Fairly standard to go for 10 cap colours and the rest white (say).
Have to be printed up ahead of time, before the start list is stable.
The PTO Swim rankings are up to date and easy to access.
Just put Big Ass number stickers on the pro’s helmets that are easy to see.
I think this is a fair assessment of the broadcast, even if the grades are more generous than I would assign.
Ryan touches on this, but one thing that really aggravated me was the overall clunkiness of the commercial breaks. It wasn’t just the repetition or the akward timing like the cut to commercial right after Geens’ pass. It was also the lack of transition. Too often the broadcast cut away to or returned from a commercial when an announcer was mid-sentence. It just seems so amateurish.
I’m not a huge fan of Welch, who seems to lack the ability to end a sentence, but I think the announcers generally do a good job, given how little they have to work with. I wish they’d do more play-by-play describing position and lead changes, interaction between officials and athletes (e.g., the finger pointing at Bogan), etc.
That would require more eyes down on the course conveying information up to the broadcast booth, but I recognize that’s expensive, and triathlon is a low budget sport.
The Kat Matthews interview during the few truly exciting moments of the race was unforgivable. It’s mind boggling to me that someone didn’t scream into their earpieces to stop the interview and start commenting on the race. I feel the same about the inability to identify the male athletes, which reminded me of “boom goes the dynamite”.
Overall, I think the T100 is better. It’s a smoother broadcast. There are fewer in-broadcast commercials like the heavy handed Tridot “interview” that consisted of the same questions and same answers, verbatim, two days in a row. Also, in the T100 you get a lot of interviews with the athletes’ coaches/ partners/ family members down on the sidelines of the race. I like those as they add some color and give a sense of the athlete’s state of mind. I don’t recall many of those last weekend. Also, I think the T100 “Unfiltered” is better than any post-race recap IM does. I really enjoy those.
Bottom line, I’ll keep watching but IM has to do better with its WC broadcast. If the hard-core fans struggle to watch, there’s no chance of expanding the audience.
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Did IM broadcast all the Pro Series races this year? (@rrheisler )
I feel like T100 has to get the broadcast correct for it’s product to be successful (duh). IM really doesn’t need to within it’s puzzle pieces of success.
I had no problem watching the women’s race on my phone while at work Friday, but I was not able to get Outside to load on my TV at home on Saturday (all my other streaming channels were fine, so it wasn’t my internet connection). I’d either get an error trying to load Outside, or it would load but when I clicked on the race coverage it would just hang up. Later in the day, there was no problem getting it to load…
Speaking of Tridot - does anyone find any value in their odd metrics that they were using to rank the course? Including here in the broadcast grade since it formed the basis of how they talked about the course.
Both days they proudly trotted out some black-box metric that the day was a 42 or 43 score out of 100, which was rated as almost exactly typical. Based on what, exactly, who knows… Then go to comment about how these exactly typical conditions mean that a high level athlete who usually takes 4hrs in a 70.3 will suddenly take 4:25 because of these typical conditions.
Huh?
I mean, this is pure product placement (though I can’t imagine that anyone suddenly has any confidence in said product), but they’re using it almost as analysis for their course conditions segment. Less than zero value is being added here.
(Though I did find it hilarious that the Tridot guy started his explanation of what the product was by saying 20 things that it isn’t. Product pitching 101 clearly failed)
Yes, Ironman committed to live streaming all 17? IM Pro Series races and has delivered. I think they committed to this for 2025 when they announced next year’s IM Pro Series.
20 broadcasts. (The four WC races plus the “regular season” which has a couple single gender events.)
If I remember correctly, I think it was Kat herself who interrupted her interview herself telling the IM commentators what was happening in the men’s race may warrant some attention.
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I couldn’t rewind the men’s race, but was able to rewind the women’s… or am I dreaming this happened?
But I agree, I had to help the wife with something when Wilde attacked and Margirier got that weird drafting penalty, I would have loved to rewind those.
It would be…The problem is that they are speaking continuously as though every second of air time must be filled with words. That interferes with their ability to think before speaking. IMHO.
