Rule number one of investment world: AI is huge. Anything with AI sells to people who think it’s the future.
So some enterprising programmer at Ironman said they can plug their data into an AI feed and generate content for the webcast? Sounds great.
Ironically, they probably should use that AI to aggregate results history and data on the field competing and feed THAT to the commentary team so they have some facts to talk about whatever athlete is showing on the screen.
This is a perfectly good explanation why they did it the first time (was it Mallorca?).
Not why they used that a second time, and certainly not in Taupo…
Funny you’d say that. I was watching the second round of the Surf life saving Ironman series this past weekend, and was really impressed by the quality of the commentary, especially how they cover the race and how the commentators can pick up who is exactly where based on the colour of their boards or skis, or even the style of their freestyle swim technique, all that from a drone shot from quite far sometimes.
Years ago in the US, they had a triathlon league that was trying to make it with TV coverage. They had an trial run with a race in California and it was similiar style to SLT now with multiple S-B-R x 2. One of my athletes got asked to race in it, as this was even before the small series that sorta fizzled out in the US when it was FB Live only coverage (I can’t even remember the name of that series, it only lasted like 2-3 years). One of the requirements for the racers and it came not from the RD or the race itself, but the broadcast producer. Every athlete HAD to wear their specific swim caps so that you could tell who who was on the broadcast and for the commentators when they were in the swim and transitioned to the swim. To the point they were going to be DQ’d if they didn’t have swim caps on (obviously if it fell off during competition it was ok, but the athletes had to keep it on and put it on on the 2nd swim in the race).
There is a reason why SLT went to teams of 3-4 and you can suddenly tell who’s who. Even before that SLT had each athlete wearing specific uniforms that showed off easier on the broadcast, none of that is required in LC (T100 requires a little more specifics w/ name on the kit but not any specific requirement beyond that),
There’s a reason ITU has specific kit requirements vs LC triathlon where basically anything goes and many times you have no clue who is who other than just knowing what they look like (or knowing a swim stroke…people laugh all the time how I can pick out my athletes strokes from afar with binocolars just on stroke alone). You’ll always have those issues when you have that many athletes all together and no “white uniform is home team, red uniform is away team” (or in your surf saving contsest, having what 4 very distinct teams all wearing very contrasting color uniforms).
ITU makes the what top 10 athletes all wear specific swim colored caps and then everyone else generic color. It helps the broadcast product give a better chance of id’ing someone especially when your in wetsuit situations where basically all 50 athletes all look the same (other than basically swim stroke differences).
(I think your example showcases why having specific uniforms for athletes can help both the commentators and the viewing product. I don’t know that it’s coutnering my point if that was your point, imo. It showcases like why “uniforms” matter…of which LC athletes pretty much can all wear very simiilar looking kits at times)
It’s also worth noting generally that pro Cycling often has to ID riders just based on body shape/cycling style alone. You have 20ish teams of 7 or 8 riders, with each team wearing the same jersey. Plus, everyone always (or used to) pick the same shade of blue.
Sure - there’s a big race number (2 of them for some reason) on everyone’s back, and another on the bike that is usually hard to see - but the commentators are often ID’ing people from odd angles, in a pace line, or from the helicopter on silhouette and pedaling style alone. At the World Champs, they’re doing it from helmet and bike + silhouette!
Add in that it isn’t just the 200 riders from this race, but that each race is another set of 200 and there are a lot of riders to keep in your head and triathlon starts to look amateur with 50 (but really 10-15 key) riders of varying race kits and comparatively rich timing data.
Maybe the lesson here is that we need bigger race numbers, particularly on the bike and helmet? Maybe season-long race numbers on everyone’s back? Or maybe just more races so the commentators are actually full time commentators?
The problem is within triathlon you literally can have 1/6th of your telecast (1/3rd of the sport events) where your “blind” with everything. Who’s actually who in the water, and the actual splits. It basically isn’t until T1 splits that we actually know and sorta get jazzed up with knowing who’s who and who had a great swim. You put wetsuits on people and your basically stuck with identifiying people based on their ability (know who is a front pack swimmer, know who is a poor swimmer, but there is probaly a majority of the time you have no clue how made the key move and who didn’t until the splits come out). I’ll have to go back and read Kona thread and see who nailed Patrick Lange coming out with the swim group he came out or only when the splits showed up did we “know” (and they don’t wear wetsuits in kona).
