Thoughts? How do you respond?
Last time I checked Providence Equity was clearly a “for profit company”. It really does not matter who owns a company but rather how it operates but it seems the anti Chinese angle flips it the other way. The Ironman guys asking for cities to pony up more fees simply reflects the demographic of triathlon changing and the organizers needing more revenue sources now that the massive 35-49 age group bubble from the 2000-2013 time frame moving on to less ardous sports and activities and Ironman never having properly invested in the 20-34 age group guys from “back” then to move in and fill the numbers. Now you have too many events with not enough people to fill them. That means you have to shrink the number of events and get more revenue per event. Providence Equity milked the big boom period and sold to Wanda right when it was about to go down a bit. The guys running the show in Tampa now are left having to fill the revenue void because it does not matter who your shareholders are, you have to keep the profitability trajectory on track. Shrinking top line revenue and profitability is not going to cut it with any shareholders whether they are in Rhode Island or China makes zero diff.
it sounds like the town of LP needs to hike its skirt up and negotiate a better deal. if the IM leaves LP, it will fall into an abyss like much of northern NYS. the money IMLP brings to the area isn’t just from race week – it’s also from the 3 months leading up to the race with all of the people coming into town for training camps. a 1-week horse show each year isn’t enough to support the area.
it sounds like the town of LP needs to hike its skirt up and negotiate a better deal. if the IM leaves LP, it will fall into an abyss like much of northern NYS. the money IMLP brings to the area isn’t just from race week – it’s also from the 3 months leading up to the race with all of the people coming into town for training camps. a 1-week horse show each year isn’t enough to support the area.
On top of that, no one really cares to ski in Lake Placid in the winter. LP is just too far from New York and Boston (much easier to go ski in New Hampshire and Vermont) and the ~ 4M Canadians just on the other side of the border pretty well go to ski at Tremblant. So they have way too much competition for winter tourism and basically all of the summer volume would be similar to Saranac or Tupper Lake (ask them how that is working out relative to LP…and I get that LP is a bit nicer so they would have more but not the same revenue base as what IM brings). How is that deal working out over in Penticton? Sounds like they are chomping to get IMC out of Whistler back in Penticton.
The whole state, along with CT is going to h-ll thanks to Cuomo & Malloy
.
It seems like a drastic oversimplification to me. Many of the issues cited would be identical in Saranac. Lake Placid benefits the entire summer for hosting that race. It’s a tourism town. Without hosting events to draw people to the area, many of the businesses would tank.
I don’t know about you, but I’d be willing to invest $200k per year to receive millions in return. Hell, I’d hire in a few extra people (J1 or not) from neighboring communities just to suck on the teat that is Ironman clientele money.
Further, these articles seem to make it sound like triathletes are responsible for all of the scourges on their land. Judging by the quantity of cheap, American beer bottles, tins of chewin’ tobbaccy, and discarded fast food containers strewn about the route, I’d say their troubles are far deeper.
I don’t know about you, but I’d be willing to invest $200k per year to receive millions in return. Hell, I’d hire in a few extra people (J1 or not) from neighboring communities just to suck on the teat that is Ironman clientele money.
Further, these articles seem to make it sound like triathletes are responsible for all of the scourges on their land. Judging by the quantity of cheap, American beer bottles, tins of chewin’ tobbaccy, and discarded fast food containers strewn about the route, I’d say their troubles are far deeper.
Also just to be clear, this is an “opinion piece” which is essentially one person’s slanted view, with any real economic analysis with a very unhidden agenda to not have to deal with the nuisance of this category of tourism (Ironman). This person is probably well enough off, that he does not need the inflow of $$$ from this tourism, or is happy for his community to struggle along like many in the Adirondacks because he does not care about the inflow of $$$$. One of the reasons I stopped doing IMLP (I have done in 11 times) was because of this category of citizen. I finally decided that people like that, whether directly or indirectly don’t deserve my money because they were taking it for granted and treating me (the royal me, I mean all athlete-tourists) like crap. Of course there is a large majority in LP who want us there, but this category of citizen makes you feel unwanted. I remember one year after doing IMLP and a few weeks later staying at 20th floor suite in the Grand Hyatt in Hong Kong for 33% cheaper than hole in the wall at IMLP week and everyone in Hong Kong treating me like royalty when clearly they have a way more diversified tourism and business economy. I think it was at that moment that I said to myself, "I can’t believe I keep giving so much of my yearly budget to the community of LP and they treat me like this…after that I went and did IM France, Switzerland, South Africa, Tremblant, Whistler, Texas and EVERYONE of those communities treated the athletes 20x better than LP. I love LP when i just go there to work out. I don’t think that community even deserves having an IM in many ways. I want it to stay but this article just amplifies a group of people whose attitudes makes spending your money there seem like a waste when other communities treat us waaaay better. Granted LP has 19 years of legacy and thus “friction points” too, but some of the others on the list above have a good history too.
