This was hard to watch - I hope he’s ok.
He’s up there racing the best, yes the best, in the world and is in amongst it.
Like, he’s 6th in world - 6th.
Don’t beat yourself up - massively entertaining and a gun athlete.
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Poor Man! I think he has been racing so super strong in T100.
Always getting back from a bad swim.
Personally I have gotten to respect Sam Long as an athlete much more this season.
Well fought, Sam!
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I think Sam might have needed this huge reality check to show what the new breed of up and comers are all about outside of the USA. The sport is changing at the pro level and the increase in talent level at the end of this year was predicted and we will see that again in Taupo. I hope he goes home and takes all the positives out of his year and doesn’t let this result lead to any emotional changes of direction.
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That is quite emotional.
I did find Laidlow’s comments and encouragement really thoughtful.
I like the lady interviewing him. She said “I can’t wait to see the changes you will be doing in the off-season”.
It would be great is at the beginning of the season they asked each athlete “what did you do differently in the off season ?”.
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Agree that Laidlow did a top job in this situation, also given their Collins Cup history. So did all three interviewers. They didn’t tell the cameraman to stop shooting, which would’ve been a terrible end to the interview.
I do think that Sam might benefit from watching the Alistair interview. I thought that was the best one I’ve heard by the Englishman, and sort of applicable to Sam despite how different their situation and their resumes are.
Embedded:
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Or, T100 could have a feel and dial back media requirements when an athlete gets destroyed in a race. Brownlee ends up in 3rd rather than overcooked. He’s got plenty of positives.
He races with so much emotion and man is it tough to see the him like that. It definitely seemed like from his own videos the long season really took a toll on him. Then add on being a new a dad and everything that brings with it I can’t imagine the pressure his putting himself under. I really hope he can regroup in the off season and maybe wrangle it in a little bit for next year so he’s not spread so thin.
I do love ALL the sweat, blood, shit and tears of this sport. And the interviews, with the emotions, the F-bombs, Taylor’s bullshit-detectors, etcetera, were almost all awesome and super insightful. But I’m with you here - I mean, timing is everything, and immediately following the hilarious, celebratory chat with two giddy, giggly newly-crowned world champions by INSISTING a destroyed and obviously reluctant Sam come up then and there for an interview, when he obviously didn’t want to… Ouch.
Gotta give props to Sam Long for really putting it all out there and caring so much about competing. And what an amazing turn of events to have Sam Laidlow being the one to support him -a wesome!
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Just to speed it up for others, go to minute 28 and then it launches shortly after that into Sam’s part. That was actually really inspiring to watch him wear his heart on the sleeve. The guy grew up downhill skiing and playing football and here he is competing with people who have done this sport since they were kids.
I liked the part about never quitting.
I think he is still early in his swimming evolution, Peter Reid was able to do it (swimming with the 12 year old age group kids until they never dropped him) and got good enough to race in the main pack in Kona, and Sebi got close to not be out of contention. Sam has a bunch of 2nd places in the T100 this year coming from last place after the swim so let’s how he can get his swim into a better range, but he’s right it is kind of hard racing solo against a group up front and in a T100 finals or Kona the depth of field is so high that the front bike groups just get more of a group advantage than the “regular season events”
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The T100 and IM Pro series are forcing the top pros and more pros to race the same races. This makes these races really hard and fast. There are no longer easy regional races where Americans & Canadians can easily win, rack in some money, and boost their confidence. Maybe there are few but it’s been drastically reduced. We used to only get 2 races a year with everyone (70.3 and Kona).
If T100 or the IM pro series didn’t exist, he would likely have a different outlook going into the off season. He would have racked up several wins throughout the year at regional races. Sam can get away with his swim in regional races but not so much in these international races. He shouldn’t feel bad about this. He’s doing something that many Americans shyed away from in the past (racing the top guys).
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Also let’s cut Sam some slack. He has been racing since mid Jan in Pucon Chile, then T100’s early in the year, then Oceanside and St. George. Arguably he was in a good form early in the year (and beat several people he is getting beaten by now in T100 and beat Patrick Lange at Oceanside). You can’t be on fire Jan-May and again from Aug-Dec !!! So he will probably realize he has to pick which window to have all his energy for
Plus going from Boulder to Dubai is a deadly 11 hrs time shift. Unless he had 10 days to adjust he can’t compete with the Europeans who barely have a 3 hrs time change. Racing east is waaaaay harder than racing going west.
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He lives in Tucson, heat wasn’t the issue, it’s his swim. I’ll agree with you that he has time, but it’s fast running out and he hasn’t shown meaningful improvement in the last few years. Either he’s just naturally not going to be able to take his swim to the next level or he isn’t training correctly to improve. I don’t know which is the answer.
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Sam is not a shorter distance guy. T100 was never a great idea for him as everything he does well gets expressed over the longer distance of Ironman.
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And what would be a “good” format for him? He could go around destroying north Americal 70.3 B level fields, but I don’t think he wants that. If he wants to race A level 70.3 folks, it’s the same bunch of guys plus a ton of other ITU guys that can even beat Van Riel (e.g. Geens, Wylde, Bergere, Luis). IM did not go great this season either, he could not even qualify for Kona. And again, Blu, Ditlev, etc.
Ultimately, he is putting himself out there and he is holding his own quite well. But unless he figures out how to swim with those guys, it will always be uphill as they can also bike and run faster than him.
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He’s falling into the same trap that a lot of the pros fall into who are good at biking and running, but the swim is the weakness. They continue to focus on what they are good at and what they like and there isn’t any room to improve in the swim.
I hope this helps,
Tim
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I think Sam is great. I do hope he can find some swim speed, he needs to invest in at least 5 different technique coaches over a year to sort it out, sacrificing 1 year of racing to focus on swimming would be worth it if it works.
Looking at things differently, everyone who was beaten by Sam needs to take a good look at themselves too. Really for t100 to be successful all the athletes need to be finishing within 5 minutes of each other, a race of just 2 is not so exciting.
It’s interesting him and Lionel who are now good friends and live close to each other are both in the same situation as far as their swim bike and run. 70.6 VS T100 VS Full distance
See what I wrote above. I didn’t say anything about heat. I pointed out the 11 hrs time shift needing time to adjust. I don’t know when he got to Dubai though
His distance is 140.6, he knows it, which is why this is all odd. He’s incredible though and it doesn’t stop me from cheering.
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