Imagine if cycling had zero gps splits and just went back to 1972 technology of getting splits from a white board on a moto (where that may not even be accurate) every 10 miles or so…it would drive people nuts. What if for the 1st 50k of a bike race they required 60% of the races to have cyclists wear black rain gear. It’
But that’s what we have, which is cool that ITU (T100 as well) does most of their swims in multi lap stages so you have talking points during the swim to atleast know “oh wow Yee made the group” or whatever.
Atleast in cycling for the most part the telecast can have the audience seeing/knowing who is on the screen. So it’s almost irrelevant if they mis-id the person at times. 1/3rd of the race of a triathlon, you. have no clue where anyeone is. I can’t tell you the difference in stroke between Matt McElroy’s stroke and Jelle Geens or Blu. I know if it’s between AB or Sam Long yeah the guy in front is going to be AB and the guy way back is LS or Sam Long. But if you got 20 guys all in a scrum, if the picture quality is grainy/poor, I really have no clue other than “X is probaly in that group cus he’s always in that group”, and then we wait for the timing splits. You pretty much know every second of a cycling telecast, where X is and if they aren’t in the break then they are in the group and if they are in the group, that’s all that matters. They’ll let you know when X top athlete gets dropped or does a break.
Triathlon telecast has no clue most of the time who’s in the front swim group, who got dropped, who got dropped again until either a timing comes about (lapped course) or the end of the swim.
That’s a fair point about the swim - though there are obvious areas for improvement.
From memory, the Olympic 10k OWS were able to ID people in each group reasonably well enough. Now, they were all wearing different colours representing their country, so maybe that’s something that could be improved (even if its on the athlete/sponsor).
Another area could be swim caps - I get that there are already 10 colours, but there’s nothing stopping RDs from handing out different patterns. With the same two colours, you could give Ditlev a Danish flag and Sanders a big maple leaf. This could even be brought by and personalized by athletes themselves. Just make sure they slap the IM/T100 logo in the right spot.
This is where I’m always cautious when we compare how 1 sport does it and say “do that” for triathlon. And it goes back to the thread about why is triathlon so expensive when each individual sport is “cheap”. Because it’s not 1+1+1=3; in tri it’s 1+1+1=4
OWS has timing gates all throughout the courses to give updated time splits and to help verify who is who. They have feed zones along the way to say “yep see that is Brian from the UK who’s getting a feed from UK coach” as many times these athletes don’t wear swim caps. (But that’s there only product, like they can pay for all that because that is the product, so “investing” in 1 single thing basically makes their product broadcastable).
When ITU went into the Olympics, they basically said the #1 rule was “1st across the line” is the winner. None of this, adding X mins to your time 30 mins after the event, because that’s when the official hands out the penalties. Suddenly the rule book got a lot smaller because that was just easier to deal with. Which again it’s funny I’ve always sorta laughed at our sport within officiating. We want YOU the athlete to do the right thing whether an official is there or not, and most of the time they arent…and shockingly athletes don’t always follow the rules. Shocking.
Guess what the “cheap” option with triathlon is? Lapped swims- which ITU has been doing now for almost 10 years and T100 has added in many of their swims (course dependent). So even if you addded updated swim caps, guess what suddenly #22 and #27 look really really similiar when your in a 20 person swim scrum.
Cycling literally has cyclists on teams who literally go for broke for no other reason than to get TV time for your sponsor. Literally they have zero chance at winning a race, they literally are there just to be at the front of the race for 4 hours on that day so every time they rotate through the 8 person breakaway they get to showcase X sponsor. Can you imagine if 50% of the races they had to start the 1st 75 mins of the race wearing a black rain coat, and you can only video them from the back. That’s basically what happens when your swim is done in wetsuits (you maybe have a drone coverage, maybe you dont and then you can only get certain videos from the front and side depending on where you are, etc). You have very very little abilty to actually identify people, even less when they are in the “group”. Cycling would freak the fuck out, they’d lose their mind with madness. But that’s a dynamic that hurts the broadcast in triathlon, like literally 50% of the pro events have a basic built in speed bump that hurts it’s broadcast. Sure you can improve with an swim cap or whatever, but your still going to have issues identifying athletes in those circumstances. Cus you have splashing water, rotating heads, arms all over the place, suddenly everything sorta meshes together.
It always come back to $$$$. There is a reason why everyone says the PTO broadcast is better than IM’s. PTO has a bunch of money and it’s sole purpose is basically to create the best broadcast product forward. So IM could turn Kona into a 2-4 lap swim to help with the broadcast product, but then it would suck cus you’d be like who is that in front of the leader…I thought that was the leader, why is he having to swim through some random AG’ers. So then your stuck with a 2 lap only course and you tighten up the wave starts, but then does doing all that make IM more money? Probaly not, so what’s the point in investing in all those when that isn’t IM’s goal. A marginal improved broadcast is not going to make IM more money. So if we want to say what works in this sport and that sport, all your really showcasing to me is just how much more you have to invest to make a better triathlon broadcast product.