Yeah, this is a very American thing i think. If you watch the British commentators of big marathons and the like, people like Tim Hutchins, Steve Cram etc, they know when to shut up and just let the images sink in. Same with pro tour cycling commentators. I can’t recall last time i heard an American commentator (I’m in NZ) on either of these and can’t ever remember wishing the commentators on these long endurance events would just shut up - yet it is a constant problem with Ironman coverage.
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So many fuck ups with the commentary. Zero idea who was coming in 9th. Headed to commercial. It’s Barnaby. The pro series champ. No mention of it. Straight to commercial.
I for one, am just tired of the seeming lack of knowledge of the athletes. I know Lovato and Dede raced and know a lot about the sport. I get that. But…you need to actually know about the athletes and what is going on to tell the story. They are terrible story tellers. I don’t know. Ironman’s pretty stuck on the old athlete club. But it just isn’t as good as it should be.
I wonder if they are SO Ironman brainwashed that they are actually not following the rest of the sport or if they are just not that interested in the sport overall anymore (or ever)?
It really doesn’t help that they (I guess, but it seems obvious) are not allowed to mention or talk much about what the athletes did in other triathlon series. The only thing they’ll mention are the OIympics (other than IM achievements).
It was I think at the post race conference that they asked a question to Jelle Geens, mentioning all the great Belgium triathletes before him, and completely left off the list the one who had the most recent achievement, MvRiel. Just because it was not in an IM championship race.
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They did mention “the Dubai race” several times, but I believe Lovato may actually be not following anything. (He is following - and quite religiously at that - Dede Griesbauer’s first name.)
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Yeah…I don’t know that they follow the European racing maybe? It was just…incredible that he looks at Marc Dubrick on the TV screen, in that super loud,colorful RTS kit - Felt bike, and without skipping a beat says it’s Jelle Geens. Unbelievable.
I think IM might just find him enthusiastic and he’s “in” with that crowd, but honestly it’s just not that professional. I don’t know what the answer is - they need a “voice” but I find it really hard to watch these. Watch it on youtube and read the comments - it’s comical. I don’t know who outside of ML’s mom is enjoying the commentary.
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It’s kind of funny because once I talked to him at an airport and I could tell he didn’t really care too much about the race and the pros. Now, I took it with a grain of salt, because he’s probably approached all the time to talk about the race, athletes, etc. and just finished a long weekend and was likely tired, etc. so I was pretty casual talking about other subjects. He just had an eye roll when I brought up the subject of the race that spoke a lot of disinterest. And you can tell his disinterest by his instagram caption saying he’s a “professional bullshit artist” with pretty much no Ironman/triathlon content.
He’s got a great voice and is in a position to be pro triathlon’s biggest cheerleader. Contrast him with Mike Reilly who redefined his entire life around promoting triathlon.
I think the personal interest of the commentators comes through in the quality of their content. Matt Lieto might very well be an awesomely nice dude, but he seems to commentate just like his Insta handle suggests – professional sounding bs.
Well all know it’s easier said than done, and maybe there’s a lot behind the scenes they do to be prepared. Might I suggest, instagram would be a great place for him to showcase just what he’s doing and taking an interest in. And by the looks of it, it’s a lot of personal action sporting with little to do with Ironman. Looks fun.
Ironman making big promises for next year’s PRO series. Hopefully the person in charge of the project will not be the person in charge of the 2024 race narrative ticker, or anybody who worked at the PTO in 2021 
I would like to see the actual Ironman communication on this (as opposed to an OYL insta).
These pockets were a requirement for all athletes in the T100 races (and they had a seamstress on hand for pocketless athletes).
We saw precious little output from them except, very very occasionally, we saw a list of HR expressed as percentages (which (as we’ve discussed elsewhere) ‘lacks utility’). Athletes were required to wear either a chest or upper arm band sensor.
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Indeed. It’s called “letting it breath”, for a bit. In my Professional Live Announcing and Commentary work in running, cycling track & field, and in triathlon, I was lucky early on to have been paired up with some of the absolute best people on our side of the microphone - and yes, you don’t have to be talking ALL the time!
As one well known Track & Field Live Announcer told me once, half jokingly - “We are all getting paid the same amount and NOT by the word” 
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