Be branded Ironman?

OK, in all seriousness: we have front-page coverage, courtesy of Tim Carlson, all weekend long. Those articles are quite well read.

And the normal characters that might be discussing are, uh, in Montreal. But we're also in our normal "it's a little quieter on the forum" time in terms of discussion. Combine that with a lot of our American audience being slightly pre-occupied with *waves hands at the news cycle of the last 48 hours* and, well, here we are.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

Thanks, Ryan, for your thoughts; but, I hope others will share theirs. I can tell you when I was on Team USA racing at World Champs, I still checked in with ST everyday. Also, nice that there are some news items on the front-page; but, I had to search for that amidst all the other headlines. Anyway, not on you, Ryan, you guys do a very good job. It's the "community" that seems disinterested, particularly relative to just a few years ago. And, yes, I do know WT is quite aware of the Ironman reach and marketing ability. Branding is SO important! 👊

Timmy's articles from later today will wind up populating the front-page stuff. We don't always organize the first four articles off of publication date. :)

But, to your broader point...I don't think I ever received anything from either USAT *or* World Triathlon about this weekend to tout it. I easily get six emails from IM's Comms team about events.

I also think World Triathlon is facing the pain of event diversification. Gravel, SwimRun, IM/Challenge/PTO all compete for essentially the same slice of the pie. What's the compelling reason they present to an athlete to choose events to then try and qualify versus, say, choosing to race a swim run, or gravel event, or a 70.3/140.6? Because outside of "it's the world championship" there isn't much of a story there for your average age-grouper.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

I have pasted some when and how details on the 'Good endurance w/e' thread.
But these heats and eliminator races are silly short: transitions may be entertaining (Luis for the T2 win!) but contain no athletic excellence (though, I guess Montreal's long climb up to T1 actually does require barefoot power). So speculating who's going to win etc etc is nugatory.
Standard distance races should be the default: I guess we'll get those once these two relay weekends are out of the way.
Gutted for Månsson and Hansmaennel that their prowess on the world junior stage was restricted to a duathlon.

Just glad the sewage level in the water has dropped below whatever threshold the organisers 'agreed' (with whoever) so the races today (and the relay on Sunday) can be triathlons.
Is World Triathlon putting effort into establishing/broadcasting the profile and palmares of the top 15 ranked athletes? Point me/us there.

I killed my subscription to triathlonlive.tv when they said they couldn't do live feeds to the USA anymore.

Why would i wait until after the race when i already know what happened to watch it?

Has that changed?

yes - watching the women's sprint final right now live in the usa.

Nothing has changed. I'm watching live right now.

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Genetics load the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger.

That must have been over 6+ years ago?
There have always been live feeds to the US on Triathlonlive.tv as far as I know.
Certainly they have live feeds for all the World Cups and WTCS races as of now.

maybe some people enjoy watching the races (in the usa on triathlonlive) and don't feel the need to post online about them. did everyone who watched the stanley cup finals last night post about it?

I'm here in Montreal and raced this morning and just came here to ST for the first time in almost three days because I've been too busy with race logistics, racing, and having fun. Just checked in while eating some dinner in my condo while watching the elite men on TV because I was feeling the effects of the sun. I would suspect that's the case for most other Team USA athletes here, and athletes from other countries.

It's a pretty great race with wonderful volunteers. The age group transition area is nearly a kilometer long, the St Lawrence River was fit to host a triathlon today (unlike Friday), it's hot today and will be hotter tomorrow, every single Team USA athlete got their skin shredded by our $$$$$$$$ required Zone3 kits, and racing draft legal is a blast. What else do you want to hear about?

Personally don't have an interest in any of the sponsored individuals. I actually get impatient waiting for them to get out of the way so us paying folks can start our race.

But, I do wish World Triathlon got more press than the branded stuff, just seems wrong.

I had a female athlete from town race, she is very raw and inexperienced, first DL race….6th and she was over the moon…but we have a lot of tactical/technical low hanging fruit for the fall.

In terms of value or return….I don’t know, 20 years ago Canada had the best national program in the world…now it’s just a 10 plus year dumpster fire of (likely) the largest line item in their budget is severance for terminated coaches/CEO’s/directors etc….I’m very jaded.

If you look at combined member, provincial and federal funding you’re looking at about 7m$ per year and all we have to show for it is some Twitter stories and shit talking and he said//she said defamation.

