I’ve heard this rumor. Do you have a precise source you can point to, because I’m with Brooks that it does sound like a load of horseshit?

If nothing else, because the start list goes through World Triathlon and earlier USAT; and these organizations - even if they decided to violate their own rules - couldn’t fart in one day, let alone shuffle a heap of paperwork?

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

This is Comment of the Month.

And yeah, the start list needing to go through various GBs (of which the PTO is essentially a pseudo-one at this point) makes this way, way more complicated.

On the money front -- not sure if anybody has posted this, but there are reputable reports of the PTO putting together another funding round. https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/...-tour-160000574.html

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

Talbot told the story on Jack Kelly's podcast. He was in touch with Taylor.

Interesting there were other guys who def wanted to go race Miami (whether in jest or not). I don't necessarily think that's something we should really shit on PTO that they didn't want to get ahletes to travel half way across the world at basically the last min. I'd put that way down on the list of things that concern me about PTO's future. The number of athletes in each race and the race distance are the biggest concerns I have for the future of T100. (I'd have 30 athletes and race closer to an T70 distance; cut off 20-30 mins off the bike. If the goal is commercial viable product. I'd also cut it down to 6 races which I think would allow more athletes to potentially race full series and not skip events.

You can’t really play up a season long narrative when you allow athletes to skip what 40-50% of the events. The whole point of a narrative is to build rivals and such. If only 1/3rd of your roster is racing a full race schedule you will likely miss out on the head to head racing element.

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

I agree it would have been a cool story but I can’t see the pto going for a last minute add like that. They want to hype these races up to get viewers and people at the races. A last second add even of Taylor’s caliber likely doesn’t sway the needle much for the well over $10,000 dollars it would have cost them to fly her. They hyped up the kb move weeks before the race in Singapore because it was planned. They used it as marketing. This they wouldn’t have been able to use as much to their advantage.

If the story is true it would have been interesting to understand the math. I guess Taylor didn't feel she could influence the race to a point where she could cover the $10k with $x race payout and $y improved ranking at the end of year. If she couldn't impact the race, why do it ? Why should PTO do it ?

I’m now curious the time zone math. Did I hear somewhere I think PTN say the men (blu) would have had shown up 2 hours before the race. So roughly 6 hours for Knibb.

I think that’s one of those stores that it sounds great to hypothetical but in reality would be sorta eeek in reality. It’s sorta the opposite of caring about well being of athletes.

Great idea for the first few mins after AD was cancelled (and a lot of people pissed off) but a “wait a min let’s think this through” in reality.

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

Going from memory, on the podcast Talbot said Knibb allegedly had a flight lined up to land at 11am race morning. The women started at 4:50pm.

My list of possibilities for rejecting her offer is:
1. Tight purse strings with top down pressure to stay on budget.
2. Lack of vision of leadership, maybe partially influenced by a bit of structural ethnocentrism from the Brits about a last minute American coming in lay waste to the field.
2A. Subset of lack of vision, but being so overwhelmed with race day logistics, not wanting to complicate things further. Ultimately lack of vision is still the issue here, as it suggests not wanting to complicate things is more important than a last minute calvary charge story.

Regarding inability to execute on the last minute development, PTO can easily put up a graphic announcing that Knibb is back and hammer that in social media and their live broadcasts. It's not like they need a week long campaign. In the overall scheme of costs of the event, it's relatively minor. If you are already overbudget and have upset management? Then maybe not.

Regarding this new round of funding linked earlier in the thread (seeking $40million), I get the feeling that we are looking at the play right here. Put money in. Get the talent. Get everyone talking about how everyone is putting money in. Get more money while everyone talks about how much money is put in. Get the people who have already put in money, put more money in via sunk cost fallacy. Use that sunk cost fallacy to get other unwitting investors to put more money in because of the current investors and other new ones keep putting money in, there must be something here, so others put money in too.... AND REPEAT.

