Mark Lemmon wrote:
Here are the quotes from True in the article:
“It’s an ethical decision we are all making whether or not to travel,” said True, who isn’t a PTO member and so would need an invitation to compete. “Where it gets complicated is when you have got a third party tipping the scale.”
True lamented the idea of “an athlete who may not necessarily travel deciding to travel because all of a sudden there’s something major at stake,” such as a million-dollar purse.
“We have to weigh individual risks and collective risks on one side,” she said. “But also, this is a professional opportunity — and that balance gets tilted when you have significant financial gain possible. Money always changes the equation.”
True has not yet received an invitation to the PTO race in Florida — and is not sure what she will do if one comes.
“We always have that risk assessment as athletes,” she said. “It’s just the stakes are higher in the middle of a global pandemic.”
Nuanced answers, IMHO, even when you take into account that she might have hoped to have received an invite by now.
If you're not gung ho on going to Daytona you're one of the worst interviews in triathlon?
Of course, the writer should have also interviewed pros who have decided to race in Daytona or at least noted that he tried and no other athletes would talk to him. That's on him, not True.
P.S. I was critical of her comments following the Frankfurt collapse, so I'm not a True fanboy.
I read the entire article. She sounds exactly like an athlete who did not make the cut for tryouts on any team and is complaining about the team that cut her. Layering her ethical soapbox too when pretty well every pro sport on the planet is trying to make a way to operate in some capacity safely. I think we all "get" that every pro sport inherently has to live on the edge of what may not be totally safe, but we can say the exact same thing about the Amazon delivery guy who brought all of us our last package, or all the guys at the local electricity utility keeping the internet on in our homes. Everyone who has to physically work in the real world takes a bit of risk so the rest of us can hide behind our screens and avoid the virus.
Now we can debate if ANY pro sport should be on, but this discussion has gone on in every society during wars and conflicts....what type of day to day life should continue to operate in a war zone/emergency zone....try to live some semblance of normal life or do nothing at all until whatever conflict or emergency is over or something in between. Is professional sport part of that or not? Clearly during WW1 and WW2 they did not run the Tour de France and in 2020 we did not run Kona even through we ran the Tour de France....The top flight French soccer team closed for the season in March, but English Premier League, Bundesliga, NBA, NHL managed to have the rest of their seasons.
So the answer is nuanced, but I don't think it is True's business to comment on the ethics of whether pro sport should happen and imply that she's on some higher moral high ground than her competitors.