Help us here, given @TheStroBro suggests there are accusations of mendacity (I cannot tel what he’s referring to btw).
Which T100 contracted athletes who met their contracted races “made less money with pto than” 2023? Give us an example, do.
Funk “lost out on a lot of sponsor race bonuses”. Yes obviously, if his partnership contracts gave bonuses for races he didn’t choose to race then he doesn’t get a bonus. This is not “a loss” it’s not getting a bonus.
“just pointing out t 100 is not a guaranteed money maker.”
I suggest that for T100 contracted athletes who meet their contracted races taking a contract is exactly that “guaranteed money” (and as an example Funk racing T100 next year, if he signs, is on minimum $130k with the same level of performance as in 2024.
Same goes for Long (on topic) though his minimum is likely $150k. He is already IMWCQ so if he signs up to T100 and wants to race in Nice he actually doesn’t need to miss any T100 races - Ibiza is a fortnight after Nice. For the women headed for Hawaii, that’s a certain miss (see also Heemeryck 2024).
Well there is only so many races you can do in a year
Personally I think you are getting really to caught up with this.
What is 100 percent for sure atheltes have more options and they have to find out what works best and there is not just one way to do it.
I have seen plenty of contracts… managers and agents started writing “PTO races” into contracts several years ago. A typical contract might be two years with some as short as one year and others up to 3-4 years (4 years most likely for an Olympic athlete). If an athlete hasn’t been able to include PTO races in contracts having known about the PTO and their event business since the December 2020, then that’s on them.
No sponsor that I’ve talked to have pushed back on including bonuses for PTO/T100 races… the question is more around at what level of the bonus tier would they be included. Additionally, contracts up to 2024 did not include the notion of the “World Tour” and “World Championship Series” component but that can be included for 2025 and beyond, again the level of bonus would need to be negotiated.
My point was that if T100 or IM Pro gives him better exposure to increase his social media following, that should be a significant parameter to the financial decision of which one to choose.
For any athlete offered a contract who doesn’t want to race full distance it’s a no brainer.
For those who want to race the IMWC it’s a balance. There are 4 choices:
T100 plus IMWCQ IM and IMWC (and NB @SamYoYoYo1 is already IMWCQ)
IMWCQ IM and IMWC and some other races: could include Challenge Champs or Roth
Hey Sam, I guess from the timing of this post you haven’t signed your T100 contract by the 15th December deadline and you’ve asked for more time to reflect/decide?
The Kat Matthews 2024 route will be infeasible in 2025 with more required T100 races. Even if the contracted athletes treat the T100 races as a catered 3-4 hour training day, the logistics alone would require an Eras Tour level of organisation.
A more feasible option for Sam would be the Gregory Barnbay route. Focus on the IM Pro Series and get wildcards for a couple of T100 races. His ranking will still be up there and as long as the PTO continues to go off the rankings for their wildcard slots and don’t discriminate against athletes that rejected the contract offers, he’ll be a shoo-in for the San Francisco/Vegas/Vancouver races.
Sam from a performance perspective, I suspect you know you’re at least competitive with, if not better than Matt Hanson, who led the series much of the year. Some aspect of that was an artifact of the race schedule, but still I think you have a better chance of being in a similar place to Barnaby than Van Riel.
And here’s the important point if you are racing for the series title. DO NOT race for the win in your IM distance races. Race them to minimize the gap to the front. Race for the win in the 70.3s.
I believe if you take this strategy, with your performance history you will do very well. If you race for the win in the IM distance you risk blowing up hard.
Race Placid and Nice conservatively. Race UT Oceanside, and 70.3 Worlds all out. If you do that you have an almost certain chance at top 4/5 with an outside shot at the “podium” depending on how things shake out for everyone else.
This is going to be fun. PTO should pay extra to have @SamYoYoYo1 on board and (I may have said this somewhere) “buy” him someone he can swim with like Lionel or Trevor Foley. Or maybe Sam can keep up with Chevalier next season. If Leon could take a minute off his swim, Sam can do it, too.
If Sam Long were a purely rational machine, the answer would be obvious: he’d race the T100. Why? Because the potential for higher, more probable income outweighs everything else. At the professional level, the only tangible reward you can get out of this sport is money. You can’t feed your family or pay the mortgage with medals or nostalgia—it’s the prize purses and sponsorship deals that keep the lights on. From a practical standpoint, the T100 is a no-brainer.
