anyone know what the last place pro at a PGA event or pro bowling event makes? Just wondering.

triathlon is a highly physically taxing sport. golf, tennis, bowling,baseball are not.

Dev,

You make lots of good suggestions here, as you always do. But I'm curious why you continue to make them to an organization whose ceo has just come here and said he doesn't give a rip what his customers suggest.

It's clear to me that fixing this system will have to be done outside the scope of wtc's involvement. They currently have control of the race most-recognized as the world championship, so they have the power to call the shots. And they're clearly not willing to share any of that power.

To fix the system, we need another race to become the most important race in triathlon; one that's run by a company that's interested in the long term health of the sport, not just their bottom line.

Because he's completely invested in the WTC and has proven it repeatedly. He's a good guy but anything he says on the subject has to be taken with a grain of salt because of his ties there. Kinda like anything Rapp says on the subject should be ignored with the way he's proven he'll say anything for a paycheck.

triathlon is a highly physically taxing sport. golf, tennis, bowling,baseball are not.

Because he's completely invested in the WTC and has proven it repeatedly. He's a good guy but anything he says on the subject has to be taken with a grain of salt because of his ties there. Kinda like anything Rapp says on the subject should be ignored with the way he's proven he'll say anything for a paycheck.

Completely disagree. Rapp has completely lost my respect over the years with his continued use of his position on this forum to trash products other than his own sponsors. His continued interactions on twitter over the past few days just go to further demonstrate his status as a corporate shill. Ben Greenfield with a Ivy League degree.

Tennis isn't a highly physical taxing sport??? What planet are you from?

I havent read as much of that as I should have it seems. I'll watch with a critical eye towards that. I dont remember seeing him knock others. I have seen him push his sponsors in a comparative fashion, but otherwise nothing directly hitting another product.

You've never played golf or tennis at a competitive level, have you?

John

Here is my view. We don't need pros in every Mdot race, just like we don't need pros in every local 10K race. The local 10k or local marathon can run just fine without a pro field.

On Sunday something like 4500 athletes raced between IMLP and Whistler. I am hearing a lot of people complaining on this thread, but i would not take that as a reflection of what is really going on in the market. Sure, WTC can do many things to improve and I'm the first one to tell you where, why and provide you a "how" on the means to improvement.

Andrew, a better response to this entire realstarky pro uproar would be a roll up of the entire year's WTC prize purse for the year. My understanding is that overall prize purse is bigger than it has ever been and WTC keeps these prize purses in Tier 3 level pro events like LP or Whistler to give up and coming pros a chance to earn a living. I am not an idiot and also realize that having a pro field is part of your overall "user experience", so it is not purely charity.

You feel you need some type of a pro field at every event. To that one i say you don't. Like Marcag said, when we go to Kona or 70.3 World's I want to see a pro field, but I don't care at Syracuse, Galveston or Whistler (it was cool seeming Marino crush that bike course, but it really would not change my user experience if he or any of the pros were there or not).

It really does not matter how big WTC gets in terms of top line revenue, no one deserves any piece of it other than those in the company that puts it on and its shareholders (I come from the business world and get it). So all this complaining that WTC make a pile of revenue so pros deserve more makes no sense.

I feel you would be better served nuking the pro field from most of your "local events" that are the equivalent of every medium size city marathon in North America. They draw 10,000 racers with no professional runners ,because runners just want to do a marathon. Likewise triathletes, just want to do an Ironman.

Take your total prize money and put it in 5-7 MAJORS world wide (Kona, Frankfurt, Melbourne, Arizona, Nice, one of Tremblant/LP/Cour d'Alene, Taupo)...Also make each of these MAJORS 125 slot Kona qualifiers. Get rid of the Kona slots from minor races and just make them qualifiers for the MAJORs instead. Make the majors KQ points heavy for pros. Continue to offer some KQ points for any pros that want to race the minors for experience or podiums that they can leverage with sponsors (which is effectively the scenario today anyway) and also offer podium guys at the minors a guaranteed invite to the majors.

Basically now you have a minor league and a Major league. Real pay at the majors where the pro race is packaged up and marketed. More competition for amateurs at the majors where there is more depth of Kona slots compared to the minors. Perhaps use the age group points system (well a modified version of it...it is currently flawed in some ways) to award year end KQ slots from points accrued by non KQ performance at majors plus points accrued at minors. That way the minors offer path to Kona too, but your best shot is at a major.

In any case I personally feel that there is now plenty of pro prize money and opportunity to earn a living. You just happen to have it spread out between too many races. The competitive model in our sport (Ironman) is broken both from pro prize money allocation and amateur Kona slot allocation. You should just concentrate it and stop diluting it across so many events. That's the root of the problem. Keep many events as it gives us all many opportunities to race, but don't make them all the same in terms of prizes.

PS: To all the guys hating on Messick, this is also the same guy that offered the road to Kona to 12x finishers who are not 'fast enough'. We don't need to like everything he does, but that was one of the first things he did at the helm. As a marketing guy, i would have suggested to him to steer clear of a response on ST, but he's not exactly like your normal Fortune 500 CEO and is much more accessible. In reality, WTC is a fairly small company in terms of revenue, which just happens to have a crazy passionate customer base that feels they own the product of the company as much as the company itself. I can't think of that many companies where the customers are this strongly vested in every breath of a company's executives.

I think there are 4 or 5 different discussions going on now?

i guess golf is physically taxing when you are this guys size and have to walk 10 feet to your golf cart.

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