I can see how she comes off that way but I ended up relating to it.
I used to follow and idolize this super fast super talented coach (8x Kona qualifier) back in the early 2000s (almost hit 9:00 flat waaay back in the day in Kona when that was unheard of for an amateur) and publicly he was all. - remember when we had blogs?
Him:
MY NUMBER 1 RULE IS NO WHINING!
IF YOU DON’T THINK OF YOURSELF WINNING YOU’VE ALREADY LOST!!!
WINNERS NEVER QUIT! QUITTERS NEVER WINNNN!!!
MY 8 YEAR OLD SON CRASHED HIS BIKE AND CRIED SO I CALLED HIM A SISSSYYYYYY!!!THAT SET HIM STRAIGHT!
IF YOU HAVE THE FLU AND YOU GET OUT AND DO THAT 100 MILE RIDE THE NEXT DAAAAY!! IT DOESNT MATTER!!!
I SAW PETER REIDS FILM IT WAS ALL ABOUT HIM WHINING!!!
Because I worked with his wife I learned from her:
He whined, he complained, his emotions got the better of him. Never had to pay a bill or handle the family tasks his wife did all that for him - it was a projected persona. He was kinda irresponsible and reckless. After every 70.3 or 140.6 he would be THATS IT! THIS IS THE LAST ONE I EVER DO!
Paula just flat out says when she’s in the swim she wants to quit, during the bike ride she thinks “oh god this is my last race ever” when she’s at a race before the start she’s not even thinking about winning she just wants to feel good and race hard. She ends up winning overall those days sometimes.
I’ve learned to appreciate the athletes who are more transparent about the self doubts and talk about the nervousness, the desire to quit, all the awful thoughts in their head. It’s refreshing and helps me in races.
Paula doesn’t go into hiding when things aren’t going her way or she doesn’t feel great, unlike many other triathletes that are out in the social media world. Her and Eric are committed to building the TTL brand and community, they put out a podcast every single week despite how ill or down they may feel, plus videos most weeks (which are often incredible viewing)
If I had to do that alongside my own job I’m pretty certain I would come across worse than she does.
I got the same vibe, she does comes across as an entitled person. The video where she was being really rude and a huge PITA towards her partner only because she was injured, kind of rubbed me the wrong way (that dude has patience lol) Or when she was talking shite about another male pro at Oceanside blaming him for interfering negatively on the bike. Haven’t really watched much of their channel since then to be honest.
I think some of you are being overly hard on her. This is her job, not her hobby. We love this sport and it’s our hobby. If it was our job, we would probably have some of same thoughts as her. Actually, many of us age groupers probably have similar thoughts as her. We just don’t publicize it. I think people are being naive if they don’t think other pro’s have similar thoughts.
Some people need some sort of coping mechanism or a way to vent when they are doing something on the surface they don’t want to do but deep down know they need to do it.
Yeah I watch most of their videos and in general think they are both wonderful people. Paula comes across sometimes as a bit sad but I think even now she isn’t super comfortable doing these videos. Her mental game isn’t super strong, she doesn’t have that killer mindset of say an LCB, she just a bit more emotionally vulnerable.
Findlay said in multiple interviews in Kona that she’s minded to race an Ironman in 2025. Not to get an IMWC slot per se, but if she did she’d think about Hawaii.
Those plans were shared while she was not committed to T100 ie before she signed her T100 contract though, so we’ll have to see how it plays out.
IMLP is one of the IMs in the IM Pro Series btw (20 July). And racing that while missing T100 London is entirely doable (slightly complicated by these date changes for the T100 races (is Frejus mid May or late June?)
Their recap pod + this video were both great. Feel like Paula is too hard on herself, but that just speaks to the mind of an elite athlete. She beat a lot of really good athletes & everyone ahead of her is top notch.
In Taupo, anyway - I’m sure you had NZ in mind
LP is almost her home turf, I’m sure she’ll have a good race. With a bit of luck, she’ll manage to jump into top10 IM Pro Series at the end of 2025. This plus T100 gives a nice payout, but I hope she also gets at least one T100 podium.
I was thinking about this a bit after reading some of the comments.
I think we have to remember that for Paula this is a job. I’m sure if we surveyed the forum on how we think about our job, we’d have many of the same thoughts. she jut shares it.
I do think it’s fair to say she doesn’t love triathlon, but does it because she’s good at it and makes good money at it. What I don’t see from her is that fire to majorly improve like we see with someone like Ash Gentle who fired her coach and is majorly focused on improving her bike. They are near the same age, but have very different mindsets. Ash wants to win. I think, if pushed, Paula is pretty comfortable placing in the 5-9 range.
I understand we’re all passionate, but I think it’s worth considering the impact of some of the posts above. It was only a few weeks back that Paula Findlay was posting on another Slowtwitch thread.
