I think the 1 obstacle that is added. If you say Singapore is a bad travel location. What alternative do you have? You’re forced to travel to US 1-2 times if you skipped Miami + Singapore and just wait til later in the year.
And then the final 2 months is 4 races (3 which will require 1 full day of travel requirements for most athletes) in a 60 day period, in a time of year when you are priming for A performances.
So if you have skipped early season races because you aren’t ready or your DNF/ DNS last min you pretty much are going to suddenly get caught up in a very complicated very busy last few months to gain scores to do this again in ‘25.
The fact that they didn’t pony up the money for Knibb to fly first class last minute to Miami and used an excuse that they didn’t want to set a precedent (of supporting their number 1 ranked athlete who has Olympic commitments that got canceled? – how often does that happen?) suggests to me a serious tightening of the purse strings. So I hope there is even a PTO worth considering next year. – source for this the triathlon hour podcast.
So either someone dropped the ball there, or they were already overbudget and someone calling the financial shots isn’t happy with them. If that’s not the case, it seems like a big missed opportunity over small concerns about “who pays” when there’s a huge breaking story you can suddenly factor into the race.
Point being, I wonder how much these athletes are really factoring in “next year” or just getting the money that’s promised to them this year because they see the writing on the wall.
Knibb was on the record as saying she wanted to go to Miami after AD got cancelled or are you talking conjecture? PTO knew it was going to basically get no Paris bound athletes early season. Knibb likely has zero thought about T100 and she certainly isn’t going to travel completely around the world in 1 week just to race an event (that she’s not trained for). Knibb is far too smart of an athlete to just throw in a half assed attempt. She’s an quiet assassin with everything she does in her life. See how they were adding longer TT bike rides in the early season of her training (on the down low) before even the idea was avaliable after AQ’ing the test event. So to think she was going to want to do that, that was not going to happen; even with a private jet travel.
1/2 the women are only taking the money this year because of IMWC being in Nice.
Apparently Knibb called Pat L as soon as Abu Dhabi was cancelled to inquire about getting back to Miami to race. Pat went through the proper channels to request a lay flat seat to fly Knibb to Miami and eventually heard back that it was a no go. I don’t think this suggests a tightening of the purse strings. I can totally understand them not wanting to have to deal with LCB or Magnus or Kristian or Hayden/Alex or any other athlete requesting business class tickets once they heard Knibb was given one. Seems rather sensible to me.
Interesting, fair point Lurker (although I don’t think that is necessarily a sign of tightening wallet or not, I think at some point you either are in or out for a race, and you can’t get too many last second advantages; as Lagoon said, I don’t think this was a big deal against PTO that they said no). I had only heard on the socials that a few of the boys wanted to “let’s go race Miami” after AD cancelled. The timeline for the event still left seemingly things to be moved around especially for a location that is screwed if it rains; but that’s an whole other point.
Apparently Knibb called Pat L as soon as Abu Dhabi was cancelled to inquire about getting back to Miami to race. Pat went through the proper channels to request a lay flat seat to fly Knibb to Miami and eventually heard back that it was a no go. I don’t think this suggests a tightening of the purse strings. I can totally understand them not wanting to have to deal with LCB or Magnus or Kristian or Hayden/Alex or any other athlete requesting business class tickets once they heard Knibb was given one. Seems rather sensible to me.
I’ve heard this rumor. Do you have a precise source you can point to, because I’m with Brooks that it does sound like a load of horseshit?
If nothing else, because the start list goes through World Triathlon and earlier USAT; and these organizations - even if they decided to violate their own rules - couldn’t fart in one day, let alone shuffle a heap of paperwork?
Apparently Knibb called Pat L as soon as Abu Dhabi was cancelled to inquire about getting back to Miami to race. Pat went through the proper channels to request a lay flat seat to fly Knibb to Miami and eventually heard back that it was a no go. I don’t think this suggests a tightening of the purse strings. I can totally understand them not wanting to have to deal with LCB or Magnus or Kristian or Hayden/Alex or any other athlete requesting business class tickets once they heard Knibb was given one. Seems rather sensible to me.
I’ve heard this rumor. Do you have a precise source you can point to, because I’m with Brooks that it does sound like a load of horseshit?
If nothing else, because the start list goes through World Triathlon and earlier USAT; and these organizations - even if they decided to violate their own rules - couldn’t fart in one day, let alone shuffle a heap of paperwork?
This is Comment of the Month.
And yeah, the start list needing to go through various GBs (of which the PTO is essentially a pseudo-one at this point) makes this way, way more complicated.
