devashish_paul wrote:
Guys, I'm not running on emotion I am looking at these from the angle of those running the events and tourism business side.
If race organizers want to have a chance to have a means to earn an income later this year (like all other businesses) and not lay of staff, this is a good thing versus them all throwing in the towel and folding up shop. The economy needs all businesses and industry to give it a shot and try to revive themselves in the second half of this year and not fold shop. This is good for everyone. If races all defer to later this year, just for a shot of staying in business noting that they may have to cancel, its still an effort on their part, that we can support versus actively discourage.
If we can support it, that would be great. It could be as simple as registering for a race this year provided the race director gives the option that your fee gets transferred to next year just so they can have a chance. I am signed up for several events not just in sport, but in business and if they happen they happen, but I don't need to actively discourage them as some of you are.
I'm fine with what you wrote here. Support all you want. I will do the same.
BUT the cold, hard reality is this is going to be the economic equivalent of an extinction event for a lot of mass gathering/participation events and the companies who put them on. Many events steeped in history and with sufficient financial backing and stakeholders will have to be dormant for a while until a vaccine is available. There will be no concerts, no festivals, no Boston Marathons, no Ironman races, no attendance at sporting events until such time. Ironman will bounce back, the Boston Marathon will bounce back, the NFL will bounce back, etc. They can likely weather the storm for the 12-18 months it will take to get through this. But they're not going to look the same coming out of this before it started. There's going to be a cosmic shift in how mass gatherings are going to happen. Jon Bon Jovi was on Howard Stern this morning and was asked how he thought the concert situation was going play out and he basically said it's never going to come back to how it was before, we may never tour again, this could be the end of touring.... how can you pack 50,000 people together ever again? Not that I'm taking medical advice from Jon Bon Jovi but he does have some bona fides when it comes to large crowd situations.
Smaller, indie races, and the like will not survive.
devashish_paul wrote:
I get that its realistic that many events won't happen, but let's give these businesses a chance should the economy open up. Minimally they should happen next year with a deferral. Its pretty redundant for athletes coming on here and just saying "its not gonna happen".
Once again, I'm good with this. I'm not good with your last sentence here because some people really need reality to smack them in the face. It's absolutely absurd to think that some Ironman race is going to occur in August or September.
devashish_paul wrote:
I think we have a world of politicians locking everything down from happening anyway, so as a community why not all of us push for what could be happen (and I get in this climate, people like myself who are a generally a silent group are being shamed from voicing anything about getting back to any semblance of normal life, so most are reluctant to even speak, as if discussing how we get back to normal life, is both a bad thing and precludes any compassion for those of us affected directly from a health angle on Covid19....its not one camp or the other, we can be supporting both)
Dev
Agreed.
devashish_paul wrote:
My main point, is the easy way out is indeed talking about and promoting why something won't happen (I have a startup company, and this is exactly what people tell startups all the time...customers say it won't work, investors don't want to invest, employees only want to join when you are making money). The world is filled with naysayers, but race organizers are a different breed of people. They generally operate in the context of what is possible when most sane people with their intellect and energy will just take a comfortable corporate job. They do something that has no thanks in general, and they operate a very difficult business fraught with many things that can continuously go wrong.
Almost every race organizer I know right now is TRYING. They are not giving up. If we give up on them it just makes their lives harder.
The disconnect here is that your startup isn't going to succeed or fail due to an impossibility from a physical and medical science perspective. Unless your startup is trying to figure out how to land a rocket ship filled with people on the surface of the sun. :-)
I worked for a startup once too. It failed due to economic conditions at the time (the Dot.bomb era of 2000). That's why I'm now a FBI Agent and not Mark Zuckerberg. :-)
Races and events may unfortunately fail during this due to the impossibility of them being allowed to do what they're in business to do. Not due to their lack of trying, intellect, or energy.
It's a shitty situation for everyone. Beyond the obvious health and medical horrors, the economic toll is awful. I feel for anyone that through no fault of their own is getting financially crushed during this. This isn't Utopia though. It's life, it's what happens, and for the next one to two years is going to be a rough go.
I'm just going to keep training and doing my thing with the eventuality that I will race again. It's just not going to be anytime soon.
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