Fun race today @ 70.3 Boulder! Foley impressive on the bike. Salthouse runs to victory in the last mile. Recap here.
To answer your question, I am not a fan of 5m penalties in 70.3 races. If that’s the penalty in a full it should at least be halved in a middle distance race.
Good to see Trevor put together a solid performance. I wonder if he’ll be able to improve enough to get a look for T100 Las Vegas. Sam would sure like to have a buddy to swim with.
Fun race today @ 70.3 Boulder! Foley impressive on the bike. Salthouse runs to victory in the last mile. Recap here.
What an interesting day for USAT certified race officials, they hammer a dude in Boulder but then do absolutely nothing in San Francisco…this sport sometimes.
Fun race today @ 70.3 Boulder! Foley impressive on the bike. Salthouse runs to victory in the last mile. Recap here.
To answer your question, I am not a fan of 5m penalties in 70.3 races. If that’s the penalty in a full it should at least be halved in a middle distance race.
Good to see Trevor put together a solid performance. I wonder if he’ll be able to improve enough to get a look for **T100 Las Vegas. Sam would sure like to have a buddy to swim with.**Agree: doesn’t need to be as much as 5 minutes to deter, at least in the Pro field. But any penalty needs to be served promptly, so that the drafter loses the pack they have infringed in. Logistically, this is not straightforward on many 70.3 courses, and likely would mean additional resources.
Long will not be racing Las Vegas, will he? Well, I guess if IM Cairns goes to full distance form he will: https://www.trirating.com/ironman-cairns-2024-june-16th-seedings/
Foley is the highest ranked non-T100 USA athlete available for a Las Vegas wildcard (and there will be a LOT being offered).
https://stats.protriathletes.org/rankings/men?nation=US
Fun race today @ 70.3 Boulder! Foley impressive on the bike. Salthouse runs to victory in the last mile. Recap here.
What an interesting day for USAT certified race officials, they hammer a dude in Boulder but then do absolutely nothing in San Francisco…this sport sometimes.
when you ask what can PTO do that IM can’t do that’s exactly it. Adapting rules, trying to fix things.
There’s so many things IM have known for years needing fixed and they do a big fat nothing about it.
Fun race today @ 70.3 Boulder! Foley impressive on the bike. Salthouse runs to victory in the last mile. Recap here.
man, bendix madsen is intriguing for sure. will be interesting to see what see could do on the right course once her run is sorted out.
also, so nice to see stimpson in the mix again.
They’re forcing top athletes to race a lot, which could leave them overtrained/overraced heading into a World Championship.//
No they are not, it is the athlete choosing to overrace. **Both the big series have set it up so that there is little room “outside” their **requirements to do other stuff. Some athletes are just tough and can manage it fine. But if you only do one or the other series, the number of races is reasonable. The big problem comes when athletes want to race outside, as they should because there is great money out there outside of the individual series.Agree: the opportunity’s there: it’s up to each athlete.
Long seems to have been tempted by Eve’s apple: we will see what two IMs and three 70.3s harvests: should make top 5 IM Pro Series (Oceanside, St George, Cairns, Kona, Taupo)). Can’t help thinking that those extra races will be to the detriment of a top performance in the T100 GF and overall, and also challenging for the 70.3WC win in Taupo (perhaps he’s written that off given Wilde and the boyos will be there).Long has changed his mind after an underwhelming race yesterday, and will not be chasing the IM Pro Series and will not aspire to race the IMWC in October.
"I have canceled my trip to Australia. This year has started off so perfect that I began to get greedy and want to chase it all. The top of the World Rankings, the top of T100, the IM pro series and Kona. Yesterday was a (needed) reminder of the need to focus and specialize. To pursue a goal with all of our being. The T100 is simply too competitive and too strong to do otherwise.
“I hate to make the same mistakes twice and this is hard because I have gotten too ambitious in the past. This year is like a rainbow with pots of gold and leprechauns waiting at it but very hard to actually find it. Part one of my 2024 season is now over; I am now on break and will build to my 2024 part two season.”
Fun race today @ 70.3 Boulder! Foley impressive on the bike. Salthouse runs to victory in the last mile. Recap here.
man, bendix madsen is intriguing for sure. will be interesting to see what see could do on the right course once her run is sorted out.
also, so nice to see stimpson in the mix again.
She has been on very low run volume this year due to injury, if she can improve that when fit it looks goos for DK to have some strong females again too.
Long has changed his mind after an underwhelming race yesterday, and will not be chasing the IM Pro Series and will not aspire to race the IMWC in October.
"I have canceled my trip to Australia.
This year has started off so perfect that I began to get greedy and want to chase it all. The top of the World Rankings, the top of T100, the IM pro series and Kona.
