If your saying pool all the money to the IMPS then just get rid of having pros at those non IMPS races. Suggesting pros should race for no prize money, only at ST. Suggedting they should have pro races that don’t race for money makes no logical sense. Just remove the professional tag at that point.
Pros don’t pay an entry fee. And they wouldn’t race for free, they’d race for qualification points.
So they’ll pay $1500 and race for no money and have to do international travel to race for points….hmmm that sounds awful similiar to itu where there is basically very little number of development athletes because the cost of racing is so expensive.
I’d actually be more in favor of removing category distinction and letting everyone race for overall prize purse (if we are going ST hypotheticals). The elite/pro distinction only is truly needed in itu where races are capped and it’s truly a competitive/safety factor.
Yeah, that’s not going to happen, at least I would hope not. There isn’t enough money other than fir the top maybe 15 or so in the world as it is.
I’m not saying pool all the money to the IMPS - just disagreeing that if they do that, the other races will not have actual PRO fields. Prize money being above zero is not what defines professional triathletes in my opinion. And there’s little difference between pathetic prize money and zero.
And not Ironman but another brand has pro races that don’t race for [prize] money. It’s the highest profile race in the sport outside Kona and some of your professional athletes will be striving to get to that race.
Nobody works for nothing, and neither should they. Sponsors who pay much more than free product are hard to come by if you aren’t a world champ, particularly in some countries. Aus is Afl mad and sport money goes there. Pro triathletes find it very hard, remove prize money for lower races and they could be taking their tiny incomes away. Remember pro series races don’t pay deep, nor much, and are having world class fields so you could still have a very good race and finish outside the money or even outside top 5 wouldn’t be breaking even with travel costs.
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I actually don’t disagree, but if you reduce someone’s net income (proceeds minus costs minus tax) from minus AU$10,000 to minus AU$15,000 per year because they’re no longer paid for their two third places and a fifth, it’s not like you’re turning a professional into an amateur is it?
(Far deeper in the hole if you live in Oz and race in Europe/NA, obviously).
Nope, you are turning them into a full time plumber, or retail or whatever. Your minus ten to minus fifteen might be for some, but with some of the lower level races still having some pay day many athletes can be part time workers of some description, take those away and they won’t be able to survive so give up, the sport need more than 20 pro athletes world wide. Jeeze..
Ironman’s focus is on age-group athletes and the races themselves. Pros are more of a by-product, and Ironman doesn’t actually need them.
If you take 100 people doing their first Ironman-branded race, I’d wager that fewer than 10 of them were in any way influenced by the pros, or even know them. They participate to be part of the Ironman brand, which is much bigger than what the pros bring to the table.
So yes, if you want more money for the pros, they themselves have to bring in more sponsors. And, to be honest, that’s not Ironman’s problem.
I think all we are doing is solving ways to cull the pro numbers, because a decent portion of pro’s will just roll out of the pro field if they can’t once ever race for a pro check. So I guess that by default will solve the “too many pro’s” in the sport. (I don’t think that is the problem @Lurker4 is trying to solve- I think he thinks/assumes the BOP pro will just “be ok” with that new non-prize purse setup- I will disagree with that assessment; and it will have a sizeable impact on pro numbers)
Pros do pay entry fees - Ironman Pro Membership Fees Increase in 2025 — Triathlete
Yeah they pay the annual fees, hence all the “PRO-amateurs” particularly (but not only) in the U.S. who dish out $1500 and race as many IMs and IM 70.3s as they want at no extra charge (the math is very easy regarding return on investment). Been discussed…
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Ironman could probably increase their total prize pool to like $10M without it affecting other things too much.
But PTO just cut what they’re paying out through the race reduction. So, now IM has no “motivation” to do just that when their “competitor” is cutting back.
Here we go again. And how do you think the Ironman brand’s reputation an mystique was built?
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i am not quite a fan of Trump - and that’s an understatment- yet i feel that is a reason why we need to be tolerant. We need to speak with people we strongly disagree with rather than keep them away. Otherwise we would end up speaking only with people like ourselves and the world gets more and more divided between sides who do not talk with each other. From Europe that ‘s the way USA looks and here also people
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How does that history change where Ironman is today?
I am talking about Ironman the company today, not how they got there.
Y’know, I’ve been mulling this one over for a while in my head.
I’d say that most of the mystique is probably tied into Julie Moss and that Wide World of Sports piece. And we can have a big old argument as to whether she was a “pro” at that point. The narration on the piece makes plenty of mention of her being a college student, but otherwise she’s just another athlete.
But that clip probably did far more for age group participation than, well, just about anything else.
I suppose my broader point is that the line has always been very blurry on this topic – outside of the fact that to just about everyone, IRONMAN = Kona and vice versa.
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That and the Hoyt’s.
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I would guess all the drama of being the race leader and the subsequent meltdown of losing the race yards from the finish was the bigger point than just being another athlete and this happening hours after the leaders finish. But of course what was even a “pro” in 1982, for the most part the whole sport started out as pretty much everyone was just “another athlete” doing it.
I’d be curious what year did pro vs AG even have actual official different start times?
It’s interesting because that is certainly the catalyst, but most people who are familiar with Ironman in a cultural sense have no idea about that or the Iron War etc.
What I think is interesting is where the next Julie Moss moment will come from. Taylor Knibb wasn’t it (maybe because she stopped?), and I think it’s more because she didn’t have the social media following. Imagine if Lucy Charles was able to cross the line in that race though… She’s got the social following where it might have broken through again.
I think our next Julie Moss moment, if we get one, will be some age group influencer with a huge following that blows up spectacularly but still moved forward and crawls across the line. Unfortunately, in the current culture everyone will just tear them down and hate on them.