In Reply To:
There you go. The guy who missed the swim cutoff my a couple of seconds has an amazing story. Four bouts of cancer, hip and shoulder surgery and a heart transplant. Damn impressive for being so strong mentally and not giving up. So many inspirational stories in IM.
So I am assuming he was given a spot (which I have no issue with), as he would provide a good story for the broadcast and/or press coverage. I wonder what his recent training/race results were and if he had much hope of even finishing the swim or the rest of the race, i.e. did he even do a HIM or something this year in some kind of reasonable time (under 6 hours?).
Again not debating his "right" to be in the race, but kind of questioning whether to some extent he was being exploited by the race organization for publicity. If he had almost no chance to finish, why would they let him in the race. It sounds like he was very upset to not get to start the bike.