I agree on all points - it does come down to money. The Kona/Nice and 70.3 are what they are because IM doesn’t feel like they get the ROI on whatever investment they’d need to shell out for the 2nd helicopter, or whatever.
Though my larger point was that there are smaller concrete things that IM and T100 can do that don’t cost an arm and a leg - all they take is some purpose.
Better swim caps are one item that I keep coming back to - and probably take less cost than the current effort. Just allow pro athletes to individualize their swim cap and give them the incentive to be unique/visible about it. (It can’t be variations of “The Feed”). At the very least, allowing them to use the same colour cap all year will help ID everyone.
Maybe larger athlete numbers are another idea - one giant sticker on the helmet and a bigger, more legible one on the bike. Better yet, put two stickers on the helmet and make it so its visible on sides.
I’d argue that the sport would also be well served by giving out specific athlete numbers. E.g. so that Kat Matthews is always #3 this year and Lange is always #5. You’d have to coordinate between IM, Challenge and T100, but if you can make it work, then suddenly you can do things like putting numbers on jerseys or custom bike decals. I know that this one would be a pipedream, though.
Most itu athletes would hate the number idea cus currently your race number is based on your ranking.
The #1 goal for any itu athlete-
Always beat your race number (or equal it if #1).
But back on topic. We see how much pto is putting into their broadcast and I think the viewer numbers are “meh”. Now I wonder just wonder if they went all in on a super league style “all star” series that actually replaced itu importance would that catch on? IE- pto investors basically doubled the current SLT support, would that be the only product with any real chance of viewership numbers. I just don’t know how you get behind 4+ hours of non draft racing to the lay person.
I was thinking it would be your end of year rank from last year - kinda like how they do it in BMX. If you came first last year, you can wear the #1 number this year for the whole year. If you were 3rd, you wear the #3 number the whole year, etc. You’d still want to beat your race number.
Where the idea falls apart would be how we all agree on a universal ranking system that everyone can agree on so that you’re not spending $$$ on multiple kits with different numbers on it. I’m not sure IM would want to use the PTO rank, or vice versa. ITU can probably be excluded since its its own ecosystem and most of the top guys coming over have different kits for LC anyway.
I guess another way to express your point is that any broadcasting initiative needs to pass through the following test
If they did X:
If they stopped doing Y:
Most triathletes who are watching it would watch it anyways. Most non triathletes can’t be convinced anyways.
And if things don’t move the needle then they might as well not do them.
Cycling is a lot more interesting, there are predictable moments of drama. The climbs, the final sprint, etc. In watching an IM race which moments are guaranteed to give you a thrill?
But I think there is one sport that is possibly the same level of boring as long distance triathlon: Formula 1.
The way they solve it is with drama and strange rules that produce unexpected results (No obv lots and lots of money). There’s a small number of athletes/teams that are always the same and make it easy to create rivalries and familiarise with the athletes. I guess that’s what PTO is hoping to make.
In fairness the original sin of Ironman is that it’s so long that even pro athletes can only do so many each year. If 70.3 was what we call IM it wouldn’t be as much of a problem.
@timbasile Ah I was thinking you were envisioning nascar style #3 Dale Earnhardt / MJ #23 “iconic” favorite number and that’s your number type of setup I. Think of all the merch athletes could now sell, ha.
@marcoviappiani the F1 comment is interesting. And sorta shows our sport’s likely biggest issue.
We have an identify crisis. The biggest triathlon in the world that gets the most views every 4 years- Olympics; is essentially the least like of any triathlon that the sport itself claims. Itu is sorta this square peg into round whole, and what do you know the MTR is the same way. It makes no sense to have the roster setup it has but WT bends the knee to IOC to get it in and we are essentially forced to double up the same athletes. Who may or may not even be best at it.
. Major respect as great drivers and the money pumped in is crazy. But as you noted, they have really weird stories always happening to their races. This teammate letting a driver win, or there was only x passes that happened the whole race. Major kudos and respect with how global it is, but it’s also like how does that product keep growing in fandom, F1 won the Covid era shut downs with it drivers documentaries. Which pto has always wanted to “highlight” the athletes as a priority,
I see it not that different from cycling:
The biggest race is the Tour de France. The World Championship and the Olympics are great events that people love to win, but I don’t personally know any pro rider that wouldn’t take yellow over rainbows, or Olympic Gold.