So in all of this talk of the PTO books, it would be interesting to see who exactly is getting paid. Who gets a % of the funding rounds and what does their ownership look like, etc. etc. I used to think the ultimate goal was to supplant Ironman or create the investment potential to buy it out. Maybe that's still the case*, but it's interesting if the real goal was just to take piece of the action of everyone jumping on to this idea. If they strike gold (unlikely), great. If not, there will at least be some people who made money here.

* And if the goal is to buy Ironman, Ironman owners wouldn't necessarily be opposed to that if the price was right as long as PTO hasn't reduced the value of Ironman through being a viable competitor. Which is at least one reason why Ironman's Pro Tour makes a lot of sense -- it's a lower cost to administer alternative to the PTO that has the same (or greater) marketing value than the T100.

One contributor to so many opting out of this race was that last year a heap of athletes got very sick after Singapore... which messed their race schedules up. Just a theory, could be wrong.

Can I just counter that I think it's a bad idea to have an athlete be forced to fly half way around the world and then show up and perform on a world class stage like this in a what 6 hour time frame to "be ready". I'd have never thought in a million years anyone would take this "trip" serious, other than "we'll we can ask" of course it's a no-go. And I hope that we aren't going to then bust their chops when Knibb DNF'd and we shit on PTO for "not caring about the athletes". So I cant get on the shit on PTO for *that* decision with Knibb train. I think there are some other better options, but not that one. That seems to be a reach.

Like it was never going to happen. It would have been stupid to happen, full stop with that tight of a timeline.

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

Well you also basically said Kona was stupid for her if I recall. Based on her training. She disagreed. And I agree with her. That was smart then, and this was smart now.

But Knibb was ready. And reached out (Allegedly). There's no reason why she couldn't have flown in to make it happen. Sleep on an airplane in an apartment room of a first class seat and go race. It's not a whole lot different than a recovery day if she has everything lined up for her when she arrives.

She appears to be a fierce competitor and recognizes that in long course she's really more in control of her success. The latest WTCS fiasco just illustrates that athletes who put their eggs in that basket are really rolling the dice. We can easily (tragically) imagine all these athletes who have put their lives and careers on the Olympics only to see a bureaucratic French entity cancel the swim and change the race come time for the Olympics.

It's not foolish to take your own fate into your hands when the opportunity presents itself.

My personal take on it is Knibb should have simply told the PTO she's buying her ticket, and would like them to pay for it IF she doesn't take top 3. Of course, maybe she did just that. But in any case, she literally got on a plane and flew home. And then likely went and trained the next day. So... why not race instead for fortune and glory?

A last minute add was probably half jest, how can they add someone at the last minute if they had already filled their field by then. They state 20 (I am with you, needs be 30) if she was to be 21 then nope can't be done, no matter who she is.
Also for all those saying Singapore is a long way to travel, think of the Oceania athletes who have to travel to USA or Europe for all the other races, and still have a minimum of around 8 hours to fly to get to Singapore if they are from one of the cities that close. It's actually only 4hrs flying longer from London than from Sydney.

Why not tell the PTO that she's on a flight and will be there by race time, and pay for it herself? Why ask PTO to fund the bill if it's about taking advantage of the opportunity. Just do it yourself, if that's the case. By asking them to foot the bill, you then sorta put the onus on them. Again, would you have shitted on the PTO if she DNF'd because of all that transpired the past 24 hours?


I just am not with you that because the PTO said no, they are the idiots in this case. But cool to disagree. I thought it was sorta all done in jist, not really taken seriously that it would really be achievable by any of the WTCS athletes with the tight timeline.

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

I think this was also blown out of proportion and used by a bunch of athletes for poor performances when they tried to go to 70.3 worlds. Imogen was already sick when she showed up and so was Sam laidlow. Sam didn’t do the swim the day before in the lake because he wasn’t sure he was going to race. That was the first swim in the lake possible. He then went out partying the night after his race so I’m not sure how sick he really was.

