From the WAPO comment section:

"Oh for heaven's sake. People are dying, triathlons are so low on the priority list. Get a grip...."

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"They know f_ck-all over at Slowtwitch"
- Lionel Sanders

There have been hundreds of sporting events all over country since June. Soccer and Lacrosse have had hundreds of tournaments in places like Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Colorado, Maryland, etc. Some of these tournaments attract well over a thousand people to them.

And a professional triathlete as essential is no more outlandish than allowing pot shops to remain open or a Jamba Juice, or a dry cleaner, or a coffee shop. At least the triathlete is working outdoors.


I shift wildly back and forth on this every day. Part of me respects the details of the science of all this, and the other looks at a ton of anecdotal*, info and now some studies based some larger data sets, like this Japanese Study released this week looking at running races/events in Japan - https://runningmagazine.ca/...9-linked-to-running/ - 787 running races and over 700,000 participants and only one positive case!

Swimming Canada produced this short PSA this week as well - over 300,000 individual swim sessions since July in Canada - not one positive case - https://www.youtube.com/...amp;feature=youtu.be

*Not scientific and purely anecdotal, I asked on my Facebook page two weeks ago, if any runners or cyclists, many of whom had been running and riding in smaller groups, all summer, knew of ANY positive transmissions from running and cycling - not one answer "Yes" or knew of any in the greater running and cycling communities that they were in!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

My assumption, which could be incorrect, is that the author tried to interview such athletes and couldn't get anyone willing to be interviewed for publication. If the author didn't make that attempt, that's poor journalism.

Those 2 countries have done a much better job than the US of A in managing this pandemic. Especially looking at current numbers..........

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Pink? Maybe. Maybe not. You decide.

Considering the author quoted Sutton and was not transparent about being a TriSutto athlete, and the positive story he wrote about travelling to an Ironman race for the NYT, I would guess this was just clickbait with a quick freelance paycheck.

How about 'safe ENOUGH'.

If you want 100% safety you're going to need to seal yourself off from the rest of humanity. Both metaphorically and literally. You'll be 100% aafe from Covid.
But then you'll die from suffocation in that sealed room.
Or die from starvation (as there's risk in going getting food).
Or die from drowning in your own P + S as you couldn't risk going to a bathroom.

There are 2 things. One is whether this type of activity is safe and second is the notion that this is the first large scale sporting event to occur. I was referring to the latter and pointing out a triathlon in Florida is not going to be the first large event.

Important to know. Thanks!

I was about to say that the last person on the planet that should be quoted on anything related to triathlon in a mainstream publication is Sutton. I was wondering why Sarah True was even interviewed in the first place and while reading I was wondering why she gets to pontificate about ethics of racing in a pandemic, when thousands of pro athlete across sports worldwide have travelled, raced/competed in during this pandemic.

Reading the article comments in the Washington Post article was mildly amusing. It was almost like the article was just a catalyst to get a combo of "anti triathletes+anti Florida" venom flowing online. Well, they achieved that!

Anyone who did IM Florida get Covid19 at the race?

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Yep,5,200 athletes quite happily competed at the various races on offer at Challenge Taiwan this past weekend and I am certain that nobody contacted Sarah True to ask her opinion about the Pro's racing at the PTO supported race down here in Oz on Sunday (or the other PTO supported race in Sth Africa). I ran the bike dismount zone for that race and seem to have escaped healthy enough to ride home afterwards.
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https://protriathletes.org/weekend-wrap-hervey-bay-100-and-peoples-triathlon/?fbclid=IwAR1ITPKRZ6-x91_lxknR0LWofh2Oy4rTrf5LpkIgb6Rksi9QE0DhSuScZxw

exactly to the point

being safe is very different from feeling safe

it is like your health: feeling healthy and being healthy

well, it is "safe ENOUGH" not "safe 100%"

Taiwan and Australia both have a very different Covid risk profile to the US. Taiwan has not had a local case for 200+ days and Australia has had only 22 locally acquired cases in the last week. Florida had 9000+ cases yesterday.

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I am well aware of the differences between the three countries and was partially joking but you may have missed the point (if you had indeed read the article) that two of the athletes from the Oz race and three of the athletes from the Sth African race are scheduled to fly into Florida for the Daytona race.I would value their opinions regarding to the Covid travel/race issues as they have actually been invited and Sarah True hasn't.

Yes I did read the article. I would be interested in the opinion of Watkinson and Salthouse as they are both travelling from locations with very low infection rates. They both will be required to complete 2 weeks quarantine when they return to NZ and Oz.

Right, that was the entire point Nick was making. Sarah True is the worst interviewee (well maybe second worst after Sutton). True has not received an invite to race, so of course she will be butt hurt about not getting an invite to even earn the paycheque. Salthouse would be a better person to select, or last year's winners (Sanders, Findlay).