Apparently Knibb called Pat L as soon as Abu Dhabi was cancelled to inquire about getting back to Miami to race. Pat went through the proper channels to request a lay flat seat to fly Knibb to Miami and eventually heard back that it was a no go. I don’t think this suggests a tightening of the purse strings. I can totally understand them not wanting to have to deal with LCB or Magnus or Kristian or Hayden/Alex or any other athlete requesting business class tickets once they heard Knibb was given one. Seems rather sensible to me.
I’ve heard this rumor. Do you have a precise source you can point to, because I’m with Brooks that it does sound like a load of horseshit?
If nothing else, because the start list goes through World Triathlon and earlier USAT; and these organizations - even if they decided to violate their own rules - couldn’t fart in one day, let alone shuffle a heap of paperwork?
Talbot told the story on Jack Kelly’s podcast. He was in touch with Taylor.
Interesting there were other guys who def wanted to go race Miami (whether in jest or not). I don’t necessarily think that’s something we should really shit on PTO that they didn’t want to get ahletes to travel half way across the world at basically the last min. I’d put that way down on the list of things that concern me about PTO’s future. The number of athletes in each race and the race distance are the biggest concerns I have for the future of T100. (I’d have 30 athletes and race closer to an T70 distance; cut off 20-30 mins off the bike. If the goal is commercial viable product. I’d also cut it down to 6 races which I think would allow more athletes to potentially race full series and not skip events.
You can’t really play up a season long narrative when you allow athletes to skip what 40-50% of the events. The whole point of a narrative is to build rivals and such. If only 1/3rd of your roster is racing a full race schedule you will likely miss out on the head to head racing element.
I agree it would have been a cool story but I can’t see the pto going for a last minute add like that. They want to hype these races up to get viewers and people at the races. A last second add even of Taylor’s caliber likely doesn’t sway the needle much for the well over $10,000 dollars it would have cost them to fly her. They hyped up the kb move weeks before the race in Singapore because it was planned. They used it as marketing. This they wouldn’t have been able to use as much to their advantage.
Interesting there were other guys who def wanted to go race Miami (whether in jest or not). I don’t necessarily think that’s something we should really shit on PTO that they didn’t want to get ahletes to travel half way across the world at basically the last min. I’d put that way down on the list of things that concern me about PTO’s future. The number of athletes in each race and the race distance are the biggest concerns I have for the future of T100. (I’d have 30 athletes and race closer to an T70 distance; cut off 20-30 mins off the bike. If the goal is commercial viable product. I’d also cut it down to 6 races which I think would allow more athletes to potentially race full series and not skip events.
You can’t really play up a season long narrative when you allow athletes to skip what 40-50% of the events. The whole point of a narrative is to build rivals and such. If only 1/3rd of your roster is racing a full race schedule you will likely miss out on the head to head racing element.
If the story is true it would have been interesting to understand the math. I guess Taylor didn’t feel she could influence the race to a point where she could cover the $10k with $x race payout and $y improved ranking at the end of year. If she couldn’t impact the race, why do it ? Why should PTO do it ?
I’m now curious the time zone math. Did I hear somewhere I think PTN say the men (blu) would have had shown up 2 hours before the race. So roughly 6 hours for Knibb.
I think that’s one of those stores that it sounds great to hypothetical but in reality would be sorta eeek in reality. It’s sorta the opposite of caring about well being of athletes.
Great idea for the first few mins after AD was cancelled (and a lot of people pissed off) but a “wait a min let’s think this through†in reality.
Going from memory, on the podcast Talbot said Knibb allegedly had a flight lined up to land at 11am race morning. The women started at 4:50pm.
My list of possibilities for rejecting her offer is:
Tight purse strings with top down pressure to stay on budget.
Lack of vision of leadership, maybe partially influenced by a bit of structural ethnocentrism from the Brits about a last minute American coming in lay waste to the field.
2A. Subset of lack of vision, but being so overwhelmed with race day logistics, not wanting to complicate things further. Ultimately lack of vision is still the issue here, as it suggests not wanting to complicate things is more important than a last minute calvary charge story.
Regarding inability to execute on the last minute development, PTO can easily put up a graphic announcing that Knibb is back and hammer that in social media and their live broadcasts. It’s not like they need a week long campaign. In the overall scheme of costs of the event, it’s relatively minor. If you are already overbudget and have upset management? Then maybe not.
Regarding this new round of funding linked earlier in the thread (seeking $40million), I get the feeling that we are looking at the play right here. Put money in. Get the talent. Get everyone talking about how everyone is putting money in. Get more money while everyone talks about how much money is put in. Get the people who have already put in money, put more money in via sunk cost fallacy. Use that sunk cost fallacy to get other unwitting investors to put more money in because of the current investors and other new ones keep putting money in, there must be something here, so others put money in too… AND REPEAT.
