love, love, love Super League.

Also love ITU olympic distance races too, FWIW

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

Better late to the party than never make it to the party I say.


I think your going to see some SL style racing transition into ITU race series in some format or the other. ITU has a few Semifinal/Final events (Tizzy- that swim........). But I think eventually we may see a race or 2 in the ITU circuit that is "different" than just the normal S-B-R. Obviously we'll have to get through Tokyo, but I have a feeling the individual standard race will be shortened to the sprint distance and thus I think it'll be easier to accomplish.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

sorry to derail, but is Tokyo going to be sprint or OD?

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

Olympic

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

yep i watch a lot of these t on youtube too. Vincent Luis is a beast. So too Zafares for the women. Looks like brutal racing, all top end stuff.

The Tiszy Swim was nothing compared to the Tiszy bike this year... full on videogame stuff... riding flat out and dodging flying fences, check... Not sure about how soon the order of SBR might be changed up anywhere on the ITU circuit (except for RBR when the swim is cancelled), but post 2020 there's a super sprint series coming and super sprint worlds (elite and AG, along with AG MTR too).

I personally enjoy all Tri Formats, but in terms of an action packed product that is a nice package for the media, Superleague has nailed it (it's the one format that I can usually convince my wife to watch)... The closest the ITU has to that in terms of media friendliness is the MTR, which is why it was so pivotal to get that into the Olympics... The heats and finals formats are also fairly exciting, I've been at a few events using that format (both at the conti cup level, but also at the Youth/Jr/U23 level) and it's very spectator friendly...

I'm right there with you! After tearing through the entire 2018 ITU season on YouTube the SL videos popped up in my recommended videos list. So, so entertaining! Love the format and it seems even the athletes who end up getting dropped seem to really enjoy it, too!

...and it's expanding to 5 races in 2019 including some interesting new venues in the 1st part of the season:

Singapore: Feb 23
Bali: Mar 23
Jersey: Sep 28
Malta: Oct 27
Mallorca: Nov 3

With the ITU series schedule from March through Sep, there's 10 months of fantastic racing for fans of the sport.
@Kid

All super league races are also available to watch on demand on the ITU broadcasting website: triathlonlive.tv

Next race beginning of February in Singapore!

I'm shocked that YouTube hadn't suggested SL to me at any point. And I guess I hadn't seen any of the SL stuff yet on TriathlonLive because I'm going through it from the beginning and I'm only at the start of 2017.

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https://connect.garmin.com/modern/profile/domingjm

I'm a TriathlonLive subscriber but I've never tried to watch anything live as I'm going through the content from the beginning. Is there an additional charge for the on demand stuff? I've already got all of their scheduled races on my calendar :-)

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https://connect.garmin.com/modern/profile/domingjm

While I agree with you, the athletes seem to enjoy it, regardless of the outcomes... But unlike racing ITU, the athletes that gain invitation to the series either ad hoc, by placement or via the qualifiers, are all under contract with super league. While I doubt this includes salary, it may include appearance fees, and would include covering some of the costs of participation (travel, accommodation, meals, activities, etc.)... Athletes have a lot more fun, when they're not stressing about getting a result to earn enough prize money to defray the costs of attending the race... Now if only more races could do this, I think there would be a much more fun picture painted of our sport...

that is such a great move by the ITU. FINA (Swimming) trying to squash the startup pro league instead of partner with it is asinine.

The only caveat in all of this is SL like the fun event Island House where pros begged to get on the race list are all backed by some rich billionaires. So they can afford to pay for flights/hotels/athlete activities at the host cities. Was it at Mallorca where they did some special chef cooking competition etc, and of course every athletes was decked out in SL gear.

Which makes the question can SL make it as a business if the Russian billionaire takes his ball and money and leaves. I think the product they have is incredible and are getting some sponsors.

MLT here in the US is very realistic in what they can and can’t provide for athletes. They give athletes $x money and if it doesn’t cover the whole travel cost, that’s just on the athlete to cover the rest. They have some sponsors and FB live video, they just don’t have the resources/names behind them that SL does.

