gary p wrote:
synthetic wrote:
i know flight/hotel costs are difficult to control (for one choose airbnb instead of hotel).... but come on USAT - do you think its right to have these excessive costs for registration and team kit? most aquathlon races are less than $100. A full kit can be had at $120. That being said, many high ranking competitive individuals do not make a lot of money wont be able to afford the $300 registration and $250 race kit, thus USA will not have good representation at world championships.
I wouldn't argue if you were to call the $250 required kit a bit of a gouge. A $300 entry fee for a "World Championship" event doesn't seem out of line to me, given that a local park-district sprint tri with a zig-zag pool swim cost +/- $65 around here, but I'll grant that to you for the sake of argument. So you're contention is these two items are overpriced by about $350 total, and that amount represents a financial barrier to US athletes who would otherwise participate.
Seriously, how small is the constituency of competitors who managed to qualify, and can afford the time off and overseas travel expenses (with bicycle in tow), but can't find that last $350 to pay "excess costs" of the kit and registration? I'd say it's so close to "zero" we can call it that.
I wouldn't blink an eye at spending $300 to compete in a sanctioned World Championship event. And I'd love to have the privilege of being able to overpay for a "Team USA" kit. My wife would probably get tired of me wearing it to bed. "Come here, baby, I know you want to snuggle with Mr. 'Team USA!'"
getting into AG worlds for tri is tough.
but for du, aquathlon, etc its easy, just participate in a national championship for it. i went to aquathlon nats and got a spot with a terrible time result for me personally. now flying to canada where the distance is half the race i just did, and 5x the cost just to compete? i know many faster than me working minimum wage jobs who cant participate.
i know many local elite racers, and ones who earned their pro card who simply quit the sport because of the costs. they still do individual legs of the sport though, locally. im seeing many local tri's having difficulty filling the elite waves, even granting some BOP AG'ers front access.