It is the nature of sport—and the workforce in general—that a select few make significantly larger dollars than the rest. It’s unfortunate, but the reality.

Coming back to "triathlon is not a spectator sport", really most endurance sports the fans are practitioners of the sport

Runners: they want to go do Boston...which Kenyan is less important than their time in Boston
Cyclists: they want to go climb at Alpe d'Huez with their buddies or win the local Tuesday night crit world championships or the Thursday nite TT worlds

In triathlon we have the following

Ironman: 85 or so pros racing head to head in Kona, 2500 age grouper doing the same race on the same day, and 50,000 age groupers at home wishing they could be on the tarmac in Kona, so they show up to local Mdot races. WTC holds the road to Kona. For most age groupers they are not so concerned about who is in the pro field, they just want to be at the same race with the pro field

ITU - They kind of blew it when the pros started doing a different format from age groupers. But ITU has the keys to the Olympics, so for those who don't want to do long triathlons, they can do their local sprint and olymic races and pretend they are on the road to the same holy grail event that is popular not because of Whitfield, or Carter or Frodo, but because they happen to be doing a 2nd or third tier sport at the same multi sport event that Bolt or Phelps are dominating. Triathlon in the Olympics is a side show (like most sports). But the key to the Olympics keeps age groupers kind of following short distance racing

Collins Cup, well it LOOKs like a format that age groupers don't really do at all that we can't enter, the eyeballs that care most about the event can't do it...so we only care because the top pros from Ironman and ITU can do this. So hopefully the fact that we kind of care from the first two formats keeps our eyeballs on it and they can get enough revenue from sponsors to keep this going (fingers crossed). But it feels to me like they need some parallel age group event on the same weekend to make it more of a festival atmosphere and get revenue from those sources (or maybe that's in the cards).

I think at the end of the day, long distance triathlon is like watching paint dry. Its not exciting unless you happen to do the sport. So we're the only eyeballs that care. Can it cross over to mainstream TV. I hope the packaging up of the story with data, camera angles, split times and so forth can make it exciting enough to cross over!!!! That would awesome if people outside of our sport started caring.

Sutto is not done on his opinions!

https://www.trisutto.com/...-to-waste-10-million

better idea to make the pros race for the money, but he doesnt address what races. I assume any pro who races under sutto plan would have to wear some team uniform advertising PTO

Draft legal long course with cross country team scoring. Everyone should start at the same time. Not this 1on 1 10 minutes apart. That will set up for a fragmented race.

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USAT Level II- Ironman U Certified Coach

I haven't seen it posted here yet, but Oxygen Addict interviewed Charles Adamo. I appreciate that he was on there explaining some stuff but I definitely tend to agree more with Sutto on most topics.

One (relatively) easy way the PTO could definitely help all levels of pros would be something they hint at on their website, helping to provide a health insurance plan for those of us who have no employer sponsored health insurance, whether that be because we only have part time jobs (like I do now) or no other jobs. Now of course, this is mostly applicable to Americans, and I wouldn't mind not needing this (go vote), but for now, both Summer and I are stuck paying over $500 a month for health insurance through the marketplace. I could certainly find better things to spend that money on than health insurance...

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Benjamin Deal - Professional - Instagram - TriRig - Lodi Cyclery
Deals on Wheels - Results, schedule, videos, sponsors

There is another PTO article on the main page recently and a lot of talk of the PTO changing tri for the pros. But can anyone tell me in the 5 years or so existence of the PTO have they done anything beneficial for the sport or has it just been talk. I acknowledge they paid out some money to pros this year, basically it all went to the top end athletes, I can't say that helped the sport in any way. They are talking up this Collins Cup and the Daytona race, yet we heard about the Collins Cup years ago and it has not gotten off the ground.

So what has the PTO achieved?

It's not fair to blame them for the Collins Cup not happening, at least not this years race. Paying money out shouldn't be understated, despite the fact that most of it went to the top 20 or so. But $5000 for the athletes towards the back end of the 100 certainly makes a big difference at this time. That would have been a huge bump in my ability to self sustain at least. Most of the guys in the back 50-100 probably aren't living lavishly. To be clear, I do think they should have weighted it less at the top.

Edit: I just realize I said most of this stuff like 2 posts ago. Woops. The point remains.

As far as other stuff they've accomplished, they haven't had their own money for that long. They've got some genuinely good ideas I'm hoping can actually be implemented. If some kind of athlete health care plan is availalbe in the next year, that would be huge for a lot of us I think. My wife and I are currently paying ~$500/month on marketplace for coverage, anything less than that would be money in our pocket essentially. This is a very American problem but still.

I'm as hopeful and as skeptical as the next guy. I'm happy to give them the benefit of the doubt for now.

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Benjamin Deal - Professional - Instagram - TriRig - Lodi Cyclery
Deals on Wheels - Results, schedule, videos, sponsors

Thanks for the reply,

With Covid I think they will be delayed further in achieving anything, so to date nothing really has been done. I like the Daytona race idea, but let see how that goes. Top end payments was a poor move, that money should have been evenly split.

