How much floatation do neoprane pants give someone? Even if multiple layers. I’m thinking very little to none. Besides, it is the floatation in the legs that helps someone swim faster. Keeping your butt up high, while still dragging your legs, won’t help.
Agreed that whatever (if any) advantage he had was minimal, however he knew what he was doing was against the rules, lied about it, and had created a system to purposefully tried to hide it. That’s what I find cheesy.
Not trying to press the issue here, cause I don’t care, but where does it say someone is not allowed to wear neoprane pants? Was that in the rules you received for your race? USAT? Just trying to understand.
For TriCan rules it specifically says you can’t wear neoprene only bottoms. Even in a wetsuit legal race, it must be a whole suit and not just bottoms. Don’t know about USAT.
As for not helping with the swim, well a pull buoy is basically the same thing and makes me swim faster by keeping my hips up. If I had a pull buoy and was still able to kick? Man would I swim fast.
If this was such a major concern for you, you would’ve called attention to it at the start of the race vs just bitching about it on an internet forum, after the fact.
I didn’t just “bitch” about it, I reported it to the race director.
They are all over the place. At a local sprint duathlon yesterday a relatively large group of guys all wearing the same team kit had very similar combined 1’st run, T1 and bike times. They also went by me on the bike like I had a flat and was sitting on the side of the road. I’m sure they are very proud of their efforts.
I’m not sure I follow you. Are you saying this group swam, rode and ran together? Or that they were drafting as a group during the bike leg?
100% cheater there, but at the same time, it’s TOTALLY not worth even blowing off any steam, let alone confronting him about it unless he’s winning a cash prize or a Kona slot.
Winning at small local races is what it is - winning at a small local race, and good for benchmarking your fitness. If you cheat, you’re just shortchanging yourself.
And even if he bumped someone off the podium - so what? That guy in 4th lost what - like a plastic medal?
I felt the same way about the FINMAN fiasco. While of course, it’s cheating, and nobody likes a cheater, that guy got more hate than the bankers who lost entire people’s life savings - just for wearing a pair of lousy fins and still coming in BOP. One could easily argue that all the guys on the bike-draft got more of a time benefit that he did, considering how slowly he swims/B/R.
While there should be real penalties if there are material things at stake, like pro cards, pro purse, Kona slot, etc., in a small local race where there’s nothing but self-satisfaction, you gotta put things in perspective and not lose any sleep over stuff like that. I guarantee 100% that you’re getting cheated right now in far greater material things in life other than triathlon, in aspects you don’t even know about, like behind-the-scenes finances, telecom business practices, tax-code (you pay over 2x a higher tax % than Warren Buffett, etc.) Gotta put things in perspective and use your emotional energy on the things that really matter.
I don’t think bluesugar lost any sleep over this. She has provided some Monday morning entertainment on ST…for which I am very grateful.
She did the right thing calling the guy out and reporting him. I don’t care how small a race is, cheaters need to know that what they are doing is really poor form. Chances are this kind of behaviour slips into other areas of life where the consequences may be far more significant.
I bet that guy feels very satisfied with his 3rd place and has completely forgotten about his ‘floatie pants’. Sad thing is he very well might have finished 3rd without them.
No out the cheater for what he is a CHEATER. Let all his friends know , his children know, his wife know and his parents know. He is going to cheat again and maybe get a Kona spot in the process.
In our small local races we have a point series. At the end of year pary we get extra prizes that may seem like crap to you but can be little badges of honor. Hate to lose my “little” prize due to a cheater, though I will this year due to drafters. And I called them out so it does suck a little. Yeah they aren’t Kona slots, but there were a few slots to Worlds.
In our small local races we have a point series. At the end of year pary we get extra prizes that may seem like crap to you but can be little badges of honor. Hate to lose my “little” prize due to a cheater, though I will this year due to drafters. And I called them out so it does suck a little. Yeah they aren’t Kona slots, but there were a few slots to Worlds.
Fair enough. Even I’d be a bit bummed if I narrowly missed a slot of something, even a token prize, due to an obvious cheater.
Still, I do think it’s important to keep things in perspective. As said, even though tri may be the single biggest passion of your life outside of family (and exceeding work), you’re getting screwed on a daily basis by people with questionable morals that have a far greater impact on your life (imbalanced taxes from uber-rich vs everyone else being one them, as I mentioned before). Just because they’re not immediately in your presence, doesn’t make the wrong any less. In the grand scheme of things, those token prizes, as satisfying as they are, are absolutely nothing compared to the dollar and time value lost because of something like those taxes - and that’s just one of many ‘behind-the-scenes’ cheating from unscrupulous politicians and businesspeople that affect you on a daily basis far, far greater than a cheater in a race.
In our small local races we have a point series. At the end of year pary we get extra prizes that may seem like crap to you but can be little badges of honor. Hate to lose my “little” prize due to a cheater, though I will this year due to drafters. And I called them out so it does suck a little. Yeah they aren’t Kona slots, but there were a few slots to Worlds.
Fair enough. Even I’d be a bit bummed if I narrowly missed a slot of something, even a token prize, due to an obvious cheater.
Still, I do think it’s important to keep things in perspective. As said, even though tri may be the single biggest passion of your life outside of family (and exceeding work), you’re getting screwed on a daily basis by people with questionable morals that have a far greater impact on your life (imbalanced taxes from uber-rich vs everyone else being one them, as I mentioned before). Just because they’re not immediately in your presence, doesn’t make the wrong any less. In the grand scheme of things, those token prizes, as satisfying as they are, are absolutely nothing compared to the dollar and time value lost because of something like those taxes - and that’s just one of many ‘behind-the-scenes’ cheating from unscrupulous politicians and businesspeople that affect you on a daily basis far, far greater than a cheater in a race.
Yes, in the grand scheme, I stew for a few minutes then move on in my life. I don’t turn it into a life long ambition to rid the world of evil. But I will squeal when I need to to try and make things as fair as possible. This is mostly as I have seen what cheating can do to a local series. Our UCI road racing series has maybe 60 people in total for the province. That is Cat 1-4, Masters, Women, Juniors etc… People were fed up with the crap. Tri is currently growing, but I see people get mad over things that shouldn’t happen (yes they will always get mad about something). I would hate to see Tri head the way of the other series, which I used to race in.
Ultimately you inform the officials and hope they take care of the situation then you move on and enjoy the race and the dry bagels afterwards. Oh and you come to ST and squeal.
Clearly it has upset a few people, but surely if it was spotted and reported and the RD had a chat pre medal award and decided that the person wasn’t going to be DQ then they aren’t a cheater, whether you like it or not?
Unless that is the RD thought he was a cheater but that investing any effort into this was a drain on his life and that in the big scheme of things it matters not one jot so decided to let Mr floatie pants claim the local glory and along with it all its rewards, its not like they planned to build a monument to the glory of third place was it!
And even if he bumped someone off the podium - so what? That guy in 4th lost what - like a plastic medal?
Even if it was just for some small local tri getting on the podium might be the highlight of someone’s season and he robbed them of that. I’ve been to enough small races and seen people get on to the podium for the first time to see how much it means to them. How happy they were and how proud their family and friends were. I’m sure that the guy in fourth went home thinking that if only…
It ain’t about the medal and if you don’t get that then you never will.