The Tour de France happens in France, end of story. Maybe the start location could be somewhere else, but all in all if you move the race to a different location it stops being the Tour de France. The location is tied to the pinnacle of the sport, so is the color yellow.
I came up admiring triathlon and to me, the pinnacle is and always has been, Ironman Hawaii. If you have the “World Championship” somewhere else, than that might be a big event, but its still not Ironman Hawaii. Tropical flowers, black lava, that imagery, the origin story is all tied to the sport.
Amen
Your point sparked an interesting thought. There are some arguments for moving away from Kona, for all very good reasons, but the soul of the sport and the event gets lost. It’s why we can have some fantastic races in the Olympics that blow 99% of the Kona races out of the water and the fans and nonfans of the sport still talk about Kona. (duh, nothing new here)
But what’s interesting to me is the danger that comes from severing the tree from the roots. If we cut out this tree and plant it somewhere else, we might be fooled for a season or two that all is well. But it’s very possible that the tree will quickly wither and die.
That’s a dangerous thing for us all. The idea to bring it back to Kona on a rotating basis reflects why the phrase “you can’t have your cake and eat it too” was invented. You just end up slowly diluting and killing the “Kona tree” rather than doing it more quickly.
If the sport is tied to the ethos of Hawaii, why not lean into that? Maybe there’s some argument for rotating it around the Hawaiian islands like King Kamehameha himself travelling from island to island, etc.
If the one of the biggest cultural strengths of Ironman is Hawaii, lean into that!
There’s no doubt that anyone who has raced Nice or any 70.3 Worlds has had the conversation with someone who isn’t even a triathlete and found themselves explaining, “Well, it’s not in Kona on a rotating basis now…” or “the half distance rotates around” when the other person brings up the race being in Hawaii.
The world doesn’t really care or know about Lahti, St. George, Taupo, Nice, etc. Hawaii is what they know and it seems like a huge mistake to dilute that.
It’s probably not too realistic, but could you imagine how epic it would be if Ironman could rotate the race out of Kona and bring it back to Oahu? Give us 2 days with 5k participants on each day. Oahu just might be willing to make something like that work for the historical excitement ($$) factor. Plus you give Kona a breather, and setup the other islands wanting a piece of the action.
I’d venture a guess that the Olympic mixed team relay is watched by more non-triathletes than all other short and long course triathlon events over the 4-year cycle combined.
I’m talking more about actual eyeballs. I’m guessing more people watch Olympic triathlon in the same way we watch table tennis or 2 man canoeing, for those 2 weeks those events get lots and lots of eyeballs.
While yes IM started out on ABC’s wild world of sports 50 years ago. for the epic maturing of exercising for an entire day over 150 miles etc. but for years Kona wasn’t even televised until 2 months later when it was a 2 hour IM infomercial that got so many people inspired cus even YOU can be an Ironman.
@kajet it likely easily does. Still doesn’t change the fact that it’s stupid that the roster of the mtr and roster of individual race have to be the same. But again that’s IOC saying “no extra athletes” of which WT would of course say Roger Roger to get it in Olympics.
So I’ll throw it back to you. Does Kona and the locals want to be the spirit animal of triathlon? Are they proud that they are the ethos and soul of tri or are they at a point where it’s in year 18 of a marriage and they just tolerate us? It’s obvious they can only do so much, and in marriage terms by doing the 2 day event and celebrating it like we won the lottery we “don’t listen to them”.
I mean we are going deep into counseling here so if you stayed at a holiday inn last night yoi def qualify as a psychologist.
But if we have “outgrown” each other is there any good in sorta “forcing” it to work? Will IM be happy if they only can do 1 day WC mixed gender race and lose revenue on the table? Obviously 2 day May be a bridge too far for the locals so what will be the “middle ground”? I guess we’ll see eventually what comes of this split WC.
And no I’m not suggesting we leave Kona. IM would never leave even if it rotated it in a small 2-4 year window. But it seems to me that the sport + the locals have sorta “grown apart” so to speak. This isn’t 1992 where everyone has warm fuzzies and Kona truly is the epicenter of the sport. The sport has grown tremendously because of Kona. Sometimes it’s ok to “take the training wheels off”.
exactly. The Olympic side is my current world and from a marketing side I think it is tough for a sport: Do people watch triathlon, or do they watch the Olympics? Olympics holds all the marketing rights, its hard to monetize on that and I think the real value that comes out of it are the 2-3 stories that stick with people (Turkish shooter and pommelhorse guy anyone?) Building your financial future around maybe getting lucky and going viral at an event that happens once every four years is tough.