I wonder if he is still considering going over to Italy and staying with his wife’s family for a training block, that would fit nicely in the run up to Nice.
for the sport he is more useful if he does not improve his swim …
for tv production he is the asset the way he is .
he is usa , the character in pto and the most unique athelte with his poor swim and strong bike.
if i was the tv producer , i would even pay him not to improve his swim lol.
As I said he’s not getting paid enough by PTO then because it’s pretty clear what is and isn’t exciting for him (shocker the event he’s 4 mins behind and clearly at a disadvantage isn’t “exciting” ha). But when we look back in 15 years and wonder why the PTO never had a chance of catching on. It’s clear that the athletes “all in” and the PTO’s need to get them “all in” is no where close to matching. But again that’s how pro triathletes have always behaved, they have to behave as if tomorrow doesn’t exist, so you better “get yours” and not worry about tomorrow. So in that aspect it’s almost non sensical to think you can come into an individual sport like tri and create a “series” platform where all the athletes are all in on said series, etc. Athletes basically have to look out for themselves with our pay structure and lack of salary for simply competing in sport like in team/ball sports.
I think you take too binary a view, Brooks.
Long raced very well in 2024’s early races (Miami, Oceanside, Singapore, St George). And his 2025 schedule looks to emulate that.
He must surely value racing the other top athletes and Singapore/St George/SF/Vancouver provides that opportunity. He’ll be “all in” for those races - the “excitement”, just as the PTO would like. Getting paid a higher base contract amount would have little bearing on his “excitement for T100”.
It seems entirely reasonable (and rational) to race both T100/70.3, without over racing and then switch fire to concentrate on an excellent full distance race in Nice in the IMWC.
If PTO were really concerned about spectacle (as opposed to ensuring the top athletes are there), they’d bring in more triathletes who can’t swim. At the very least, that would create the “swimmers vs cyclists” narrative. “Can the poor swimmers erase the deficit in time?”
Sanders is the obvious big name, but there’s a lot of other guys who can fit the bill.
But its harder to pick those guys based on merit over the long term. Its a bit of a catch 22 - PTO rankings and T100 points are obviously the most fair way to do it, but creates a bit of a boring dynamic where the same guys always make the front swim since the top guys are (almost by definition) guys who can swim.
It’s not actually a binary viewpoint, it’s what usually needs to be done to be successful. The fact that you are suggesting “all in” on the athlete’s standpoint is doing the bare min of races is basically the whole fallacy. Neither athlete nor PTO are meshing well to create this full time, full series dynamic with many of it’s athletes and “stars”.
And again I don’t blame the athlete. Pro triathletes dont know any better than to do what is best for n = 1. PTO is basically the 1st real intity to have “salaries”, and we are basically seeing that those salaries are only at a level that athletes are deciding to race min races for said salary/company.
So I think any person lack very real business sense if your trying to tell me the athlete’s are “all in” on PTO by racing bare minimum number of races in said series. There’s nothing logical about that in terms of making that a top priority. But again if the athletes were paid well enough, they’d be more “all in”. So again the compromise is basically “all in” is bare min races for many of it’s stars. That doesn’t lead to success by any logical measure for PTO. So back to the 15 years from now, we’ll be able to say, it’s wild that both parties couldn’t come together better to put the best product forward. If you think this current process is, cool. But again it’s the best “compromised” product in all likelihood. We are going to look back and say how wild is it that pro triathletes were on salary for a series and their race calendars still was filled with more races that intefered with that series than aligned with it. That’s going to be the narrative.
So it’s wild as hell to me that a race organization has gone to the pro’s with SALARY before the races even kick off in addition to race purse + end of year bonuses, and the pro’s are like 'nah i’ll only do it if i can race a bunch of other races I wan to race". Thus PTO’s own race needs are likely cooked cus the “minmimum” races are likely no where close to what they actual want/need for it to be success vs what they have to make them to get these athletes to race their series. I don’t think we can cry poor “pro triathletes” after this endevour can we?