On health care, that is a USA issue I don't think that is the role of that group as its not equitably supporting athletes around the world, sorry mate, I think that is a burden you will have that is shitty but a USA issue.

The PTO needs to be working towards a better structure of money and racing, look at the ITU model of tiers and bring that more officially to long course, less pro races, with deeper prize money would be great for the viewer to get top class 70.3 and Ironman competition. They can keep a heap of Age Group only events as that is servicing that side of the business and maybe those race can also serve as like tier 3 events for up and coming pros, with no prize money but a chance to qualify to race in the higher tier events to make money. Just making the PTO championships confuses the whole thing, I love it has big money, but why not just team with with the ITU long course worlds that has history and help make that more prestigious and better paid.

I hope that they are just starting with the idea of these massive money championship to gain interest before allowing it to trickle down some... if not that's going to be no different than the payouts they already did. I get they want these to be "championship" races, but the invite only structure to both the collins cup and Daytona further seperates the disparity between the top and everyone else. It would seem strange of them to continuously rely on Ironman races to form rankings that they then use to build their championship rosters, considering they pretty clearly want to be independent of Ironman. Once again, that's their best option for now with no history of races so hard to fault them there.

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Benjamin Deal - Professional - Instagram - TriRig - Lodi Cyclery
Deals on Wheels - Results, schedule, videos, sponsors

Thanks Lucy for posting this! BTW, spectacular pain cave, the best I've seen!!!

Some interesting points, my take on this.

The PTO is a good thing for the sport, and for the pros.

I think the Collins cup will be pretty exciting to watch, but I will prefix that with the fact that the statement is coming from someone who's glued to the TV screen once a year for 9 hours to watch the live Kona broadcast, so I'm not the "masses", but an UBER fan.

Having said that, the format is quite exciting. I disagree that this is "Island house" re-hashed, Island house is much more like "Super League", another great format BTW and very exciting to watch.

There are two fundamental aspects to this.

The team captains, the strategy and making the picks, and then the race. Everyone is discounting the role the team captains will have in the outcome, and the excitement around the picks, that is a HUGE aspect of this. It's not just who can beat who, but also how far back they think they would be if they do lose, since there are 1 1/2 extra points up for grabs for each competitor, as timing bonuses, depending on how far back second and third place finishes.

If you watch the Ryder cup, there are swings throughout the day, where the US is up, then they fall back down. Each match has a current score, 4 Up for instance. So the running score of the Collins Cup will be front and center, and would be changing throughout the entire day, as they score the current placing's and timing differences. You could have a scenario where at one point, an UBER biker can gain a current 2 1/2 point lead over the second place guy/girl with a huge bike lead, but when the run comes up, and UBER biker gives way to UBER runner, hence a BIG swing as that 2 1/2 point lead evaporates in the other direction.
Because of the time bonuses, it's not simply show up and win, you are trying to maximize (for the winner) and/or minimize (for the loser) the time deficit because that can add significant points, so I think over the entire time of the event, this could be quite exciting to watch.
Will it become main stream, I don't know, but I believe there is an audience for this.

Regarding pay, Golfers are not paid for the Ryder cup nor the President's cup, they get a bonus sent to a charity of their choice. That doesn't mean they are not trying as hard as they can, i.e. Sergio trying to rally the troops and fans after he finished his match. They are competitors at heart, and I believe will give it their best on the day, regardless of the fact there is no prize money on the line.

In terms of, why don't we just had the cup over to Team Europe, in the immortal words of Chris Berman, "Thats why......they play......the game". Anything can happen on the day, look at Daniella last year in Kona. Over the last 10 years, we could have just handed the super bowl to NE and Brady each year at the start of the season, but that isn't how it transpired did it.

I personally am quite stoked about this race, and i think it's a great format, and different from anything we have seen in the past.

All these formats, Super League, Collins Cup, Kona, etc, all help build the sport of triathlon up IMO.

Bravo PTO, really excited to see this happen.

Three months to go.
Latest rankings: https://stats.protriathletes.org/rankings/women https://stats.protriathletes.org/rankings/men

Back into this event....I have just seen the rankings...but who is going to race and who is not?
Team Europe...I think the 4 qualified women will race, and the discretionary picks might be Spirig and Stimpson. In the men´s I think Lange will step out and Baekkegard will go in, and the other two spots will go to Ditlev and Luis or Goodwin . Blummenfelt stepping out and Brownlee is injured....

Team USA. I guess the 6 women will be Moench,Jackson, Hering, McCauley, Corbin and Doehla. men´s: Long, RVB,Hanson, Kanute, and the two discretionary picks might be Leiferman and Tim O.

Team International: Adam, Findlay, Lester, Metzler, plus Crowley and Salthouse. Men: Sanders, Appleton, Currie, Neumann, plus IMO Trautman and Laundry

On paper, Europe is much superior to USA and internationals, and Internationals seem superior to USA but who knows...

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Spaniard. Sorry for my english for the sensitive ones :P

Not so fast Skippy,we "Internationals" may be calling in the A-Team for help...