This is an old debate that goes back to the old Wednesday ride in north county San Diego starting back in the early 80’s. It would often be about a 1/3 triathletes on aero bars and 2/3 roadies on road bikes. Of course virtually all of the triathletes were either pros or elite AG’ers, so it was not your beginner ride. It all sorted out in the end, no one rode on the bars in the draft unless last in line, and the ride went fine for years and years.
I would imagine Sam was on the drops unless he was leading, which sounds like he was for quite a bit setting the break(which he got dropped from, ha!!)… Now of course this is not to say that dozens of you are now going to get on here and tell your stories about some trigeek that showed up to a group ride and rode stupidly. Yes that happens and it shouldn’t, but Sam on this ride along with Hofman are fine, and it is not the same thing as the geek that doesnt know the rules…
Could you? Sure, it seems if you’re a reputable enough pro triathlete you can “get away with it”. Should you? Probably not.
Esp when you consider, the whole world knows Sam has a road bike, and on top of that, it’s February…no major races around the immediate corner, my opinion is simply ride a road bike. Idk. Maybe I’m alone on this.
Def. think you get some grace if you are a “known quantity.” Hopefully everyone in a ride of that level knows not to use aerobars in the pack, and has some reasonable group riding skills.
I think it’s interesting that Sam said that he produces greater watts on the TT bike than the roadie (he assumes it’s the steeper setup).
You can ride just as safely on a TT bike as on a road bike (as long as you’re not down aero obviously) so I wouldn’t care if someone did it. I wouldn’t personally do it just because I know uptight road riders tend to lose their mind with stuff like this.
You don’t have to be uptight whatsoever on this one, it’s a pretty standard unwritten guideline for group rides that is 100% a safety thing. This isn’t sock height or leg shaving or what have you. One split second mess up by that person and they could cause others serious injuries. I just don’t see the why here. Sam has a sick road bike, why do a ride mostly in the hoods of the TT bike? I just don’t get it. But I can agree to disagree on the OK-ness of it.
As triathletes on ST I don’t think we have the ability to accuse others of being uptight
Like I said, I wouldn’t do it, just because I’d prefer to fit in and not cause any aggro. But I also wouldn’t care if someone else did and I don’t think Sam should be bashed for doing it if he thinks he can ride better on the TT. Riding on the hoods of a TT bike you have just as good brake coverage as riding on the hoods of a road bike so I don’t see how it’s less safe.
Road riders love to bash triathletes but the reality is that when roadies race they spend a lot of time falling off and crashing into each other.
It’s more general rule until Sagan or Lance or insert name pro doing it or your local badass and then suddenly its shoulder shrug. Especially with group rides of that ability, they aren’t going to give one F what bike Long rides on at this point.
This “rule” goes way back too when you had shifters on the bar ends and such - you couldn’t shift close to the brakes. Now that’s no longer an issue for the most part - it’s not that different on the hoods than the brake hoods on a roadie. But…tradition lol
Yes, but way back in the day (until the mid/late 90’s) even road bikes had shifters far removed from the brakes. I remember group rides in the late 80’s and early 90’s with lots of roadies being very skeptical/wary of even shifterless clipon bars.
I mean yeah - I wanted the grip shifters so bad on my first aerobars - had the original scott dh bars.
Sure shifters were different but that doesn’t mean roadies haven’t looked down on triathletes for years and find ways to not want them to ride with them lol.
@ADabs I would like to suggest you change the title of this thread to
“discuss Sam’s race schedule”.
I didn’t say anything several weeks ago. I get it that pros put themselves out by being pros and are subject to scrutiny, but this is not like NFL or MLB where pros are making millions of dollars and by definition are subject to scrutiny. Pros in triathlon, are just faster than age groupers, but on the balance not really affluent. We fans are not paying “that much” for them to earn their livings.
So when I thread persists for multiple weeks talking “Let’s bash Sam…” at the end of the day, its just a negative take. If you are Sam, or close to Sam, it likely does not feel cool after a while no matter what is being discussed inside the thread the title just keeps rearing its ugly head.
So what do you say…change the title now?
I don’t know Sam, I only met him ONCE at the ST party at 70.3 St. George. He was largely a gentleman socializing with everyone talking about his race and training no different than the rest of us.
There is also another side to it that you directly have been apart of in different threads in the past with spoilers, etc. and why you put spoliers in thread titles.
To draw interest and clicks and actual commentary on said subject.
I agree with your sentiment for the most part, but I also think it’s more of a play on words of the title to actually get commentary. And I don’t think anyone has bashed him within the thread? It’s just been commenting on his traing/racing/percieved strengths/weaknesses. But no one is “bashing him”.
Creating interest in a thread at the direct expense of an individual is not that cool.
If no one says anything about it, the behaviour gets normalized and you all defend it. As I said, I don’t know Sam, but I think it is not that cool to be slamming him in a thread title just to create interest.
“Discuss Sam’s 2025 Schedule” should be enough.
Saying, “let’s go beat up on this kid” is not cool. It’s like the cafeteria fight. Most people won’t participate in the fight, but they will come support that a fight is going on for entertainment.
If you are coming to defend the title, you’re being part of normalizing this type of culture. I do agree that the discussion inside the thread is largely OK. But ugly title keeps showing up each time any of us respond so that’s at Sam’s expense each time (and I get that by responding I am bumping the thread up, so hopefully the original poster changes the thread title and we’re golden).
No I’m not coming to defend. I’m calling out your double standard, with thread titles, that was all. Creating interest by “spoiling” isn’t cool either, which is why so many people have a problem with spoilers in thread titles (and not directly at you, even ST articles have spoilers in the title at times, that “spoil” the results for the reader; that happened just a few weeks ago). But your justification was to do it for the “clicks” vs using a “generalized” thread title.
(I said I agree with you and that it was more of a “play on words” than an actual literally let’s bash said athlete).
OK we can have a discussion about spoilers elsewhere. That is not at the expense of one individual. It is at the expense of a concept of internet time lapse or not. This is totally different from picking on an individual. It’s not even in the same logical category. Yes both can create more traffic and discussion, but its never good to create entertainment by putting down an individual. This is the big difference.
So if the thread title is fixed, all is good, or are you saying any comments within said thread are all part of some “normalizing” bashing of an individual and must also be cleaned up?
IE anyone who commented in this thread is “normalizing” the behavior?
Nvm- I see you said the thread content itself was fine.
The thread title is clearly tongue-in-cheek (and if you read the first post, that explicitly confirms the intention) and I highly doubt that it would offend @SamYoYoYo1 or anyone else for that matter.
The thread TITLE is not tongue in cheek. The first post does say that, but that is inside the thread. If you don’t open it, and if someone just comes to ST, what they see is, “yeah a bunch of smart alec age groupers who have no clue bashing a Sam”.
At the end of the day the guy is human. Did you see his interview after DubaiT100. It does take a lot to come out at T1 in last place in every race and race in ITT mode against an entire field.
You guys coming on here defending the title are just proving that you don’t actually care about the culture of this place nor the reputation. You’re saying it is OK to not be decent towards another human for your personal entertainment.
While it may appear that I am trying to boil the Pacific Ocean worth of internet indecency with a match stick which IS a losing cause, I would ask you if you want to walk up to Sam and say, “Hey sit down across from me, I want to bash your schedule”. If you think that Sam would sit down with you, OK fine go ahead. If you think he would walk away and tell you to go to hell, then you have the answer.
