Nothing to do with Wilde.
T100 was never meant to be successful. We already had 70.3 races and 70.3 worlds, and IM is not good at sharing. Triathlon is too small of a sport for two such competing organizations.
The fans had spoken: just bring the Collins Cup back.
I think the problem with the Collins Cup, I think the funding never wanted to be just an 1x “all star race”. There was an event called Island House about a decade ago- the money man literally was cool with it being a paid all star race. Of course when it’s just paying to entertain a billionaire, when he gets bored, the funding goes away pretty quickly (I think island house was a 2 year “all star” one off weekend). So the investors of t100 want this to mean something other than just a 1x all star event. And I don’t think they wanted to simply add $3mi to the Kona race. So yes it was kinda destined to then struggle if your going heads up with another tri company/series.
What about 4 huge races. One in each “region”, plus a grand final in Qatar or wherever.
Same $, almost same number of races (combining men and women).
More views, more interest, more athletes showing up, more excitement. And importantly: adding something new to triathlon.
Isn’t that what they are doing now with each gender? Each gender has what 3-4 races and then a combined GF right?
T100 was just never going to be work with being just an 1-2x “all star” event like Collins Cup. They needed whatever series of races to “matter”. So whether that’s 4 races, 6 races + GF, they were always going to then go heads up against IM at that point, whether smart or not. Any one off race can stand on it’s own (see Roth), it’s when you want to make it more than that, that you then start to run into bumping up against this and that,etc.
The Collins Cup was the only thing they had that was “different” and I completely loved it. Team triathlon. So much you could have done with that. Getting rid of it and going all in on Mass Participation just made like what? A well funded Rev3?
Triathlon is boring (which is fine) but it’s clear to me that there has never been a “there” there because PTO never does the same thing twice. It always tweaks things, and a bit wildly.
Team scoring in triathlon = great idea.
Format essentially tailor made to make Euros feel good about beating up USA = dumb.
Add in a sprinkle of “everyone else” in green, gold and red was even lamer.
But I do agree the concept of team scoring was interesting. Super League tried this though, and their implementation was no less awkward.
I think the problem with any one off event in triathlon- your never going to get people’s best. I mean I guess if you had a $10mi prize purse, and $1mi to the winner, and $500k to 2nd, duh, but realistically even a just shy of $2mi prize purse they had half the race roster “racecation” effort, so when it was clear X big name was just phoning it in, it probaly left a lot of behind the scene WTF reactions. Thus why I think CC was never going to be the only thing they were going to do, they had to move to some setup that “meant” something.
But keep in mind if it’s just a one off event, those races have very very steep prize purse structure generally, so if your suddenly out of the podium running and instead of being near the $100k winning, are you going to tough it out for a $5k difference between 8th and 12th, etc. (it’s probaly smart to “save” for the next race). So generally you can’t really “fake it” in endurance sports, like you maybe can do in team/ball sports. MLB has many more grooved fastballs to get things entertained than they do every pitcher is up there going to throw every pitch in their bag to get outs. There’s an “entertainment” element, but also why sports like NBA/NFL are failing at the all start events cus it’s clear as day the players aren’t trying. But NFL is probaly similiar to a sport like triathlon- you can’t really “half measure” the event, or it’ll be very obvious your dogging it.
@Lurker4 “team formats” have to actually mean team formats, and that’s sorta where the sport gets stuck. All SL seemed to do is instead of having 20 different athletes, they just randomly put those same 20 onto 4 teams; but there was no team tactics, no team structure other than deciding who got the short schute, so I guess that enabled some sometimes very colorful mid race interviews with the captians/coaches. Collins Cup was just random 1v1v1 (Ryder Cup singles format); yet you had what enough rosters to have an MTR (best ball / alternate shot), individual races etc.
The very 1st time I heard “MTR” was coming to triathlon, I actually thought it was an actual relay- best swimmer, best biker, best runner. I mean they could have even done something like that with the rosters instead of just single race, etc. Kanute/Long/West relay team or if it’s MTR Kanute/Knibb/West, etc.