I'm a bit curious as to all this last second maybe race across the world stuff. Where were they going to get a bike for the race? I think the plane flight would be the easy thing to organize, but where are they going to get a sponsor bike at the last second that fits them? Small detail that I think many have left out of the discussion...

She was probably going to just take her road bike like she did many times in her early 70.3 days (though she rode w clip ons then). The new cockpit these days on road bike likely don’t allow for any type of clip ons if she’s using some type of flattish handlebar setup. It certainly would have been easier to just race the road bike than try and ship her tri bike in etc…again the timeline was way too tight. I didn’t think it was really a serious attempt. I assumed it was going to easily be turned down, nor did I think that was going to cause pto to catch flack for saying no.

They give any athlete a chance to race. When they priotize another race, you can’t turn exprext pto to drop everything to make it happen, when they’ve then gone through the start list procedures. At any point Knibb could have raced Miami, she chose not too. Cool everyone moved on, end of discussion.

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

Sam Long rolled up last minute for Milwaukee. There's been other races he had flight issue and showed up last minute. It's not all that uncommon as I'm sure you're aware for flight delays to happen and athletes do whatever they can to get there just in time. Taylor was exploring the possibility of showing up after a good nights sleep in a flying hotel room. Which she had to do anyway (in coach?) to get back home and then go do some light training the next day. I can see from Taylor's perspective that if she dropped 10 grand to show up and the flight gets delayed that's a big gamble on her end that is reasonable to try to get the PTO to foot the bill in advance.

If you've got the crew to handle the bike setup, etc, it seems stupid to NOT do it from her perspective. No offense if you disagree ;) I just don't see this likely injury that you do. It seems like this was far more than messing around with flights and text messages based on the conversation in the podcast that broke the story. There was some real back and forth involved at all levels from higher ups in the PTO, their pro athlete manager, Knibbs manager, Trek, etc.

Regarding getting upset if she gets injured? No way, of course not. Kat is injured already at the start of the season and we're likely to see more as the season progresses and athletes try to do it all. Athletes who commit to the T100 or IM Series and focus on one alone will be less likely to get injured. This might be a big stretch here, but I wonder if Kat would have been injured if she was only training for the T100 and not building up to bike for 5 hours and run lots of miles for Ironman as well. Of course, I don't know her training and maybe she does the same volume either way... in which case I'd suggest it would seem wise to do a little less if you're just doing T100. She got injured coming off the bike within minutes. Is it possible to assume she might have been spending too much time on the bike in training (calf tears are a common cycling injury)? This isn't blaming her or her coach, but I can see a world where less volume going into Miami would have had her more resilient.

If anything, I'm more annoyed at Ironman. I can see doing a handful of PTO races just fine. I think doing three to four Ironman's mixed in with the other 70.3 races you have to fit in is asking for trouble. Ironman should only have included two full distance scores. I think they acted in the way they did to force athletes into the corner, but it's a useless corner. We're going to see athletes get injured doing all the above. Two 70.3 races and two Iron distance races would be ideal to count to the score. If they need to race more to pad their score, that's on them.

One of the best lessons from last year was Ash Gentle going all in on PTO and doing very well. Sam Laidlow doing very little other than focus on Nice and doing very well. LCB being practically forced to do less as she recovered from multiple injuries and doing well in Kona.

Taylor Knibb had EVERY opportunity to race Miami. She chose to race AD. Cool everyone moves on. At the last min things change, she tries to race, she finds out it's not possible. Cool, I can understand why it's not possible for as many valid reasons as the reason you suggest PTO was in the wrong for not letting it happenn.

Getting her TT bike from Boulder to Miami and setup was likely as big of a hurdle as it whether PTO could fund the $10k flight...Your getting the bike at min likely 12pm noon time frame. 4-6 hours prior to the race BEST case scenario.

You can't use last year as examples as the PTO now has start list procedures that they have to sorta follow through (whether they want too or not). So you can't really use that as an example of making it work. They have more "devil in the details" that they are being held to by joining forces with WT. So they likely ran into far more red tape than even if they wanted too with houw they've setup there season this year. So again, Knibb had every chance in the world to race Miamai. SHE, not PTO, SHE chose not to race that event. At that point, everyone basically has to move on.

