A close, hard fought finish is exciting to see, having the biggest personality doesn’t guarantee that.
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how high do you think are the chances that an athelte that repeatedly cant hold the pack in draft legal races is going to suddenly do well non drafting .
its obviously possible he will do well
he is a great asset for itu as usually once a year he hits a great race ,
but i do think gelle was spot on .
I wrote about this in the Abu Dhabi thread. Morgan is a bit of a mystery indeed. It seems his issues at ITU are potentially more about peak power surges. He had that great bike at Karlovy Vary a couple years ago, and that’s more of a long sustained strength course than other ITU courses that more shifty.
On the other hand, when he’s with you in a pack he’s proven to be pretty useless (to help make it back to packs in front). So maybe Karlovy Vary was an outlier?
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interestingly there was a 20 year old kid in that race you mention that had a 2 second slower bike than morgan. that greek kid has done pretty well last year and would have been my pick.
Agreed, Bitados has all it takes to be great at the T100 distance. But he may want to stick to World Triathlon until at least Los Angeles. Don’t know why he wasn’t in Abu Dhabi?
Plenty of those guys who hold the pack can’t even stay with the front group of a big Ironman.
Even a close, hard fought finish doesn’t make an interesting race. Unless you don’t tune in until one minute before the end.
The rest of the race are people rolling about, mostly. Boring, mostly (I know - that’s just, like, my opinion man - and of the vast majority of the world’s sports event viewers). Unless some of them you really like or dislike, some have rivalries, and some have major strengths with some weaknesses.
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When I tune into a race I like to watch strpng athletes racing each other, hopefully closely. I dont get to see or hear their personalities during the race.
So don’t you like drama? Don’t you like to know why someone finishing ahead of someone else matters? “Racing close to one another” brings to mind the typical draft-legal peloton of 50 men commuting from T1 to T2…
well i guess that depends on ones character.
are you interested in quality or bs .
and of course it can be a mix of the 2 sides
but i guess if i was into bs and drama i would watch pro wrestling…
So Peter, if you go back to T100 Miami last season and Sam Long just barely avoiding getting lapped out on account of his shitty swim, only to finish second.
Is that “quality” or “bs”?
Because that sure as hell was the thing everybody was talking about and one of the main things that made the broadcast worth watching, aside from India Lee’s upset win.
thats quality , while your example of the tri 24 7 article was total bs
i would certainly rate sam the most valuble athelte for the series last year.
i totaly agree its great to have atheltes with different strenght and weakness profiles and of course i also see that from an usa standpoint its important to have another usa athelte in the series.
but ultimately i want the best racing and i doubt thats person , why not have a shootout race with 25 hopefuls and the winner takes the contract .
wilde bergere they are true hot shots they have demonstrated that , Pearson has not .
its just based on where he is from . and again i love morgan for itu races he is the dark horse , but he is already quite iffy in the races he has done for the least 6 years.
bitados is the rocky guy no money training in greece but man some of the races he did where serious shit . if you need drama the underdog that cant afford a coach.
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Count me in as one who is pulling for Sam Long and I want to see him be relevant. So far it looks like the T100 races he was able to have a strong result despite being so far back at hot races where he is still able to send it on the bike while others are holding back in the swim and bike.
He can’t always have his A-game, but I’m perplexed how he goes from being a one of the top 3 runners and bikers to absolutely blowing up on the run or bike.
Except there is one of his mediocre races that he put together a #1 bike and a #3 run was Las Vegas and he just got drilled on the swim. Usually he’s about 4min back, and there he was 5:30 back. If he was 90s closer to the field he’d almost certainly have been in 3rd.
What I’m guessing based on these results and his interviews is that he really does get mentally screwed over in races. I can’t believe his bike or run fitness suddenly drops from near best in field to near worst. Get that mental game under control, focus on incremental gains on the swim, and he really could work his way right back in the top 2-4 contention spot in every race.
And at a minimum it will be great to see him run Morgan Pearson down after Pearson blows up from overbiking.
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Pearson will getting off the bike 2 minutes behind Long. And the rest of the field.
Some interesting Ibiza stats
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I suspect T-100 knew about this a while back but kept it low profile so they can keep telling the world they have 9 races for 2025?
Wonder if it has a back-up destination ?
Spain and Austria know how to make money from triathlon races so IAM sure they find a location
This is a shame as I thought it was a great race last year and was looking forward to it again for this year.
However in a small island with really busy roads (trying to get a recce ride in on the Friday wasn’t fun) I can imagine that the 7 hours at least each day they closed a major route off caused absolute mayhem. Shame people can’t just put up with it for one weekend - but then you add it to the fact there is a bit of an uprising against tourism in some of these places anyway.
if you see the glowing report 2 weeks earlier before cancelation , i guess they had no back up options… and while i have no idea it would seem it was a slightly late decision by ibiza to cancel, so iam not sure if i share your assetment t100 knew this was happening as i assume the had actually a contract in place for 2025 which was cancelled .
at the same itme i would guess that a lot of tourist seaside towns have an idea what ironman barcelona does to extend the season for caella so i would be susprised if they are not going to find a place .
i think rather than poor planing by race organisors the highlight here is more the volatile circumstances triathlon finds itself to get races over the line that are big and create money for the communities. after all ibiza has been holding a 4 120 30 k race for as long as i can think , it was not just 2 years it was more like 20 years . to be honest i cant quite remember so take my number with a grain of salt . but i do think it was later in the year , more like end of oktober
As I said on the Findlay thread:
“Both Findlay and Kelly mentioned “Las Vegas” as a race before Vancouver.
Maybe they both meant San Francisco.
???”
On the PTN pod Las Vegas was mentioned as ‘moving to the spring’ (early May) before Alcatraz on 31 May). Effectively to fill the gap created by the Frejus move to late June?
And that would give flexibility to the dates for the ‘Spain’ T100, to synch dates taking into account a fair few contracted athletes choosing to race Nice (14 Sep) or Kona (11 Oct). After London (9 August) the next T100 is not till Dubai (mid-November). Also avoids Wollongong (18 Oct, for those still WTCS engaged) and four weekends of supertri (one assumes being shoehorned into the August-September 9 weeks) (NB Karlovy Vary and Weihai to negotiate).
And then there were 19 WPros.
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