I was not initially a fan of the show after the first Messick interview where I felt he was badgering and driving his agenda. After that it’s been much improved and I look forward to it. I’m glad he is doing the sort of reporting he is, “professional” triathletes forgo a level of privacy to build their brand and the kind of reporting he did on Imo comes with the territory. All this pearl clutching over it is ridiculous. If it was any other “professional” sport people wouldn’t have the same response but we try and treat our pro’s like a protected class.
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Full agreement on the Messick interview. If people hadnt been a little bit sour on Messick in the first place, I think the tri community conversation would’ve been on Jack. Even in disagreement with Messick, I still saw his point, and it clearly was not informed primarily from social media.
In regards to the actual Simmonds situation, there are several sides anyone could take, but the actual situation was that an athlete he covers in races was/is(?) living with a (now) known PED user. Whether she knew is a detail for the courts. Had Jack sat on that info, some people would’ve known (all the PTN guys knew already), and then complained about “the system.” What surprised us all was not that Jack was holding himself to a code of ethics, but that we were all like, “you’re a journalist?!” In all of these comments on ST, the presumption is Simmonds’ innocence. Base fact though, she was living with a doper.
To the protected class comment, I see it as built into the system. In every competition, commentary, commercial and conversation, the professional field is spoken of as “professional” 8,000 times. This is a hobby turned sport, and the product pushers make a living doing it. Cool. I’d love to as well. But the constant reminders of “professional” cannot but have an effect after a while, especially when the races are organized the way they are. There’s few ways around it, but to think it doesnt have people thinking they need to protect the reputation of their favorite racers is not realistic. It’s not if you worship, its who.
This will change/mature Jack. Not that he made a mistake, but I think he’s mis-read the tri community as a whole. He listening to the people trying to create a brand, a commercial product, etc. and trying to contribute in helpful ways. He needs a waterfall of maturity poured on him, but that’s not isolated to this incident.
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I return to my previous comment that the 'tri community" need to stop clutching their pearls and being so precious about the professionals in our sport. I am of the opinion that a a professional sports figure who is using their notoriety to make a living needs to accept all the ancillary positives and negatives that comes with being in the entertainment industry.
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But doesn’t that include Kelly himself?
Sure and people can not listen to his show to express their displeasure.
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But we have to listen to him during the T100 broadcasts. Can I express my dislike with words? Or do I also have to stop watching the races?
You do you, champ.
Thanks 
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if there is an issue here its the person in immos team that leaked the info
and to add thats a rather unfortunate team, a partner that dopes and another team member that leaks info.
its kind of crazy to me Kelly gets the brunt when the knowledge in the inner tri. circle was already there.
at the same time I totally understand if another podcast etc. etc. does not want to report it.
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I’ll give my 2c
I used to enjoy the podcast, but recent years (months) it’s become about himself not the topic at hand.
Added to that, the rant last year about how clean triathlon is, justified because there are positive tests, was just stupid.
I stopped listening then - but I do listen to the guest podcasts he has when the other athletes like Fred Funk etc host it.
It’s the same with PTN.
“I can’t tell you who told me” “I heard this rumour” it’s awful, bunch of discount frat boys.
Much better, imho, are Imtalk ( the original ), That Triathlon Show (training based), Talking Triahlon and Triathlon Mockery.
None of those make it about themselves.
Jack Kelly has it in him to be excellent, it used to ti be really good, but something has changed.
I hope he loses the self focus and gets back to how it was!
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I stopped listening to the podcast when it stopped being about training (How Thet Train Podcast). Between his hyperbolic way of speaking (I feel like I’m listening to Trump), Kelly is full of himself. He always finds a way to tell us that he’s cozy with the athletes: “I was having dinner with X last night and he told me Y”, or “I was having coffee this morning with Z and she told me…”.
He did get better the second year as part of the T100 broadcast, but he truly loves the sound of his own voice and his self-importance.
Anyway, I don’t listen to the Podcast so I can’t complain about that. 
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Does anyone miss the TRS podcast now?
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I sadly found that podcast after it was over. Entertained quite a few rides on the train.
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Every damn day.
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I think some culture’ journalists/reporters like to dig up a bit of drama. Britain is famous for it. Although Jack Kelly is Australian he this kind of journalist and he’s probably the first to admit it. He’s also well prepared, respectful and has great guests on his show.
I have a job working with loud equipment so I listen to most of the tri podcasts and enjoy them for their different take on things.
BTW, who wouldn’t want to know the power numbers of a goat like Taylor???
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Me 
I’ll try to cover most things on here:
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Re: the Imogen case I feel like triathlon is a small sport and we treat our athletes differently from bigger sports. I don’t know if this is good or bad. I’m a media member who had it confirmed to me that Imogen had tested positive for a banned substance by a few people. I ran it past Imogen and I posted it. I care about clean sport & protecting clean athletes so I do feel like talking about all aspects of doping and not hiding it is important. And I really hope Imogen’s story is true and it was an accident, but I guess we’ll see what the decision comes back as on that. ON reflection though I do wish I hadn’t posted it. I HATE the drama of it despite some people thinking I love it. I hate it. I have fully made the decision going forward that I won’t be “breaking” anymore news stories. I’ll leave that to other people.