The difference between LP and those other races you mentioned are the size of the town though. To most other races in big cities, Ironman is just a small blip on the radar. For Lake Placid, a town that’s only school has a graduating class size in the 20s, this isn’t really the case. As a local, born and raised in Saranac and who bikes there all the time, the issue the type of people you’re complaining about have is many of them don’t directly see the money from the race, and just see the negative consequences. I have many a time seen entire troups of triathletes biking in large packs 2-4 people wide on 86 or 78, both of which are narrow roads with limited visibility at times and crashes do happen at an increasing rate because of this. This creates a big rift between locals and any athletes who try to train on the roads to the point where many local triathletes and cyclists actively avoid anywhere along the race route. As an athlete that doesn’t train for an ironman by biking unsafely and drafting the entire time (how is this even specific training?!), the sense of entitlement many of these athletes come with is a problem, not to say locals are without their own sets of problems.
I’m unsure how I feel about the Saranac Lake issue though, it’s not far enough away to cause any drastic changes with many of the issues of locals being grumpy about the logistics of it. Not enough hotels to support athletes there so the issue with hotels price gouging wouldn’t change at all. I will say Saranac Lake has done a good job recently of trying to actively recruit and support more sporting events in the area, just recently hosting World Snowshoe Champs which went off relatively well so I’m assuming that’s where this opinion piece came from.
The difference between LP and those other races you mentioned are the size of the town though. To most other races in big cities, Ironman is just a small blip on the radar. For Lake Placid, a town that’s only school has a graduating class size in the 20s, this isn’t really the case. As a local, born and raised in Saranac and who bikes there all the time, the issue the type of people you’re complaining about have is many of them don’t directly see the money from the race, and just see the negative consequences. I have many a time seen entire troups of triathletes biking in large packs 2-4 people wide on 86 or 78, both of which are narrow roads with limited visibility at times and crashes do happen at an increasing rate because of this. This creates a big rift between locals and any athletes who try to train on the roads to the point where many local triathletes and cyclists actively avoid anywhere along the race route. As an athlete that doesn’t train for an ironman by biking unsafely and drafting the entire time (how is this even specific training?!), the sense of entitlement many of these athletes come with is a problem, not to say locals are without their own sets of problems.
I’m unsure how I feel about the Saranac Lake issue though, it’s not far enough away to cause any drastic changes with many of the issues of locals being grumpy about the logistics of it. Not enough hotels to support athletes there so the issue with hotels price gouging wouldn’t change at all. I will say Saranac Lake has done a good job recently of trying to actively recruit and support more sporting events in the area, just recently hosting World Snowshoe Champs which went off relatively well so I’m assuming that’s where this opinion piece came from.
Just to be clear, Tremblant is actually smaller than LP but has more hotels. Same deal with Whistler. The difference is that these resorts get that tourism is the bread and butter and anyone in the way of the tourists will basically get squashed by the tourism friendly town councils. They will do anything to develop tourism which is their lifeblood. Meanwhile LP is trapped in this warp where they want the tourism dollars without actually having to put up with stupid tourist behaviour. There is a cost to getting that revenue and yes, it includes putting up with idiot triathletes, idiot skiers, idiot jazz fest tourists (you should see the mess at Tremblant during jazz fest…piss, cigarette butts, broken beer bottles everywhere)…but the local population just deals with all that silliness because it keeps the economy alive.
While I “get” that some people don’t get the direct benefit, they all get the indirect benefit…the guys running the town basically have to squash the people getting in the way of business and progress (if they want something more than a subsistence economy). Pretty well EVERY municipality on earth has to figure out what business their town wants to be in and then set up the entire place to make it happen (Silicon Valley, Bollywood, NYC Finance, Suwon Korea for tech all come to mind). Tremblant, Nice, Whistler etc etc, they get that they only stay alive due to tourists.
