lately so many posts seem pragmatic and gear-y that i thought a philosophical debate was in order. bearing in mind that i’m a social scientist and believe there’s no ‘right’ answer (or if there is, that isn’t the point anyway), i usually enjoy playing devil’s advocate a bit and asking questions that get us to mulling on things.
to whit: why is canada so much better at triathlon than america?
discuss.
We have more major professional sports that dominate our attention .
Triathlon money is much less when compared to other activities. It is much less in relation to our minor sports like motocross and skateboarding … not even counting the big sports.
Americans, in general, care even less about triathlons than we do soccer … and that is not caring a great deal. Someone from another country could say “Ha! We’re better than the USA in triathlons?”, and the American would look right at them and say “We do triathlons?”
Last year I saw both tri-events broadcast on TV … The Chicago Tri, and Kona. 2 events out of 365 days w/ many Americans having 100+ cable channels. We simply are not at all interested.
I wonder how many talented high school/college aged athletes even know about triathloning? It is not advertised/promoted as well as other sports in the USA .
Didn’t realize they were.
Male long course: about even
Female long course: Canada in a rout
Male short course: about even
Female short course: U.S. in a rout
Don’t know why this should matter in this instance. Canada isn’t exactly a poor country - oops I guess you are talking about prize money. nevermind 3. Americans, in general, care even less about triathlons than we do soccer … and that is not caring a great deal. Someone from another country could say “Ha! We’re better than the USA in triathlons?”, and the American would look right at them and say “We do triathlons?” The double win at Kona didn’t even make it into the sports page of one of the national papers (not even on the stats page). The other national paper had a short 300 word article buried in the sports pages (a meaningless in-season hockey game made the front page of the entire paper).
Last year I saw both tri-events broadcast on TV … The Chicago Tri, and Kona. 2 events out of 365 days w/ many Americans having 100+ cable channels. We simply are not at all interested. We did have a few more events televised. We got to see Alcatraz and Kona. In Ontario we got coverage of a few of the local races put on as part of the Subaru Triathlon Series. That was nice.
I wonder how many talented high school/college aged athletes even know about triathloning? It is not advertised/promoted as well as other sports in the USA . Here either
Last year I saw both tri-events broadcast on TV … The Chicago Tri, and Kona. 2 events out of 365 days w/ many Americans having 100+ cable channels.<<
You need to use more of your +100 cable channels. IMH and Alcatraz were both broadcast on network TV. Most of the IM races were either on ESPN2 or OLN and there were a number of other tris on OLN, plus, the summer weekly program which showed highlights of other tris. Not a full menu like football, baseball, basketball or car racing, but it’s getting better.
clm
I heard someone on CBC sports once say that Canadians tend to do well internationally with “new” sports. They can compete very well with all other countries when a sport is just starting to become popular. Once the bigger countries start pouring money into that sport and Canada doesn’t follow suit, then Canada doesn’t do as well. The example they used was trampoline. While some may argue whether this should be a sport or not, the Canadians are currently doing very well (at least they were when I was watching this telecast). I wonder if the federal funding of triathlon is comparable in the 2 countries. It would be interesting to compare how well Canada does in various sports vs. how much funding goes into it.
Dawn
Canada sucks worse than France
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Ouch…remember that which Michael Barry helps Lance win his 6th at the Tour this year…despite the attacks by French cyclists. Ingrate
Adam – My thoughts were from someone that is new to triathloning, who came from another major sport.
When I was a kid, we did everything, swam, baseball, karate, etc … Nowadays, too many kids seem to “specialize” and the formal competition (rankings, trophies, etc) has seemed to trickle down to ages where it has no business being. So, now, for many kids … swimming will interfere with , so they don’t do it. There are kids that “do everything”, but they seem to do it for fun rather than to be really good at all of them.
I could go on with more explanation/discussion … but it’d really just be more of the same.
I don’t if Canada is better, and I don’t know the #1 reason why. I commented out of interest, and b/c I don’t understand why USAT doesn’t try to get “the word out” about triathloning, and make it a part of youth sports.
Cathy, I barely use the few channels (ESPN, History,Discovery, and Animal Planet) that I do watch. If they occurred before late August, Sept, I … like many Americans would not have been interested. I try and catch sportscenter each night to keep up, but I’m losing that battle.
I would like to see a discussion sometime about what we, as triathletes-parents-teachers-coaches-etc, can do to increase the involvement of the youth and to make it more appealling to our more-talented young athletes.
Probably due to nationalized health care ;^).
To adress one of the other posters, I think that our country is just as obsessed with professional sports so that is a negative.
Quite frankly, I think that we have been lucky to be blessed with great talent, who have worked extraordinarily hard and come up big when they had to. From The Puntous twins, to Joanne Ritchie, to Carol Montgomery, to Julieanne White, to Lori Bowden, Lisa Bentley, Heather Fuhr Jill Sevage and Sharon Donnelly, and recently to Peter Reid and Simon Whitfield for the men. Within the sport this group have many inspired others to take it to the next level.
The success of the above has come without much if any govenment support or private support or sponsorship, nor a system to develop talent to world-class levels. Somehow they have managed to make it work. One year before Simon won the gold medal in Sydney, he was literally living out of the back seat of his car in Victoria, BC! This is starting to change as funding from the government is now starting to flow directly into triathlon and former National Team Head Coach Barry Shepely is privately on a mission to recruit into triathlon the best prospects for future success - really good swimmers who can run!