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Mostly this. If the PTO fails, the athletes who lament not getting valued or paid well have no one to blame but themselves or they just need to recognize that collectively they aren’t that valuable, despite the fact that individually some of them are very valuable. PTO is clearly doing all it can to hype up rivalries, create narratives, capture amazing footage, promote the sport to TV and to sponsors. It’s on the athletes at this point to give us a show.
If that means someone needs to poop their pants and crawl across the finish line…or someone else needs to slow down up front and let the damn thing turn into a 18km side-by-side run battle, then do it. That’s mostly joking…The media landscape is too crowded and PTO is trying its best to blend traditional sports marketing with the social media components, and most of it isn’t that compelling.
Short of the PTO tour becoming like the Real Housewives where we mostly watch drama behind the scenes of beautiful fit human beings who then go and trash talk and compete every now and then, it’s not going to break through.
There is no doubt value in this cast of characters, but it’s likely only if they become a cast of characters rather than just doing their eat, train, eat sleep, repeat cycle for the TV.
Still fun to watch for the rest of us!
Like most start ups, very rarely is anyone paid their “value” initally. In order for most businesses to be successful, you need the opposite of bare minimum buy in…you need basically true “all in” with the understanding that your “sacrifice” now is creating success for tomorrow. Even more so in a sport like triathlon I would imagine with so much up against it, you need 100% buy in. But of course we all sorta know/believe this is going to fail anyways, so why not “get yours” from a pro triathlete pov.
Question to all of us experts:
How do you reconcile racing and travelling all the time with making a fundamental step in your development as an athlete? (Fixing the swim).
He’s not going to make a ton of progress in that area likely. He might marginally get better over time, like cutting the deficit down by 30s. And occasionally when things break his way he’ll be 50s down sorta thing, but that would likely be based on conditions or competitive swim dynamics out of his control.
I dont know what people expect of Sam, to just quit racing and become a swimmer for a year? He will be working more on the swim pre season, and no doubt more again in the big bloc he has in the middle. Of course they aren’t gonna be huge gains, no one ever has big gains starting out where he did.
the good news for him is that the lead group doesnt get any faster, just sometimes larger. So whatever gains he makes are actually ones against the field. His biggest problem in T100 is that he has to swim alone. That 4 seconds a 100 is huge as well as the whole sighting aspect he hs to deal with. Probably in the 70.3’s and Ironmans he will have some company, so look for those races to show the most improvements against the leaders.
It really would have been fun to have a guy like Lionel in the T100, hopefully he gets a wild card or two and they both can run down back markers until they run out of room…
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Except with Louis and Bergere joining the race the front of swim will get faster, more fast swimmers woking together.
Really dont think so, guys just as fast as them already in the series. Heard those guys Brownlee, Laidlow, Royale, and Amberger do pretty well in the water… (-;
And yes as I said, there is the possibility that more will be up front, depending on the start lists. But I do not expect the overall pace to be different, Aaron will hammer as usual as he needs there to be some bigger gap to those that can motor him up. The two you mentioned may take their turn occasionally, but will be thinking more tactically about the next two events and setting up for that last 8k of running…
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Hate to break it to you @Monty but “Brownlee, Laidlow, Royale (sic), and Amberger” are not IN the ‘series’ (2025 T100 Tour).
But I agree the swim won’t be any faster than 2024: Luis and Bergere will be taking it out with at least half a dozen comfortable in their wake (FP).
Is Pearson faster than Wilde/Geens/Van Riel over 18km, if they’re together at T2?
Think we can be confident after a hard bike that Long with pull them back on the run.
Ha!! Of course not, I mentioned them to illustrate that the swim was already fast last year, but I think you knew that??
It will be fun to have the new guys up there, Wilde too. Gonna make the pointy end of the race more competitive and the winners will absolutely have to be on a great day. As for Pearson, have no idea except he will probably disappoint. I expect he will be in Sam’s sights at some point in the race, even run down by him until he gets his non draft legs underneath him…
What about run-bike-swim for some T100 races. That could be super interesting and would make an interesting spectacle.