Yesterday was a (needed) reminder of the need to focus and specialize. To pursue a goal with all of our being. The T100 is simply too competitive and too strong to do otherwise.
“I hate to make the same mistakes twice and this is hard because I have gotten too ambitious in the past. This year is like a rainbow with pots of gold and leprechauns waiting at it but very hard to actually find it. Part one of my 2024 season is now over; I am now on break and will build to my 2024 part two season.”
Smart move. If he’d just been flying to NY to do Placid it’d be one thing, but a long haul flight and all that entails is a totally different beast.
Fun race today @ 70.3 Boulder! Foley impressive on the bike. Salthouse runs to victory in the last mile. Recap here.
What an interesting day for USAT certified race officials, they hammer a dude in Boulder but then do absolutely nothing in San Francisco…this sport sometimes.
when you ask what can PTO do that IM can’t do that’s exactly it. Adapting rules, trying to fix things.
There’s so many things IM have known for years needing fixed and they do a big fat nothing about it.
Moritz Events adopted 20m draft zone, and then didn’t apply it during the race, but this isn’t the PTO. This is race referees from the federation showing discretion in application. Mostly, I’m guessing, because you’d have 10 dudes in the penalty tent which would look bad for the TV audience they’re desperately hoping appears out of thin air.
The start list for the next IM Pro Series race: Mont Tremblant is out:
https://www.ironman.com/...article/show/1312225
I see that two athletes who chose to sit out San Francisco are on the list (will either start?): Sodaro and Metzler.
Findlay and Salthouse will be there too: one assumes Findlay will go in favourite, partly because we have no clue whether Sodaro is going to race to her potential. Jewett wears #1: after her underwhelming T100s, perhaps the bike course will suit her better (but apart from her breakthrough at Oceanside last year, we have not seen her bike well: it’s stayed her weak link, as in 2022). Stimpson races again with hopes of a place on the podium.
There are some men racing too, but it’s a predominantly domestic field of North Americans. Kanute is the only T100 athlete and probably the best. Wurf on there too.
Not having any internal gossip at all, does it strike anyone as odd that athletes would give PTO who is allegedly paying them this year and next year the short shrift and go race other races? It’s bizarre to me.
There’s either some internal beef with certain athletes and the PTO. Some payments that haven’t come through, some indication that next year the payments aren’t happening regardless, the athletes are just taking advantage of the PTO who perhaps foolishly paid them a large lump sum, or the athletes are dumb as rocks.
Some combination of the above may be possible, but it’s just weird.
I suspect its just the way that the contracts are structured, that allows PTO athletes the ability to maximize their own earnings as they see fit.
E.g. you need to show up for a minimum number of races, but without any serious repercussions if you clearly skip a T100 race in favour of an IM race on the same weekend.
The odd part is that a lot of athletes are all optimizing around the back half of the season or leaving their T100 showing without much slack. If you’re showing up for the min number of races, you’re not giving yourself much room for a bad race or an injury. You’d figure with all the Paris-bound athletes loading their races for after Paris (which makes sense for them), that some of the long-course athletes would try to take advantage of fields without them and try to maximize their points as soon as possible.
Not having any internal gossip at all, does it strike anyone as odd that athletes would give PTO who is allegedly paying them this year and next year the short shrift and go race other races? It’s bizarre to me.
There’s either some internal beef with certain athletes and the PTO. Some payments that haven’t come through, some indication that next year the payments aren’t happening regardless, the athletes are just taking advantage of the PTO who perhaps foolishly paid them a large lump sum, or the athletes are dumb as rocks.
Some combination of the above may be possible, but it’s just weird.I suspect its just the way that the contracts are structured, that allows PTO athletes the ability to maximize their own earnings as they see fit.
E.g. you need to show up for a minimum number of races, but without any serious repercussions if you clearly skip a T100 race in favour of an IM race on the same weekend.
The odd part is that a lot of athletes are all optimizing around the back half of the season or leaving their T100 showing without much slack. If you’re showing up for the min number of races, you’re not giving yourself much room for a bad race or an injury. You’d figure with all the Paris-bound athletes loading their races for after Paris (which makes sense for them), that some of the long-course athletes would try to take advantage of fields without them and try to maximize their points as soon as possible.The structure of the contract in terms of payments and athlete obligations was shared, to an extent, by Renouf in various interviews (the one I listened to was Pro Tri News (pod, about 29 Jan)).
Athletes got a ?% of the money up front, can win prize money each race, and the rankings after the GF determines how much the final payout is (from a $2M pot). In addition, there’s the PTO Rankings EoY bonus payouts to the top 50 (which will include every T100 contracted athlete). The total amount of that was $2M in each of the years 2020-2023. Not heard whether the same total amount this year.
