It’s already very outcomed based model
Prize money and year end bonuses ….
Also I am assuming if you do not fulfill your contract, you won’t get paid the full amount or you might have to “work” for free like doing commentary and other promo work. I am sure there are some penalties
Since forever - you don’t start a race so you don’t win/get money. Not “you don’t race, so you’ll be commentating / swimming and we’ll recognise it like if you were racing”.
Many athletes didn’t start in Miami/Singapore (“because it’s too far / too early / too hot”), planning to fulfil their contracts with races #3-n. And then they got unexpectedly injured or surprisingly reminded themselves of other races. No buffer resulted in them being unable to fulfil the contract they originally signed.
I believe that, if there was a stronger incentive / punishment scheme, most athletes would have applied contingencies in their plans.
That would be rather simple if t100 series win makes you more in In price money AND sponsor contracts and bonuses than kona win you have what you want …
Which “best athletes” with T100 contracts “sidelined their plans” as a result, @Lurker4?
Seems to me the reverse.
All who wanted to race LD did so: some sidelined T100 in the process, deliberately (reasons varied).
Which athletes fell victim to their own poor planning and tried to race too much, or at least offer an example, @Th4ddy?
The over/under on number of T100 races in 2025 is (imho) 9 in total, @asianzone. Rather than a simple 8+GF and race at least 6+GF, I like the idea which maybe Pat L floated on PTN of having more (than 4+GF) to score over the season and to require (say) 2 scores to come from the first three races.
With an IMWCQ earning IM and the IMWC that’s entirely doable. If you add Roth in that’s surely too much. Would Lange have won in Kona if he’d completed Roth? Maybe that kicking he got was a blessing in disguise!
In 2024 the money was paid out in 3 main ways:
Think you must have all three elements. Not an easy balance to strike.
I’d point out that there’s a hidden performance ‘variable (tour) outcome’ incentive: top 10 get offered (lucrative) gold contracts for 2025. And the same consideration (for 2026) will be in athletes’ minds in December (when they have to sign, or not).
Nieschlag (#24) is Laidlow’s replacement for Sunday’s final.
Top 5 just got more congested.
A good race here (ie as good as LLV) and then in Taupo would crank him right up the PTO Rankings and in contention for an 11-16 contract.
Minimal chance Laidlow will drop out of top 10.
Both women’s and men’s races have (exactly) 20 athletes on the start list.
Am I counting correctly that 10 out of 40 initially contracted athletes will not be racing the final this weekend? 7 on the women’s side and 3 on the men’s? That seems pretty bad considering it was explicitly clear that all athletes had to race the GF (some valid excuses in there, some less so). Add in a few more who are racing who haven’t fulfilled the minimum racing required in the contract as well and we’re over 25% non-compliance…
Like what? Moritz events would fold faster than you could think of it. So much for an organization whose origins was an athlete’s advocacy group.
Methinks this was not the narrative they were going for.
I wonder if the race was in somewhere more easily accessible like Florida, for instance, if the turn out would be much better.
Well 2 have retired
2 are pregnant
who is not racing for whom Florida would be more accessible? Dubai is not far from Europe, and Chelsea is in Dubai despite not racing. Flying from Europe to Florida would be at least as far I would think.
Agree. Frankfurt to Dubai is 6.5h, while Frankfurt to Miami is 10.5h.
With all my dislike for Middle East greenwashing with sports, Dubai seems like a relatively ok-ish place from the logistics point of view. Then, US already had 3 T100 events (2 of which are farther than closer to anybody outside US) and finally the Mexico Gulf area isn’t the most stable in October / November.
If anybody isn’t racing, it isn’t because of the travel.
Sam Long for one. Was all in on T100 then decided to throw a hail mary and qualify for Kona. Failed in Frankfurt, pulled out of Cairns, and has had relatively poor results in T100 outside of the first couple of races.
LCB for two. Was all in on T100, decided she’d do Nice in order to contemplate doing the WC, most likely overraced and got injured in London, pulled out of the WC due to injury and ended her season.
Sodaro for three. Has never really seem ‘prepared’ or ‘race ready’ for any race she has shown up to in 2024. All things considered it would be put down as a very poor season by her standards.
Anne Haug. Threw her hat in both IM and T100 series for the year, and granted she’s been super unlucky with equipment (or possibly poor planning on her part) has failed at both.
