I feel bad for him [..] to be a performing monkey and stroke Frodeno's ego

Imagine that, professionalism and attention to detail. Frodeno has a physio that lives with him for crying out loud! It is a two gold medalist household! Obsessively scribbling every single workout or doing calculations to the nth degree is not exactly this type of attention to detail. Keeping a manchild as your Bundini Brown may be great for YouTube but is not the same kind of team. Frodeno is a one of a kind and maybe Sanders does learn from observing and though he may not close the gap to Frodeno he can widen the gap to the chasing pack, many of which are aging, and the up and comers like Long. Keeping DTD is a must to maintain continuity and to progress off of that rather than self-sabotage. I wish him luck as he has plenty of prime years.

I think Jan is very unusual in how professional he, and his team, is. In amateur sport it isn't typical to run one's career like a high level business or pro sports team. There are outliers, but look at most endurance athlete vlogs - they basically live and train like college students. It is the rare few at the top of these sports that create a team and a lifestyle that goes beyond just training a lot.

In that regard, I think you are right - this was a huge opportunity for Lionel to realise that his small team can be much more.

I think Lionel is already very good at seeing the bigger career picture - his collaboration with Talbot has been huge and Lionel has been thinking outside the box in bringing other athletes into his videos and promotions.

I was skeptical about the whole tri battle, but seeing that Lionel saw it as an opportunity to network with Jan and also to set Jan up as a bit of a mentor, I thought it was a very shrewd move.