Unless an athlete is an Olympic aspirant (January perspective, so Knibb, Spivey, Duffy, van Riel) athletes are contracted to race 5 of the 7 regular season plus the GF. Olympians are required to race 3 plus the GF (and both Knibb and van Riel now have one in the bag; there are 3 regular T100s after the Olympics).
The final rankings will be based on an athlete’s 4 best scores (NB the GF score rates about 50% more points), so race all 7 and you have plenty of discards. So (@timB) in scoring rather than contractual terms there is plenty of “room for a bad race”. But I agree “optimizing”, as you put it, to June-November is high risk from a contractual PoV: mostly WPros plus Gomez.
Athletes who want to chase other objectives (eg IM Pro Series or Roth or a qualification/validation race plus IMWC or Challenge Champs) have to schedule their season accordingly. Several have had to miss races because they’ve been injured or ill, for example Sodaro. Two athletes (only, Haug and Neumann) have missed more T100s than their contract allows, and further both Lawrence and Moench will not be fulfilling their contract for happy reasons. No doubt the PTO will discuss with defaulting athletes how they can make up value or otherwise determine the amount of any further payments. For example Neumann was dragged kicking and screaming (I assess) to make that rather forced ‘why I’m not racing so far’ PTO video. Maybe that’s the quid pro quo for missing T100 SF.
Some have missed one or two deliberately (mostly to race other events or to start their season later eg Simmonds and Sodaro).
For example:
Ryf chose to validate at IMSA (April) instead of racing Singapore.Matthews chose to miss Singapore (just as well given the injury at Miami) and race IM Texas (April) to gain IM Pro Series points and qualify for Nice. Philipp chose to race two (well three actually, April and May) 70.3s to validate her Nice slot. I speculate that Philipp is now tempted to race IM Vitoria (before T100 London) as if she does, and then does well in both Nice and Taupo she will be well up the IM Pro Series rankings at year end. More likely she will race Tallinn and accept the 2500 point hit.Charles Barclay and Pierré have chosen to miss SF (former to race IM Nice to validate, after change of mind; illness? for latter)Several women chose to give the hot humid conditions of Singapore a miss (eg EPB), and Haug chose to give SF Bay at 12o a miss (she had validated at IM Lanzarote).
Missing two early races does put pressure on athletes, if they are to satisfy the contract, not to miss any more and so we are going to see some weary WPros in Ibiza (about 9 will be racing Nice the week before). I assume every MPro racing IMWC will be missing Las Vegas the weekend before Kona.
“PTO who is allegedly paying them this year and next year” The allegation is part true: the PTO are ‘paying them’ but it’s a one season contract. Next year’s T100 contracts will be offered to the top 10 in the T100 rankings at year end, and then, excluding those names, the next 6 athletes in the PTO Rankings. And 4 ‘hot shots’ (and these could be Moench and Lawrence btw).
Not having any internal gossip at all, does it strike anyone as odd that athletes would give PTO who is allegedly paying them this year and next year the short shrift and go race other races? It’s bizarre to me.
There’s either some internal beef with certain athletes and the PTO. Some payments that haven’t come through, some indication that next year the payments aren’t happening regardless, the athletes are just taking advantage of the PTO who perhaps foolishly paid them a large lump sum, or the athletes are dumb as rocks.
Some combination of the above may be possible, but it’s just weird.
I’m pretty annoyed with some of the T100 athletes If I’m being honest. I so badly want the T100 to somehow miraculously succeed despite me and everyone else not seeing any real way that can happen. But for fuck’s sake, without all of these athletes buying in 100% there’s no chance this all works out and the sport as a whole is a lot worse off without the T100 series.
Not having any internal gossip at all, does it strike anyone as odd that athletes would give PTO who is allegedly paying them this year and next year the short shrift and go race other races? It’s bizarre to me.
There’s either some internal beef with certain athletes and the PTO. Some payments that haven’t come through, some indication that next year the payments aren’t happening regardless, the athletes are just taking advantage of the PTO who perhaps foolishly paid them a large lump sum, or the athletes are dumb as rocks.
Some combination of the above may be possible, but it’s just weird.
Who cares? They’re not employees, they’re on a 1099. What the PTO thing has done has led to Ironman evolving and caring about the pros slightly more and by creating a end of season cash purse we now have stacked races everywhere and all these randos that barely raced are now racing because there’s decent coin to chase at the end of the year.
From a fan perspective this is amazing. I can only hope that when Moritz and Warner-Discovery pull the plug Ironman keeps going.