But realistically if you interview an NFL player or MLB player or UCI cyclist about competing in a pandemic to earn their living, what the heck are they supposed to say. Of course the player who got "CUT" from the NFL will say, "The NFL ethically should not play during the pandemic" (Sarah True is in the category of the player that did not make the team/league).

Here are the quotes from True in the article:

“It’s an ethical decision we are all making whether or not to travel,” said True, who isn’t a PTO member and so would need an invitation to compete. “Where it gets complicated is when you have got a third party tipping the scale.”

True lamented the idea of “an athlete who may not necessarily travel deciding to travel because all of a sudden there’s something major at stake,” such as a million-dollar purse.

“We have to weigh individual risks and collective risks on one side,” she said. “But also, this is a professional opportunity — and that balance gets tilted when you have significant financial gain possible. Money always changes the equation.”

True has not yet received an invitation to the PTO race in Florida — and is not sure what she will do if one comes.

“We always have that risk assessment as athletes,” she said. “It’s just the stakes are higher in the middle of a global pandemic.”

Nuanced answers, IMHO, even when you take into account that she might have hoped to have received an invite by now.

If you're not gung ho on going to Daytona you're one of the worst interviews in triathlon?

Of course, the writer should have also interviewed pros who have decided to race in Daytona or at least noted that he tried and no other athletes would talk to him. That's on him, not True.

P.S. I was critical of her comments following the Frankfurt collapse, so I'm not a True fanboy.

This is not an issue that she will have to concern herself with.

I read the entire article. She sounds exactly like an athlete who did not make the cut for tryouts on any team and is complaining about the team that cut her. Layering her ethical soapbox too when pretty well every pro sport on the planet is trying to make a way to operate in some capacity safely. I think we all "get" that every pro sport inherently has to live on the edge of what may not be totally safe, but we can say the exact same thing about the Amazon delivery guy who brought all of us our last package, or all the guys at the local electricity utility keeping the internet on in our homes. Everyone who has to physically work in the real world takes a bit of risk so the rest of us can hide behind our screens and avoid the virus.

Now we can debate if ANY pro sport should be on, but this discussion has gone on in every society during wars and conflicts....what type of day to day life should continue to operate in a war zone/emergency zone....try to live some semblance of normal life or do nothing at all until whatever conflict or emergency is over or something in between. Is professional sport part of that or not? Clearly during WW1 and WW2 they did not run the Tour de France and in 2020 we did not run Kona even through we ran the Tour de France....The top flight French soccer team closed for the season in March, but English Premier League, Bundesliga, NBA, NHL managed to have the rest of their seasons.

So the answer is nuanced, but I don't think it is True's business to comment on the ethics of whether pro sport should happen and imply that she's on some higher moral high ground than her competitors.

This one was somewhat in the category of Jonathan Vaughters writing a letter to the UCI saying the last week of the Giro should be cancelled due to Covid19 while his team was still in the race (and not even having consulted his on guys on the ground in Italy). Vaughters is lucky the UCI does not give him the boot from their races next year. I am sure if there is any time in 2021 when Vaughters needs whatever favour from UCI, well he cut off that lifeline.

I disagree. This is a business decision for her just as you have discussed your business decisions during the pandemic. Do you agree that business decisions often involve ethics? I assume the Trues are still dependent on prize $ and sponsorships to pay the mortgage so I doubt she thinks she is on some higher moral ground than her competitors. She didn't say that she wouldn't compete if offered a spot, so she appears to have struggled regarding what to do if given the opportunity.

Generally it's pretty simple with sports. She's at the tail end of her career so it's a bit different. But if this is your career and you can compete, you compete.

Unless someone is committing theft as their career, I won't really look down upon from some moral high ground about what someone does to earn the money that allows them to buy food and pay rent. Every job is essential.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

I think the right term is less unsafe...

The measures that events have been putting them in place make the activities less unsafe than they would be otherwise, but anytime you are amassing a larger number of people and at times they will be in relatively close quarters, there is risk to the activity...

It is OK if she decides here personal business decisions and reasoning for them, and its OK to discuss mine. But its not OK for me to tell other businesses and employees what is OK according to my ethics even though they are doing something completely legal. If people are doing things illegal and against various government and federation guidelines, then by all means, voice your opinion.

And if your peers are doing legal things that are completely stupid from a public health angle because the stupid government allows it, then the people to beat up on are the government, not the people trying to earn a living inside the rules. Just beating up on others based on your own values never goes anywhere, because the other person always has a slightly different point of view.

Personally I'd like to see all Canadian people not allowed to travel to the US by any means for the next while, but that's what's not going on, because my government keeps allowing people to travel. If they implemented that, Lionel would not be able to race, but I don't hold it against Lionel for racing. I hold it against my government for allowing us to keep going to the US and messing up our public health, because the same people who find loopholes to travel are the exact same people who don't follow the quarantines when they come back (and I have family members in this category)

So if True would have used "I" rather than "we" you would have been OK with her comments?