personal character and whether his personal character either should be questioned or whether it even matters. I don't know Herbert- never met him- but if judging him on his merits as a writer and reporter then I think his overall body of work here for all these years speaks for itself. He does his job, has done his job well for many years, and aside from the occasional article that might seem not up to its audience 's standards, at the end of the day he has earned enough credibility here from his audience and from his boss that talking about a question asked about abortion is nothing more then the same hit job many people here seem to be mad at him for doing to the interviewee. I guess I'll also double down and add it is also hyprocricy as well...

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"There are two ways to slide easily through life- to believe everything and to doubt everything- both ways save us from thinking "- Korzbyski

Very well said.

The only recommendation I would have for Herbert is to make it clear up front the focus of the interview was on questioning the validity of the women bike times and not presenting it as anything but that and perhaps making this an article based on a few more of the women in top 9 vs just Jen.

We all know the time(s) unfortunately for Jen and others has zero credibility and she will have to back it up somewhere else for the respect she may want or deserve given how much of an outlier it was esp given the top 9 world best bike times on same day which anyone should see is clearly not remotely doable without a lot of drafting whether intentional or not.

The part i do not like is she makes little attempt to simply state she clearly benefited a lot from draft packs whether she intended to or not and saying something like "the power clearly got me a time significantly faster than I would have expected" even if she does not want to release the file which I understand why she would not as it would likely only reinforce what many already know.

I do feel for her as whether her performance was the actual cracker jack world best it will never be accepted as it by most.

x2 and said better than what I tried.

For context, the table below shows many people were around a specific rider at each timing mat (up to 6 seconds ahead of her and 6 seconds behind her—data is Alan Couzens').

Jen's data shows the cleanest ride of the 20+ people I've looked at.

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http://powerful-problem-solving.com