I think that in Canada it is a bit easier to get exposure and coverage in the media - the main-stream newspapers and CBC TV do an ok to in some case outstanding job of covering sports such as triathlon. That’s a good thing. Unfortunately, corporate sponsorship in Canada of athletes is very hit or miss. Some like Subaru Canada have put huge reasources into it, but they are the exception. Many Canadian Corporations simply don’t seem to care.
Iron_Mike: You say you are a social scientist. Well, you need some data. There are a few Canadians doing well in long course triathlon. Simon Whitfield has won a few races. That is not enough data to draw any conclusions. Three pieces of evidence would help ansewer the question:
Wht is the level of triathlon participation on a per capital basis. Which contry has more triathletes - Canada or The US?
Are there elite race series where aspiring pros can go head to head at a reasonable financial cost (i.e. without having to tarvel all across the country). The US does not have this. Ontario has always had one of the most competetive triathlon series in the world where racers can drive from race to race.
I would also look at the existence/non-existence of clubs and support for youth racing.
The answer is simple. We have way more high quality races per capita than the US, so people such as Reid, Bentley, Bowden, Whitefield had better opportunities to get hooked on tri. Every small to medium size town seems to have a tri and they are not expensive. For example a top notch half Ironman in Ontario will go for ~$80 CDN vs $125 - $150 for an equivalent US event.
Anyway, I would not say the Canada is better than the US, we have just had a few more victories lately in high profile races, but if you go beyond that, the depth chart drops off big time.
Aren’t Dave Scott, Mark Allen, Scott Molina, and Tim DeBoom Americans? I know they are, I bring it up b/c they have had virtually no impact on USA youth .
If I were to ask USA youth “who is Mark Allen?”, I’d get responses ranging from the dude that played for the raiders/chiefs, to super bowl MVP, to the ‘touchdown guy’, to “ain’t he OJ’s buddy?”.
Dave Scott? Scott Molina? Tim DeBoom? DeWho?
I don’t say this stuff out of arrogance or sarcasm, but rather embarrassment. There’s no reason for Americans not to like triathlon. It’s an “American-invented” sport, it’s been dominated by Americans, lots of Americans do it, etc. It seems there is only room enough on sports TV, sports newspapers, and in our hearts for one endurance athlete, and we all know who that is.
Everyone talks about where the best place to live/train for triathlon is - Boulder, San Diego etc . . I know this will sound completely bizarre, but Southern Ontario( say within a couple hours of Toronto) is pretty darn good. Indeed, we have always had an outstanding race series - The legacy of Graham Fraser. Great areas to run and ride and access to some of the top coaches in the sport( eg Barrie Shepley). Yes, we do get 3 - 4 months of moderatly severe winter( so break out the xc skis, already!) However, this did nor seem to hold back the early development of Lori Bowden, Simon Whitfield, Peter Reid and Lisa Bentley!
Also, you would not do wrong by setting up shop in Victoria BC either - better weather, an outstanding training group, and access to more outstanding Coaching - Lance Watson.
Iron_Mike: You say you are a social scientist. Well, you need some data. There are a few Canadians doing well in long course triathlon. Simon Whitfield has won a few races. That is not enough data to draw any conclusions. Three pieces of evidence would help ansewer the question:
Not to mention what the Hamilton Hammerheads are doing as of late. If they don’t lose steam I think there are a number of team members that will need watching in the future. I agree with fleck…Ontario is a pretty good place to race/train. With two very large race series competing for our racing dollars things are really heating up. You can race every single weekend (sometimes twice or more if you want) from about the last weekend in May right up until the last weekend in September. And if you use Toronto as a jump off point you never have to drive more than about three hours to any of those races. Entry fees are way lower than US races (or so I am told so no flaming) and prizes, tshirts, food, and competition are all top notch. Man, I sound like a promo for tourism Ontario.
Fleck - I know everyone likes to play up the starving athlete bit, but Simon had a nice little condo (owned - not rented) in Victoria well before Sydney.
It’s simple, really… it’s due to the fine weather they enjoy that allows them to train so many more months of the year than Americans. 
Or maybe it’s because Canadians would rather PARTICIPATE in sports than watch them like the armchair athlete Americans. Canadians are much thinner, as a whole, than Americans and maybe more likely to be active. Triathlon is not really spectator friendly.
And I’m an American married to a Canadian. 
I say this with the utmost respect, but those great’s of the sport of triathlon had a high impact and profile WITHIN the sport of triathlon. They where truley pioneers and broke through to new levels in a vareity of ways.
It’s all about media coverage - particularly main stream media coverage.
Compare, the impact the “Big Four” had to what happened after Simon Whitfield won the Gold Medal in Sydney four years ago. The day after, Simon’s face was on the FRONT PAGE sports section and in some cases the front page of the whole paper!! in Canada and many other countries. Compare to IMH, our sports greatest yearly race - it’s lucky to get just the results buried in the back of the sports section. This year Canada won both races, with Reid and Bowden, but their was a disapointing, but expected lack of coverage.
I loved being a fly-on-the-wall in the days and weeks after Simon’s big win. I would just play dumb with people, not letting on my inside knowledge of the sport, nor that I knew Simon personally - it was astounding listening to people, the details that they knew about him, about the race and how inspired they had been watching him win. These were by and large completly non-triathlon people at work, in the street, in stores etc . . That kind of media coverage is huge. “The Big Four”, did so many great things for the sport of triathlon, but by and large the mainstream media did not pick up on it very much at all.