So it helps when your backed by large money and it begs the question will SL go the way of Island House once the rich guy gets bored? Atleast SL has top quality video, Island House always seemed to have video that took months to broadcast.


ETA: I always got the sense IH had the rich guy watching from the who would give a thumbs up or thumbs down type of feel while watching the all-stars compete for him. Atleast SL is forming a "league" and not just an all star exhibition. Of course they also I think have much more freedom than ITU, so for all the people that say SL is better or going to out do ITU, no it's not. SL is the all star short course racing event. ITU is the olympic route, while they are kinda now "partners", they also have distinct pathways that don't particularly cross.

IE- no one who is doing ITU well (and I'm saying well as in a top 15 guy) is going to quit ITU and then do SL only. So I kinda cringe when I see "SL is way better than ITU", well no shit cus they have much more freedom than ITU does. But as I said earlier I think ITU is going to slowly slip in some enduro or F1 style events in their events. Just get through Tokyo.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

That is a smart partnership. I love me some SL, but watching on YouTube isn't always the best.

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Aaron Bales
Lansing Triathlon Team

Oh, thanks for sharing. Was not aware of that.

Wish there were more events throughout the year, but I understand it takes a backseat to the main ITU race calendar.

In addition to the traditional Oly, they'll also be including a mixed team relay in Tokyo.

Agree completely. SL has gone a long ways towards sustainability (remember the insane prize purse in Hamilton Island... and how that vanished come Jersey) in terms of courting corporate sponsors, to help relieve the reliance on said Billionaire's budget, so when the inevitable loss of interest occurs (remember Olaf Tinkov in cycling), they are not up shit's creek...

I really like the MLT model in the sense that they are honest with their participants, rather than over promising and under delivering, which has tended to plague some similar type initiatives... We can offer you $x to help defray travel costs (or sponsor provided accommodations/homestays, etc.), and then whatever prize money you may earn, are you still interested in participating?

In terms of Island House, I have the vision of President Snow from the Hunger Games standing on his balcony ready to give the thumbs up or the thumbs down...

And yes SL and ITU have partnered both officially (some of the SL events have used ITU officials, along with their own folks) and unofficially, as part of the selection criteria for the SL championship series is based on ITU world rankings (along with SL rankings, qualifying events, and discretionary picks). And both ITU and SL can raise the profile of the athletes which benefit both series... WTC athletes are feeling the gravitational pull of it too, as witnessed by some long course Pros racing the qualifiers for SL (Taylor Reid (the canadian 70.3, not the kiwi U23 stud (Tayler), Rachel McBride (who ended up bailing on SL Jersey (she had a spot there for the qualifier within the event, based on the Penticton fires fiasco), when she got a Kona slot), amongst others...

Your subscription gives you access to both live and on demand.

Super league back on this weekend. Could be an interesting weekend with the unknowns of early season form. Certainly should look different than the utter exhaustion from most people in Majorca. I’m not too sure how the scoring is for this final stop of the season, but sure seems like Zaferes and Luis are solidly in the driver seat for this one too.

Pretty much the top 3 for both men's and women's are pretty much 90% locked up. Spivey having a DNS on her ledger basically has too much ground to make up. JB could likely jump Murray if it's true Murray has some ankle issue coming into the race. But that's about it for the overall racing. It'll still be hard charging, but KZ and Luis have pretty much locked up the 1st.

This is all according to what I see the prize points not being extra for the championship event. Of course SL is very top heavy for prize money to podium athletes per round so they'll always be pushing for that in this format regardless of where they all stand overall.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

With Kasper not racing, I think Spivey can move up in the rankings?

Yeah apparently she isn't racing. Which I thought was weird seeing her in AZ a few days ago but then I saw her in a SL post "it's SL time"....i just didnt read the whole text "won't be racing".

So yeah she's losing massive large sum of money and now Spivey probaly can get 2nd.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Extremely disappointed for Vincent Luis, that has spoiled the weekend’s racing somewhat.

But so happy to see Jonny Brownlee finally have a good result!