Wow. That’s excellent. The USTS was very cool. Pros and Age Groupers going gun to tape at the same venue 14 times a year. With a season-long narrative and points structure. Everybody hoping to qualify for Hilton Head. Then, of course, there was Nice and Hawaii in October. We had similar race series in the UK (Le Coq Sportif GP, 220 Series). But nothing like that exists now.
I really enjoyed the interview Macca. He is a great story teller, always interesting.
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Yeah,100%.
I lived for the F1 Tri Series in Oz during the 90’s and loved the first couple of years of Super League but then they started messing around with it and I have all but lodt interest now.
His Multisport Festival in Indonesia has me looking at Bikepacking routes through Indo as a Tri/Bikepacking adventures.
As Frodo said,they didn’t even start covering the stuff he is into now.
Not sure how I missed this, but gonna go check it out now!
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What a great episode. McCormack is just a dispenser of anecdotes in constant overdrive, and there’s something about his body language that makes it worth watching and not only listening to.
The questions were well thought out, too, and Frodeno was able to share some of his own equally interesting experiences and outlook without overshadowing the guest (would’ve been a tough ask anyway).
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Interesting how he couldn’t even refer to Crowie in name, just ‘another Australian’ and an ‘a peer’… he must still be hurting like how some people can’t say an ex girlfriends name out loud..
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What I really liked is how he pulls you in and makes you feel like you are living those moments with him. And the entire thing with busting the Ironman guys’ balls when they banned photographers from the course and had to go in the official Ironman truck so Macca’s crew got a helicopter that included Eric Wynn who now owes this.
On that story in 2012, I was helping sportstats at Kona putting down timing wires in Kawaihai and for the turnaround at Hawi. I had to make sure that the timing was working before leaving Hawi and sportstats asked me to manually write down times and numbers as a backup feature while they were validating from HQ in Kailua Kona. So I contacted Timothy Carlson and said, “Hey, I gotta drive a vehicle out to Hawi, and the land beside the highway is open to hikers, even though the road is closed. I can drop you on the lavafields (not the road) and you can take pics of the top pros and then I can pick you up on my way back”. So if you see some amazing shots of Kienle, Marino etc from the QueenK with the Ocean backdrop on their “ride back”, that’s how Timothy magically landed on the side of the road by the lava fields. He didn’t hike all the way between scenic lookout and Kawaihai, rather he hitched a ride with a timing vehicle.
Probably borderline, but now that it has all changes, @Slowman and @Herbert can’t get into trouble from Messick since 2 years before Eric was flying overhead and taking pics of Macca !!!
@ThailandUltras this should have been its own thread and not buried down in these bowels about a podcast. I also liked how Macca brought in how cut throat it is in the corproate world and he only hired ex athletes. My VP of finance who is active (but not insane like me or others) once came to me and said, “we should only hire people doing sport now or who were competitive athletes because they get the grind and understand win and lose”. I replied back “we’re hiring software engineers, and some of the best girls and guys don’t have a competitive bone in their body…they are abstract thinkers and creative and we need that” (i could say with AI that’s become even more important)….but sometimes I think on the sales side or product management they need that background to have the “win at all costs” mentality that Macca refers to. Maybe a new thread on “inside the head of Macca”….we literallly have not had a character near the top of the sport like that since he retired.
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Jan gets right on it with Sam
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