This whole thing is insanity. Triathlon is suffering from the same thing running has suffered from for years but to a lesser extent. Most guys on the T100/IM circuit know that winning a small race is better than coming 2nd to a superstar at a big race. Enough people dodge each other that races are diluted. The races themselves (besides Kona) aren’t prestigious enough to warrant their own appeal. How many people actually tuned into the third week of the Giro to see Tadej extend his lead from 5 to 7 min?
Big prize money at like 5 races in a year. Big like $1,000,000 total. Enough that every top tier triathlete say screw it I need to try. I know T100 an IM need content on a day-to-day basis, kids will lose attention after 3 days without a race, etc.
(another fundamental problem with trying to build the sport, that’s also shared with running is that it’s too deterministic. 9.9/10 times the most fit athlete will win the race. Cool. But not exciting. Cycling at least has an injection of randomness with chases, teams, tactics, seems like the favorite only wins half the time. You don’t want total randomness in a sport, but you don’t want absolute determinism either.
This whole thing is insanity. Triathlon is suffering from the same thing running has suffered from for years but to a lesser extent. Most guys on the T100/IM circuit know that winning a small race is better than coming 2nd to a superstar at a big race. Enough people dodge each other that races are diluted. The races themselves (besides Kona) aren’t prestigious enough to warrant their own appeal. How many people actually tuned into the third week of the Giro to see Tadej extend his lead from 5 to 7 min?
Big prize money at like 5 races in a year. Big like $1,000,000 total. Enough that every top tier triathlete say screw it I need to try. I know T100 an IM need content on a day-to-day basis, kids will lose attention after 3 days without a race, etc.
(another fundamental problem with trying to build the sport, that’s also shared with running is that it’s too deterministic. 9.9/10 times the most fit athlete will win the race. Cool. But not exciting. Cycling at least has an injection of randomness with chases, teams, tactics, seems like the favorite only wins half the time. You don’t want total randomness in a sport, but you don’t want absolute determinism either.
Before T100/PTO came onto the scene Triathletes dodged each other all the time.
This whole thing is insanity. Triathlon is suffering from the same thing running has suffered from for years but to a lesser extent. Most guys on the T100/IM circuit know that winning a small race is better than coming 2nd to a superstar at a big race. Enough people dodge each other that races are diluted. The races themselves (besides Kona) aren’t prestigious enough to warrant their own appeal. How many people actually tuned into the third week of the Giro to see Tadej extend his lead from 5 to 7 min?
Big prize money at like 5 races in a year. Big like $1,000,000 total. Enough that every top tier triathlete say screw it I need to try. I know T100 an IM need content on a day-to-day basis, kids will lose attention after 3 days without a race, etc.
(another fundamental problem with trying to build the sport, that’s also shared with running is that it’s too deterministic. 9.9/10 times the most fit athlete will win the race. Cool. But not exciting. Cycling at least has an injection of randomness with chases, teams, tactics, seems like the favorite only wins half the time. You don’t want total randomness in a sport, but you don’t want absolute determinism either.
Before T100/PTO came onto the scene Triathletes dodged each other all the time.
That’s what I’m saying. Has T100 solved this problem by offering similar payout to IM? I’m no fan of IM, but adding more races of the same prestige and restricting the races your athletes can do is only going to increase dodging.
If there’s 25 local 5ks in the same weekend that all pay $100 to win you bet your butt every mediocre runner will be looking at the start lists to find the one he can win. It’s no different when there’s 20x 70.3’s with similar payouts over a season. Give me 2x 140 and 3x 70.3 with a high enough payout to promise the absolute best in the sport head to head. Id rather watch 3 great races than 20 predetermined winner-from-start races.
Pierre isn’t on the start list for Ironman France.
Anne is racing as an age grouper in the 70.3 distance category.
Well this is what ‘PTO #1’ Long is missing in Cairns (https://proseries.ironman.com/races/im-cairns):
Great preview of the venue article by Jenny:
https://www.slowtwitch.com/…_in_Cairns_8970.html
According the Thorsten (data based):
https://www.trirating.com/…-june-16th-seedings/
last year’s winner will be the lady to beat. And Simpson (poor swimmer but great bike/runner) will go to the top of the IM Pro Series for sure with Wilms moving to ~3 or #4.
https://proseries.ironman.com/standings
Barnaby, Currie, Skipper and Guilloux all looking for an IMWCQ (4 x MPRO and 4 x WPRO on offer).
Of those Barnaby seems the best placed to do well in the IM Pro Series (assume with Vitoria or Frankfurt as IM number 2, and is 70.3 capable).
Top 3 women already IMWCQ so slots will stretch down. And $150,000 prize purse means winners take $25,000.
TV Producer’s notes: https://proseries.ironman.com/...roducers-tips-cairns