The “private” or basically WTC generates about the same 7m$ through race entries (Canada) and the stake holders or customers get a 10x better ROI….in my opinion.

The good news is we have a new CEO who I don’t think has done a triathlon…get this, from badminton!!! Before the jokes start flying I actually think he might be capable…he increased the “presence” of badminton nationally and more importantly revenue to the org by 300%!

Maurice

i don't follow the inner workings of team canada but it seems like the worst thing that happened to it was mislawchuk winning the test event. from the outside, it seemed like team canada thought they had a gold medal favorite and put everything in that basket and completely forgot about its other men, its women and even the MTR as they backdoored their way into getting a team in at the last minute (and not due to team canada doing anything correct). it's kind of pathetic to have a total of zero men and women in the finals of both races on their home soil.

There was a whole fiasco around Matt sharpe and Jono Hall, safe sport and about 3-4 different angles & opinions to the story…it’s funny because I was looking for Sharpe in the results and just assumed that he took a break or went to long course, nope he won st anthonies a month ago (pretty good field)

Anyways I think AUS federation (and others) is going through similar distractions as well.

WRT the age group race and general report, they put on a pretty awesome event and our gal from town is pretty stoked to race the MTR tomorrow….kind of unique opportunity for an AG athlete so should be fun to hear back.

Maurice

Pro racing was great yesterday. Lot of sportsmanship in the men’s race too after the events last week with the leaders not taking full advantage of Wilde’s mechanical.

In the womens the run for 2nd and 3rd was interesting given their respective strengths on paper at least.

Agree. But Beaugrand showed pedigree in Leeds. Potter seems not to be able to replicate her amazing stand alone run speeed as the third discipline. But her swim and bike were great yesterday. Will she be in the MTR, I wonder?
Wilde had to have his last 500m on run 'sting' drawn after that mechanical/electronical chain drop and quality but sapping catch up.

I’d read a quote from Wilde where he said thanks to the others for not speeding up and taking advantage, obviously him having to catch back on was an advantage for them anyway.

WTCS MTR will be covered in-depth on TriathlonLive.tv. In the UK will also be shown on the BBC Red Button (#601) and BBC iPlayer.
Sunday – Elite Mixed Team Relay World Championships
1645 local time / 2145 UK time / 2245 CET (UK BBC Red button @2125 Sun)

ITU should pay Lionel and Sam Long to race, ITU post would be the biggest on ST!

I have a lot of interest in short course pro racing, but the consensus here seems to be that we should confine all those World Triathlon racing discussions to one thread.

Which, to me, would be a waste of time.

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"FTP is a bit 2015, don't you think?" - Gustav Iden

There's nothing stopping you or anyone else from starting multiple ITU threads. Have at it :)

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Genetics load the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger.

I actually used to prefer the race day threads rather than having all talk for a year in one thread, we used to get more chat in those threads.

I agree but don't see any valid reason to not start new threads as you see fit. They will either live or die based on people's interest.

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Genetics load the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger.

I just returned from duathlon world champs in Targu Mures, Romania - my 1st WC. IME, WT has had to deal with quite a bit of pandemic-generated complication (for AG events). For example, I specifically targeted 2021 Nationals to qualify for 2022 Worlds b/c I'd go to Townsville, AUS. Got Mrs. giorgitd on board for a joint trip, got coached, qualified ... and AUS cancelled the event due to the pandemic. Now what? That steaming pile got dumped on WT and they needed to find a new host site fast - and one that would not care about pandemic restrictions. Hello, Targu Mures ROM! That took Mrs. giorgitd out of the plan, but I did race there. My event was not ideal - changes in the run course the night before and each leg had many laps, hard to count in the presence of the red mist and a fair number of AG athletes were DQ for not completing the specified number of laps, mostly on the modified run course. I, on the other hand, had 30 sec to decide if the bike course was more than 1/2 lap short. I decided, nah, I must have miscounted the laps ... and did 6 laps instead of the specified 5. Doh! At least I was not DQ... Still, it seems as if WT needs to get their stuff together to ensure world championship quality events - aspects of my event were pretty unprofessional. Don't misunderstand - a phenomenal experience - but many were pretty bummed about their DQ or about doing too many laps (I was not the only one!). Hoping for better in Ibiza ESP in 2023!