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A) By signing the contract he was never going to quit racing this year even if he went “swim focus” trianing (which is what I suggested he do in December)
B) By signing the contract, you can realize that basically gives you a free year to not stress over having to get race results in order to provide for your family. Like THIS is the time you go all in on a key weakness, a time when you are getting paid regardless of your results. And if your results are good you get double pay from the prize purse and then even get included in the end of year bonuses. Again it takes balls/long term planning to actually “race less and focus on swim more” as your plan of action. But again your still getting paid a bunch of money this year regardless of the results, and the sport is only going to make poor swimmers pay more often then not in triathlon from here on out. I don’t ever seeing it go the other way where the poor swimmers are the “uber” bikers, the uber bikers are also now the guys coming out at the front in the swim, oh and oh fuck they can run too.
C) It’s chess not checkers Staying the course likely isn’t going to improve the chances of a real swim break through. It’ll take more than just a winter “swim block” of training. So back to the T100 contract, that should be the “investment” you can then use to self improve yourself, because again you don’t need to win this year. You have a salary, your racing the events where 5 10th places gets you another $50k. If you finish 10th overall in the standings that gives you another $35k. So you can “race less” on a T100 contract and still make what over $150k if you finish in 10th place (which is what I was guessing based on his end of year results, just as a ball park number).
D) Demands of competition. At some point Long has to get his swim faster, and this isn’t even for T100, cus I think he’s going to be long gone by a year or 2 anyways (generally I think weaker swimmers always gravitate to non-draft LC as their jam). So all these swim advacements is more for the LC needs. Which I think at the WC level, there are more “gap fillers” in championship races than there are in T100 when it’s only a field of 20. Having double to triple the race rosters means he’ll be able to find more people on the swim than what the current T100 demands where it truly is if your not chase pack, your solo.
E) Long can sorta use LS’s career as “what not to do”. But LS also early in his career didn’t need to swim focus like what is happening now. And so LS being 7 years his senior, LS has a limited number of years left in the sport. He’s long past the point of being able to go “all in” on fixing a weakness. But Long isn’t 30 yet, so he still has ~10 years/chances of winning the big time races. Like NOW is the time to go all in on the swim if that’s what you want to do. And again the fact that he’s getting a salary regardless of his race results, that’s imo huge enough reason to self invest; that’s what I’d be telling him if I was part of his group. And again it doesn’t mean it’s going to be able to fix it, but logically it makes sense to if that’s the key weakness holding you back. And like we’ve always said about LS, he doesn’t need “front pack” swim (he’ll never get that), he just needs improvements to put himself in better positions. And again in LC events, there are more athletes on the start, and thus more “fillers” within the swim and not just essentially the 2 main groups like we see in T100 and/or ITU racing (where if you miss either of those 2 groups it’s race over essentially).
F) Again what is the actual salary structure. Is it essentially a “salary” to do the min, requirements or is it 1 salary number and by racing more than mimimum your actually cutting into said salary by having to “international travel” and not getting paid more; thus why everyone is racing “all in” as minimum races this year? But if I’m in his camp (every time I see him swimming, it’s always solo), I’d really be thinking the opposite viewpoint you have monty- THIS is the year to go all in on the swim and use the monthly T100 races as benchmarks for your improvements.
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I was totally thinking what you’re saying, and I went to look up Leon Chevalier’s racing history to prove to @monty that Leon raced less last season on his way to cutting the IM WC swim deficit by 1.5 minutes and abandoning Sam on T100 swims.
Boy, was that a severe case of brain fog on my part. In addition to the T100, Leon raced 3 full Ironmans. Hardly a swim-focused season.
There are differences between Chevalier and Long though, a major one being that Leon is tri-coached in addition to swimming with a squad (in Bath).
I *believe Long is in the LS camp of “self coached”. Ok, no problem. But then every swim video I’ve seen of Long lately, he’s always in the pool solo. Maybe he’s in a group, but we see LS in the Aqua Bears group (hell we even get LS’s swim coach on his videos talking up the training). I don’t watch every single Long video, but every time I do see swim video of him, it’s solo swimming.
So who’s writing his workouts and who’s giving him technical feedback? I don’t watch every video, so maybe those answers are in the videos I’ve not watched. But more times than not you need on deck coaching and you need others around you (just for the satisfaction of having others to suffer with in addition to push each other).