As for entitled athletes, I totally get that a few really spoil it for many. I am certain I have exhibited my share of entitled triathlete behaviour a few times when I had to navigate around grizzly bear size potholes, but hey, I’m not going to declare to be a perfect choir boy all the time either. My understanding in NY states that we are supposed to stick to the side of the road, but may navigate around obstacles and enclosing motorists have to wait for a safe time to pass. Some of these “encounters” between triathletes and vehicles at every venue are simply caused by poor tarmac at the edges. At Tremblant where there is a wide shoulder, these encounters are far fewer. In Whistler, it’s not a problem…you get down to Pemberton and onto the flats on a training day, and like in LP the locals are whining because those people get zero $$$ from the race and have to put up with people using a valid form of transport on their roads. So they try to get IM kicked out of there. Whistler will probably lose IM because Pemberton gets nothing out of triathletes on their roads and without that stretch of road, the rest of the course sadly becomes “too tough” for Messick’s guys to approve…7000 ft of vertical will not make the guys in Tampa happy, but I do hope they actually go with a 7000 ft vertical course option and then we don’t have to bother the idiots over in Pemberton.
Oh I agree with the road quality issue. LP is in my backyard and I still choose Tremblant over it for partially that reason. I feel like the town catered more towards wanting a race there so did the right steps. LP people will come no matter what because the “history”. Roads over here are atrocious, but then that would be a whole other argument about taxes and such.
I just personally get miffed at the poor bike handling and “training camps” dropping off huge packs of triathletes around here clogging up the roads. It gives us all a bad reputation and I kinda have one foot on each side.
Also just to be clear, this is an “opinion piece” which is essentially one person’s slanted view, with any real economic analysis with a very unhidden agenda to not have to deal with the nuisance of this category of tourism (Ironman).
His agenda is certainly “unhidden” but it is not tourism and he is using the recent IM simply as the excuse to push this agenda.
He could probably substitute any number of Lake Placid events (major collegiate hockey tournaments, Horse Show, X-Cross Skiing Championships, etc.) instead of IM to show his colors of his opinion of indentured servitude and J1-Visa employment at many of the hotels and eateries.
I’m in Placid many times a year… I hike there all year long and there really isn’t any down time for the town. 2hour waits for dinner are common even when it’s “dead”… I raced Placid Sunday and I didn’t meat one grumpy person. Honestly I meet more grumps when I’m up there on a big hike weekend.
I reside in a town that lives off tourism. Locals bitch and moan about it because it’s something they can band together on. But EVERY SINGLE PERSON HERE understands without the money tourists bring in we’d sink. Sure… I complain too but woopdedo…
This article is no different than the complaints of others in other small vacation towns.
Also just to be clear, this is an “opinion piece” which is essentially one person’s slanted view, with any real economic analysis with a very unhidden agenda to not have to deal with the nuisance of this category of tourism (Ironman).
His agenda is certainly “unhidden” but it is not tourism and he is using the recent IM simply as the excuse to push this agenda.
He could probably substitute any number of Lake Placid events (major collegiate hockey tournaments, Horse Show, X-Cross Skiing Championships, etc.) instead of IM to show his colors of his opinion of indentured servitude and J1-Visa employment at many of the hotels and eateries.
I don’t disagree with you at all. However, I think IM is more in your face with the public impact than a horse show/x-c - road closures, riders impeding road traffic, etc.
I would respond that you should be very careful what you ask for. Penticton is your case in point. Their 30 year history with WTC didn’t mean squat and they have been working to get Ironman back ever since. One could only wish the same fate on Lake Placid. That said, I doubt the city feels the same way as the short-sighted citizen who penned that BS. In fact, LP had bid on the 70.3 WC … and we can be glad they didn’t get it.
I’ve done 12 IMs at 10 different venues, but never at Lake Placid. The price gouging, negative comments, and opinion pieces like this continue to keep that race at the bottom of the rung for me.
Also, x5 on everything Dev said.
Love that people have written comments on the article’s page. Keep them coming. We’re all a good bunch, saddens me that a community just remembers the bad apples.