So in all of this talk of the PTO books, it would be interesting to see who exactly is getting paid. Who gets a % of the funding rounds and what does their ownership look like, etc. etc. I used to think the ultimate goal was to supplant Ironman or create the investment potential to buy it out. Maybe that’s still the case*, but it’s interesting if the real goal was just to take piece of the action of everyone jumping on to this idea. If they strike gold (unlikely), great. If not, there will at least be some people who made money here.
And if the goal is to buy Ironman, Ironman owners wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to that if the price was right as long as PTO hasn’t reduced the value of Ironman through being a viable competitor. Which is at least one reason why Ironman’s Pro Tour makes a lot of sense – it’s a lower cost to administer alternative to the PTO that has the same (or greater) marketing value than the T100.
One contributor to so many opting out of this race was that last year a heap of athletes got very sick after Singapore… which messed their race schedules up. Just a theory, could be wrong.
Can I just counter that I think it’s a bad idea to have an athlete be forced to fly half way around the world and then show up and perform on a world class stage like this in a what 6 hour time frame to “be ready”. I’d have never thought in a million years anyone would take this “trip” serious, other than “we’ll we can ask” of course it’s a no-go. And I hope that we aren’t going to then bust their chops when Knibb DNF’d and we shit on PTO for “not caring about the athletes”. So I cant get on the shit on PTO for that decision with Knibb train. I think there are some other better options, but not that one. That seems to be a reach.
Like it was never going to happen. It would have been stupid to happen, full stop with that tight of a timeline.
Well you also basically said Kona was stupid for her if I recall. Based on her training. She disagreed. And I agree with her. That was smart then, and this was smart now.
But Knibb was ready. And reached out (Allegedly). There’s no reason why she couldn’t have flown in to make it happen. Sleep on an airplane in an apartment room of a first class seat and go race. It’s not a whole lot different than a recovery day if she has everything lined up for her when she arrives.
She appears to be a fierce competitor and recognizes that in long course she’s really more in control of her success. The latest WTCS fiasco just illustrates that athletes who put their eggs in that basket are really rolling the dice. We can easily (tragically) imagine all these athletes who have put their lives and careers on the Olympics only to see a bureaucratic French entity cancel the swim and change the race come time for the Olympics.
It’s not foolish to take your own fate into your hands when the opportunity presents itself.
My personal take on it is Knibb should have simply told the PTO she’s buying her ticket, and would like them to pay for it IF she doesn’t take top 3. Of course, maybe she did just that. But in any case, she literally got on a plane and flew home. And then likely went and trained the next day. So… why not race instead for fortune and glory?
A last minute add was probably half jest, how can they add someone at the last minute if they had already filled their field by then. They state 20 (I am with you, needs be 30) if she was to be 21 then nope can’t be done, no matter who she is.
Also for all those saying Singapore is a long way to travel, think of the Oceania athletes who have to travel to USA or Europe for all the other races, and still have a minimum of around 8 hours to fly to get to Singapore if they are from one of the cities that close. It’s actually only 4hrs flying longer from London than from Sydney.
Why not tell the PTO that she’s on a flight and will be there by race time, and pay for it herself? Why ask PTO to fund the bill if it’s about taking advantage of the opportunity. Just do it yourself, if that’s the case. By asking them to foot the bill, you then sorta put the onus on them. Again, would you have shitted on the PTO if she DNF’d because of all that transpired the past 24 hours?
I just am not with you that because the PTO said no, they are the idiots in this case. But cool to disagree. I thought it was sorta all done in jist, not really taken seriously that it would really be achievable by any of the WTCS athletes with the tight timeline.
One contributor to so many opting out of this race was that last year a heap of athletes got very sick after Singapore… which messed their race schedules up. Just a theory, could be wrong.
I think this was also blown out of proportion and used by a bunch of athletes for poor performances when they tried to go to 70.3 worlds. Imogen was already sick when she showed up and so was Sam laidlow. Sam didn’t do the swim the day before in the lake because he wasn’t sure he was going to race. That was the first swim in the lake possible. He then went out partying the night after his race so I’m not sure how sick he really was.
I’m a bit curious as to all this last second maybe race across the world stuff. Where were they going to get a bike for the race? I think the plane flight would be the easy thing to organize, but where are they going to get a sponsor bike at the last second that fits them? Small detail that I think many have left out of the discussion…