Again if self coaching is his thing, great. But he’s gotta improve the swim and generally “self coaching” is the worst pathway with that. Again going “all in” doesn’t automatically mean his swim issue is solved. But I think within the pro ranks of today’'s triathlon, you can’t continue to race WC level events with that type of specific issue and think/want to win.
And I’m not necessarily saying “race less”. Im saying that Long has the security from a salary this year to actually change his training THIS year and take out the pressure from the results THIS year. He can sorta show up in not as good “tri shape” and use each race as sorta a benchmark to know if the swim training is paying off. That’s more what I’m saying…The 2025 salary gives you the incentive/reason to now go “all in” on the swim training and less worry about said actual results. Because again whether he as a good or bad T100 year, he’s probaly bouncing after this year or next year at worse I’d say.
But listen to Long talk about his schedule, he’s basically only doing a “winter block” swim focus because once the tri season starts he’s back to “tri training”. He wants to win and he wants to race the best and see where he stands. Which again I think it’s really really hard to talk patience to athletes, but again THIS would be the year/reason why you show an athlete like Long “this could work because your getting salary regardless of your results…NOW would be the time to do it”.
Again we’ll all look back at this era of “salaries” and think it was bonkers the pro triathletes didn’t support that cause more than what they currently are doing.
So whenever your going through some major changes, you *generally would want to race less because your now now not “race ready”. Thus why I said you can view this year for Sam Long as a “free” year to figure it out because of the T100 salary. Which to me is a huge opportunity for Long if viewed in the correct way. GJ and her coach was someone I learned a lot from. After London Games she was sorta in an fork in the road in her career. She could be comfortable living in the US, part time triathlete, part time financier with her career. She chose the harder path of going “all in” on her itu career by moving across the world to Australia. But guess what she didn’t view it as giving up anything, she viewed the “opportunity” to invest in herself to put herself in the best position to be successful. So that’s why I thought Long has an really great opportunity this year at age 29, where he has plenty of years left in a career to truly get after it with swim training. He can basically punt on the year and still likely make 6 figures as a pro triathlete. Instead it seems *from afar that the pressure to win is still there for him. Which again to me makes zero sense if your in a phase of your career where your trying to really fix a major issue. And so maybe he’s getting it fixed behind the scenes and he’s only getting more and more confident. But that would probaly go against the norm of where he is as an athlete and where he needs to go. At some point he is going to need time to go “all in” on the swim and not just 1 winter block likely, that likely means more of a longer term process to fix it. Thus if I was in his camp as an advisor or coach, I’d lay the groundwork of how a short term reset on race results this year and the focus on the swim have a far greater long term impact on his career than just the “same ole same ole” approach. Again I’d use the T100 salary as the security he needs to show you can still provide for your family even if you race minimum races this year. But he’s “self coached” so he may or may not have that type of support/sounding board on his career (nor want that). And again it’s much easier to stay the course and race than it does to actually go all in on fixing something like the swim. It’s not a gurantee, so then does he come back angry at me as a coach for suggesting it and “wasting” a year? Of course that is how it would play out, but again what is Sam Long “losing” this year in terms of limiting his race schedule (if he so chose to do that)? He’s not losing racing income cus he has the salary from T100. So then he’s also getting money at 5 races min this year, which then he’s also getting guranteed end of year bonuses. So it’s not a complete “don’t race”; it’s more psychological changes of how you view this upcoming season and we’ve seen already he talks about the pressure he’s putting on himself to win. So again maybe he’s super confident cus his swim training is going so great he’s chomping at the bit to race. I just don’t think it happens that quickly for where he is. So it sorta takes a leap of faith to do what I’m suggesting but again that leap of faith is much less severe now that he’s got a guranteed contract. Thus the all in is suddenly not as impactful than if he truly did take a full step back from racing to focus on the swim.
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Too me it sounds like you are changing from, every pro needs to really focus on PTO and only silly pros don’t go all in with pto.
While you don’t even know what the pros get paid for and how .
But Sam really should screw PTO and use the season as swim training.
Do I get this wrong ?