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I honestly just love triathlon. I love the training, the lifestyle, the racing and the athletes. I started a podcast because of that. I didn’t start it to become the biggest or the best or anything like that I started it because I love talking about the sport.
I think the thing about me that’s quite different from almost every other option in our sport is that I was (and still am really) a complete nobody. I don’t post YouTube videos about my training, I haven’t been one of the best in the world, I don’t post about myself on social media and I know some of you above have said I love the sound of my own voice/talk about myself a lot but honestly I really don’t talk about myself at all really. Like you could have listened to every single minute of my podcast over the past 4 years and I daresay you still wouldn’t know much about me.
I actually think that makes it hard for people to really get around me/support me/buy into my content at times. From my experience I feel like American’s particularly want to feel connected to the person they’re listening to/watching because they are such open, expressive, social people by culture. Whereas the Australian in me kind of shy’s away from letting people actually get to know me so that when I talk (whether that be lots or not much) it’s kind of like “oh will this guy just shut up already, I want to hear from the person I know/relate to, have watched the journey of and am therefore interested in!!”
Take Jan Frodeno, for example, who I commentate with. EVERYONE wants to hear from him cause he’s a 3 x World Champ and we’ve all followed his amazing journey. Same thing when I have the world’s best triathlete’s on the podcast like Taylor Knibb or Marten Van Riel - you want to hear from them and not me, because what have I ever done to make you value my opinion, care about anything I have to say about something or want to hear about my life?
Honestly - I’ve done basically nothing to make you value my opinion! I don’t think I have and I’m not living under this illusion that I’m special or important. I don’t think those things. In private I’m actually my biggest hater and very critical of myself if anything.
I also have at times made mistakes & stuffed up. I own up to lots of things I’ve gotten wrong or misjudged. I would do things with Andrew Messick differently, I would have done things with Ironman differently (people think I hate Ironman/am anti-Ironman when I actually love Ironman racing), I probably would not be as “dramatic” about some things that I have been in the past.
In 2024 I would’ve stuck more to what made my podcast what it was which was one on one chats with pro’s about their training, racing, life, etc. rather than experimenting with lots of other formats that just weren’t as good.
In 2025 I feel like I’ve changed a lot of what I do. The podcast has gone back to what made it good taking into account everything I’ve learnt over the past few years. On reflection, I probably shouldn’t have done the Imogen Simmonds PTN podcast, but at the time I just felt like I needed to defend myself because I did try to do everything as well as I could.
But again, I’ve learnt from where I can be better and going forward I’m just not going to get too involved in the big drama shows that sometimes present themselves. It’s a lesson hard learnt when you get 10 instagram messages, 5 saying they support you and 5 saying they hate you. You don’t really read any of the supportive ones but the ones that aren’t you sit up dwelling on all night and can’t sleep!!
I really do try my absolute best to not make my podcasts or content about me, that’s the thing. I’ve done well over 500 hours of podcasts and on average I talk less than 15% of the time. So guests talk for about 85% of time on my podcast. Which I do feel like is probably on the very low end of how much a host would talk on a podcast. But again, I’m actually really aware of this and try my best to ask a question and give the person as much time and silence as they need to answer and then I ask another question. I also don’t have the benefit of having co-hosts to make it easier to talk less. So if you felt this about the podcast maybe a year or two ago and made up your mind then, I’d love if you could try again and see if it’s different now.
Like I said above, whether you love me, hate me or are neutral to me I do think it’s REALLY hard to buy into what I say/do because no one really knows me, cares about me or would have any reason to want to listen to me. I’m not one of the world’s best pro’s, I’m not the partner of a pro, I don’t give much of myself to my audience/the triathlon public. Like honestly why would you care about me? It makes it so easy to find me annoying and not relate to me. I honestly think lots of people who hate me could walk past me in the street and not even realise it was me, that’s how little I put myself out there!
I think going forward I probably need to fix that and let everyone get to know me. Because all the “drama” and garbage like that actually isn’t who I am or what I am in my day to day life. It’s just not what I’m about. I spend 95% of my time coaching athletes, going for runs with my dog, spending time with friends & working.
And being a member here is a part of that. I do want to let people actually get to know me and then make up their mind about me instead of seeing this very limited and not real version of my via instagram when there’s some breaking news or as being the guy who talks during the T100 broadcast when you’d rather hear from Jan 100% of the time (trust me, I get it, I’d feel the same if I was you!!). And so for the rest of 2025 - that’s what I’m going to do and I’ll do that via Youtube, maybe doing some series where I train for races and show my life and myself more, giving more of myself on Instagram like posting reels talking about things that are going on in the triathlon world and things like being a member here on Slowtwitch and chatting to everyone about triathlon and life! 
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i was hoping this would escalate to full troll mode, aussie bogan style. i am bitterly disappointed.
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As a major critic…I just ask that if you’re going to be commentating this year that you spend a long time listening to NASCAR commentary. Less color, you’re now in the PxP seat based on last year. I don’t really need your anecdotes when you have expert.
Drive the bus with the actual action of the race and let whoever is color commentator do their role of filling that.
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The experts are here to give their expert opinion. I like that Jack also has anecdotes on top of the ‘serious’ stuff that the experts may comment on. And he already does a great job of commenting the action.
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