It’s nearly impossible to be sixth best in the world at anything! It requires levels of focus, dedication and selfishness that most of us can’t fathom and won’t ever live.
In a past life, I was fortunate to spend days and weeks with professional athletes. The glimpses we get don’t tell the full story of who they are.
I’m not the first person to write this: Can we use this space to foster a more positive and supportive environment? I think that would make the forum an even better resource and perhaps encourage more professionals to return and answer the questions we’re asking.
I agree…while we can always be arm chair professional athletes and in the best terms critique but in the worse terms bash and slam them…maybe if we would soften up our stances, we would have more of them contribute to our online communities such as this one…
You read my mind, racing ahead!
Findlay will not be “jumping into the IM Pro Series”: she will score points in that if she chooses to race an IM Pro Series IM (logically Texas or LP), but that’s all.
Marbella clashes with the T100 (mandatory) final.
To be top 8, three IM scores and two 70.3s are going to be needed. Trying it on 2 IM + 3 x 70.3 gives away 41 minutes straight way and ‘not Marbella’ costs another 8 minutes.
This is my first time posting here, but I felt compelled to join in after reading some of the terribly mean comments. I started doing triathlons when I was 9 yo, and I was immediately hooked because I felt like I joined a community of empathetic, welcoming, uplifting individuals.
Apparently, this is not that community. Maybe stop to consider for a second that you are denigrating a female athlete who has inspired many young girls to fight through adversity in this sport. That is the essence of triathlons. Paula speaks openly about mental health struggles, discouraging injuries, finding joy in life outside triathlon, putting time into your relationships, and ensuring that triathlon doesn’t consume your life.
Maybe the ignorant people on this thread are struggling to balance triathlon and life like Paula and Eric do, so they’re jealous that they seem to lead a happy life. I don’t really care what the rationale is for being spiteful and angry towards someone who we could run into at the grocery store. They’re ordinary people just like us. If I had seen this thread at 9 yo, I would’ve been disgusted. This is not the triathlon community I first fell in love with. Everyone on here who said something disparaging towards Paula needs to look in the mirror and feel ashamed that they make the triathlon community that much less welcoming. Because my 9 yo self sure as hell wouldn’t have wanted to join this.
I completely agree with your sentiments, a “few” assholes here are making a lot of noise. But then you make the mistake of lumping all of us into that few category. This community whole heartily supports Paula, and always has. Please dont let the squeaky wheels cloud your judgement of what most of us really feel.You start to become like them when you just lump a couple posts and then assume it is all…
Of course Paula is working her ass off to do the best she can, and she is a competitive SOB and things affect her when things go wrong. Only difference is we get to see those moments because her and her husband have chosen to give us those dark looks into their lives. It is why they are so popular online like some others that dont manufacturer their lives, and just show us their real lives and feelings…
Its just that most of us in support dont usually jump into these trash talking, keyboard warrior, negative threads. We have seen it before and have concluded to stop feeding the trolls…Just know you are not alone by any means in your admiration for Paula, not by a long shot…
Had to check back to see what negative vibes there’d been on this thread. Apart from the troll B**S## and the engineer bloke, seems pretty reasonable to me. Findlay raced super well at Taupo and might have kept with Simmonds/Matthews but she explained why she didn’t in both pod and TTL video, linked in OP. Those two would have benefited by having her along (except Simmonds was pushing watts only surpassed by Knibb, hence Matthews hanging on mostly). Contrarily, if Findlay had made that a threesome, Simmonds might have been less motivated as she’d know she had Findlay to beat on the run once Matthews had hopped it up the road.
Good chance she’d have outrun Simmonds for #4.
You’re right! I agree that most people support Paula and the rest of the pros. I tend to see similar names on this forum have negative attitudes about more pros than just Paula, and I hope people can use this thread as a good example of how to be nicer and more welcoming in the new year! Happy holidays
Welcome (to posting at least). There’s a load of nonsense around here on almost any topic, but hopefully you can continue post and add to the valuable perspectives most of the members of the community like to share around here.
I think a lot of people forget just how close the triathlon pros are to us all. And by that I mean in what other sport would you have pros join in and contribute to a chat forum, we even had Sam start a thread asking for advice on wether to race T100.
This is in contrast to ‘normal’ sports where people can say the most stupid shit knowing that the pros will mostly never read it let alone engage in what has been said, so the content is made without any filter. In contrast for example to how you might talk to that pro in person. At the same time the pros need to remember to not take it to heart, yelling out ‘you suck Jones, you should just give it up’ is just rubbish talk that every pro sport athlete cops. The media are far more brutal in what they say for NBA/NFL etc than anything that has been said about a pro triathlete.
And that’s what makes our sport so incredibly special, we get to race with our hero’s on the same course, on the same day at the same time and have access to them in person and online, it’s amazing.