So I think this was far more in jist, see if we can, vs the only thing that held it up was PTO's refusal to pay $10k flight. If that's the case, Knibb is as stupid not to have just paid for it herself, if she wanted to race it so badly. And if that truly was the only thing stopping her from racing (which I don’t believe).

$10k for Knibb is nothing. She made what $200k last year if not more? If the only thing holding her back from racing was who was paying for the $10k flight…that’s as much her fault as pto.

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

A couple of years ago Trek built a Madone specifically in mind as a cross for triathlon. https://www.trekbikes.com/...-disc-speed/p/28014/

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

It would be interesting to know if she uses that model (I'm looking at a pic from Paris test event and can't tell what model it is) and if she travels all the time with the spare clip on's readily available to add on, on a whim. I wouldnd't think she'd have them with her because the road setup is likely setup just for itu and now that they have banned the shorties, there wouldn't even ever be a situation where riding in aero bars would be of benefit. And using an road bike + clip ons wouldn't really help with "TT position" practice becuase the likelyhood of the angles not being the same, so road bike = road setup and TT practice on the actual TT bike.

But I would assume Trek could have gotten a set of clip ons either from a local shop or sent from their headquaters that would fit whatever bike cockpit she has (if it allows a clip on setup). It should also be noted, unless they have fit coordinates to handle road bike w/ TT cockpit setup, it's probaly a bad idea to use her ITU road bike and just slap on TT bars to get in better aero position. And she likely wouldn't have had enough time to "adjust"/ bike fit, so it would have been better to just go with a road bike if that was the only bike that she could get. I'm guessing for the most part for her, she's not using a road bike with a TT configuration ever anymore. It's either road bike = ITU work or TT bike = aero work. I would guess there's been no instances of her riding her road bike in the TT cockpit position.

In a March 7th article, she talks about she has 2 Trek bikes (assuming road + TT bike). A pic of her road bike from Paris is in there, but again I can't tell what the specific model is? I assume it's a Madone??
https://racing.trekbikes.com/...-2024-season-preview

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

To wrap up the reasons why Knibb might not pay the fee is that she has an agent that advises her to get the most out of it.

If you always say yes, because you want to do it anyway, you reduce your value. If she's not working at that level she's making a huge mistake.

I imagine every athlete who went to Miami got a decent paycheck to go. I assume the Olympians didn't. No sense in giving PTO a free one from that perspective.

There's a principled reason not to pay out of pocket from the perspective of an athlete preserving their value.

Moritz gave them a $10M grant which allowed them to do Daytona and the bonus pool. Then he funded their Series A. Then there was a Series B which he was not the "funding leader" but my presumption is that he was the second highest funder. Not sure how much was thrown into the kitty in Series A or B, but with how they burn cash they're looking at spending like 3M/year on athletes alone. Then they have like 20 employees plus dozens of contractors. That doesn't factor in Broadcast so they're burning like 20-30M/year easy. Oh and the PTO board is an executive board that takes a salary. So add like another 1.5M in burn rate. I have no idea who creates these structures, but can I get a board seat?

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

If they had allowed her to race then she most definitely would have gotten her appearance fee based on her ranking like everyone else. The pto pays for lodging while at the races but not travel so she would have had to pay her way like everyone else did.

Don't see why they wouldn't give you one. Can't think of a better advocate for the Moritz event company!

No disrespect for your analysis, but a wrap up should include the fact that it was i m p o s s i b l e to add an athlete to the start list the day before the race, period. No matter how much the PTO would've wanted it. The PTO does not control the start list the way you think it does.

Also, they would not have wanted to arrange a last minute addition at a significant cost only to see the athlete travel for 20 hours with little to no sleep, get off the airplane, start, and finish last. Sam Long arrived in Milwaukee the day before the race, not several hours before, after a good night of sleep and 4-hour flight.

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