Which athletes fell victim to their own poor planning and tried to race too much?
Long
Racing too much? Well one could judge this every year. He’s raced less in 2024 than in 2023 or 2022!
Poor planning? Flip flopping to try to get to Kona was certainly ‘poor planning’. However his forward planning to IMWCQ at Chatt for Nice next year may be a clever step, so he can ‘just’ race T100 next year - some chance 
LCB
Races 4 times in 6 months (one IM). Too much? Exactly the same as last year.
Very publicly commits to T100. Races T100 Miami and Singapore well. Decides she wants to race IMWC after all (and with two excellent T100 scores) misses San Fran to complete IM Nice to validate (but a 2:54? really), and then injuries prevent her finishing London or even starting in Nice.
Sodaro
Cannot lay Sodaro’s 2024 travails at the altar of “racing too much”. Planning? Do you think a southern hemisphere Jan – Mar training choice (and being able to validate for IMWC easily and early) is a poor planning choice? Hammering the run for a 2:50 maybe not so sensible.
https://stats.protriathletes.org/athlete/chelsea-sodaro
Haug
(Was never doing IM Pro Series.) Like Sodaro, she evidentially didn’t “try to race too much”. Lanza for validation. Roth cos German and standard on her race schedule. Less races than last year. Poor planning: did seem a bit ad hoc. Signing the T100 contract and then not fulfilling it must have caused angst to her: she always delivers, till 2024. I suggest illness has had the main adverse effect on this season for her. Let us not forget her outrageous Roth world best LD will stand for a decade (Chrissie’s did). Is that more important to her/her legacy than another IMWC win? Probably.
are you answering your own questions now …
and on top of it take apart your question to argue with yourself
No, I’m replying to @Kingy who nominated those 4.
@Th4ddy had said: “I think a lot of those athletes fell victim to their own poor planning and tried to race too much.”
I’m suggesting that poor planning and/or “racing too much” are not the reasons some athletes’ seasons “fell victim”.
Sam longs poor planning in traveling across the world to hail mary a race in order to KQ is the definition of poor planning AND racing too much.
LCBs decision to go and RACE Nice and throw down a crazy time is poor planning AND racing too much.
etc etc
They may be doing the same amount of races as they have done previously, but attempting to race too close together, or doing a race unprepared, or overcooking yourself at a race can be classed as poor planning and racing too much.
Patrick Lange is case in point. He targeted the Pro Series, raced a set of races he probably outlined early in the season with Kona being his proper ‘A’ race and didn’t panic race in the middle (the outlier being his DNF at Roth which may have been a good thing otherwise we could well be saying the same for him as well as Haug).
Was his a perfect season? Absolutely not, his poor 70.3 results will probably cost him the series win, but he’ll finish near the top and as the mens world champ, so exceptionally good nonetheless.
I mean, if a “hot shot” is retiring they’re not a hot shot. It’s a waste of a contract in hopes that their name will draw eyeballs. And I’m unsure a single name in Triathlon will draw eyeballs.
lange paniced so much that he changed his coach after frankfurt …
Exactly, and how many are injured too?? I’m pretty sure at the end of every year of a series with 40 world class athletes, that there will be a substantial amount of no shows for the grand final.It is the nature of the sport.
Now many here like the argue why so and so in injured or burned out, but that is really not the issue at this exact point in time. They are just unable to race, and only a few are actually “choosing” not to race for other reasons, presumably more mental ones when you get down to the very last few…
Be (a bit) reasonable!
When Moench and Lawrence signed a T00 contract in December neither were pregnant.
When Ryf signed a T100 contract she hoped for a great 2024, getting back to her near her best - please recall she’d placed #5 in IMWC (Kona) a few weeks earlier.
When Gomez signed a T100 contract in January he similarly hoped his body was on the mend. He’d had two wins in successive months (and was there a reason he DNF’d Taupo in December?)
Only the last was a ‘hot shot’ : PTO’s ‘good old days rivalry’ rationale was transparent.
2024 Hot Shots -
men: Van Riel, Gomez, Brownlee, Bogen
women: Byram, Duffy, Spivey, ?Watkinson
Of those: Gomez immediately struggled (injuries) and Watkinson has too (and is injured now aiui). The rest have been successful and competitive.