But here’s the thing: Sam isn’t a machine. None of us are.
Humans are emotional beings, and the psychological toll of competing in a series where your skill set doesn’t perfectly align can’t be ignored. As an athlete who isn’t consistently competitive in the swim, the series can feel like an uphill battle right from the gun. Being constantly on the back foot could lead to more than just physical fatigue—it could create a deeper, emotional wound that’s harder to recover from. The pressure to perform when the odds are stacked against you can lead to a kind of mental wear-and-tear that’s irreparable.
So, while the T100 seems like the obvious choice on paper, the decision isn’t purely about income or probabilities. It’s about longevity, mental health, and staying in love with the sport. Sam needs to pick the path that lets him thrive as a human being—not just as a racing machine.
I don’t know Sam, but I think T100 year over year is not for him.
However if he has say a 3 year plan, and can use T100 to fund this plan he is in a pretty enviable position.
I hope he sat down with this advisors, had an honest conversation about strength and weakness and set a plan to correct and test his evolution as he goes along.
A goal with a path and measures of progress can be a pretty strong motivator. But people struggle to play the long (no pun intended) game
One of the biggest issues with the “social media” following is that you better be one hell of a strong person to handle the “haters”…IE- stay out of the comment section, etc. And hell there is a famous and soon to be basketball Hall of Famer who created burner accounts to talk back to the “haters”, Kevin Durant. I mean it’s really really hard to do something and not be affected, we all are humans after all, and social media and mental health are only ever becoming more important. Even more when you have a following and your results aren’t there, it even can at times get nastier…aka “pro youtubing”.
For me the biggest thing I see is in just that every time a pro performs, someone has a faily big travel bill to pay. Whether that’s an sponsor, the athlete or an organization, when your flying anywhere you’ve just ramped up the costs. And then you get a flat or come in 6th but only 5 paid, it’s like…fuck this sport is ruthless. Wasn’t it for years something like if you finished outside top 8 at Kona you were losing money by going…That’s our world championship and that’s what we are doing to the world’s best…make it make sense.
Well, you were losing money on the prize purse. Whether top 10 at Kona then paid out well enough with sponsor bonuses was between you, your agent/manager (if you have one), and your sponsor.
Yes I realize that, it’s proving my point that it’s more than just results that matter. The point I’m making is SOMEONE has to pay for an athlete to ALWAYS travel from Tucson/Raleigh/Hamburg/Gold Coast/London to International events. Whether it’s a sponsor/federation support (hello ITU)/the athlete, this sport isn’t easy at a top level. There’s nothing easy about traveling and then you add in what probaly 10% of the time athletes travel and get their equipment broken…No one gets “home races” basically. No one gets to sleep in their own bed before a race, it’s always traveling. Which means you as an athlete have to be more than an athlete. So then you see the rise of “social media” presence because if you can’t be the best, you have to show some value. And then you see the ugly side from this very OP with the obvious “pressure” he’s felt this year based on his “breakdown” interview at the last T100 race and cryptic comments he spoke about a few times. It’s just a really really hard sport.
And keep in mind it seems more and more these top athletes are creating “teams” around them to be successful. ST just did a article on that topic with Knibb, which means you as an athlete is also investing in the process. Someone’s gotta pay the manager or sport physio or swim coach or bike coach (no one is doing this out of the goodness of their heart). So if you are an athlete sorta doing it alone, your also having to “do everything” as well. I think it’s currently SL, LS and Skipper among the top names that I know who are following the “no coach” pathway. So who are they using behind the scenes to help with all the demands that this sport is putting on athletes these days. If you are going no coach, are you also going no manager to save some money, or no sport psychologist cus you view it was a “negative”, etc?
So when you got T100 offering you money to basically get you by for 1 more year, that’s sorta a really tough to turn down, even if it seems the wrong competitive pathway for an athlete like SL. So to @marcag point. Can this sorta free up an opportunity for an athlete to better themselves down the road, but again for that to happen you also have to “invest” in yourself. Which is of course much easier for Knibb to “invest” in her team when she’s making $500k than if she was a 11th place every ITU event, etc. So there’s a bit of catch 22 in all of this. BUT if your Sam Long, you’ve just basically been given another opportunity to take off some “stress” off your expectation and just go race/develop yourself better. But there is also the real reality that there’s also an “ugly” side to sport that can erode at an athlete.