Valencia named as the Spain location on the 20th September - in conjunction with the World Cup short course races that weekend I believe.
Should be interesting!
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Press release:
not a big suprise given that they position themsevels as the sports city and invest into that .
only city that has a ironman 70,3 , world cup and t 100 race
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I did the 70.3 there last year and was very impressed with it. Although it was their first Ironman event (I believe?) you could tell the organisation was on top of almost everything it could. The swim was excellent, the bike course was good albeit a little dicey coming off the hills and the run course was excellent, finishing next to the Science Museum.
Looks like I might have my autumn campervan trip sorted now!
IMHO, this is how all the PTO races should have been done – tie them to WTCS / World Cup events (or other existing large races, like they did for the most part before). Infrastructure is already there, extend out the bike course, and would probably pull down permitting / operations costs.
And then sell the snot out of broadcasting rights.
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Do you think PTO will become the organiser for world Tri events
IE first Levien , Valencia .
IE will world Tri focus more on governing and PTO become more the operator and promoter .
The other question is usually in Tri festivals the longer events have more prestige unlike in athektetics where the 100 is kind of king .
IE how will they achieve a balance of events or do we think 2 events will actually both win as there is more synergies
Which event will get the prime time ? I would assume in spain likely more short course , but who knows.
Intersting stuff and I guess it’s good that they are trying it out .
No, I don’t. I think the PTO should be out of trying to be an event organizer, generally, and instead be trying to tie their events to existing events / promoters so as to focus on their energies on what they’re good at: hyping up pros, creating social buzz, and maybe, just maybe, an honest-to-God world class broadcast experience. Which they can then sell and build the audiences they’ve been attempting to create for years.
Probably the most boring bike course on the WTCS / World/continental cups calendar. Hopefully by extending it they can make the T100 course a bit better?
If they focused on that they’d actually have to try to figure out how to make money doing that. … // sarcasm
Here’s the way I look at it. Let’s imagine a service like youtube or gmail back in the early day. It’s an expensive thing to put on and yet, somehow they made it work by having a huge economy of scale that they could leverage for advertising.
But would google have been a genius if they offered to pay youtube for advertising rights on their videos and just let youtube grow to be huge in the meantime?
No, they needed to own it, otherwise, once that contract ended, youtube could just shop around or negotiate a better deal. Now, google was expert at bandwidth and servers. And PTO was expert at…spending money and telling everyone they are expert at promotion?
But you see the dilemma, PTO can’t be successful bankrolling the prizes for Roth and Daytona, because if those events ever do break through to prime time, then PTO will promptly get pushed aside.
So, they need to own the service to actually have an asset for their investors long term. Or do you see it another way?
One more look at it from what I assume is your media focused perspective: I suppose the PTO could have given the athletes less, paid existing leagues or race directors for signing a media exclusivity agreement, so long as the money keeps coming.
But the current model puts the PTO/T100 in a better negotiating position if they can show they are going to start putting on events that threaten the age group attendance.
Look at IM or Challenge race model. I assume, if you removed 300+ entries from most of those races they start to drift into unprofitable territory. So while 300 racers is not enough for PTO to cover it’s costs, it is enough to really worry which ever RD they setup shop next to. That would certainly level the negotiating playing field pretty quickly.
Startlist for the women for Singapore has been shared (Tuesday before the D-30 day). Lists 15 contracted athletes.
Meant to be a 100% attend (but do not need to actually race)
Missing from the list are:
Simmonds (suspended)
Findlay (given a pass - Green Card process: can’t leave USA)
EPB (with her hot conditions vulnerability, I’m very glad that T100 have allowed her not to risk it. Maybe she’ll actually be there though.)
Madsen (has suffered a significant injury - stress fracture?)
Salthouse (don’t follow her but someone suggests she’s in post-op rehab)
Five wildcards therefore.
Selected first by a PTO/World Tri joint panel (would allow the odd SC athlete to be blooded) and then from the Waiting List (Kaidi Kivioja PTO #32 and Kate Curran PTO #34 top two).
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Agreed. Credit to T100 for being sensible on this one. I’d imagine she shows up to do some media.
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West and Heemryck not racing. West not listed as an athlete on this page:
Is he still contracted? He is listed in the standings, however
No idea about West (but he’s contracted).
Heemeryck had a car driver drive into him (broken clavicle ++) pre-Taupo (IMNZ) so Singapore start no chance; maybe Las Vegas (May).
Absolutely loving that Singapore mens start list!
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The women’s list is really stacked as well. It will be interesting to see how Jess Learmonth and Kate Waugh make out in this field. It’s hard not to bet on Ash Gentle the queen of sweltering conditions.
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I’d be amazed if Learmonth can hold her own in this quality of field. She may lead (or FP) into T1 but none of her bikes suggest she will be able to hold a 20m wheel.
Waugh raced well in her only draft illegal race ( Laguna Phuket Triathlon last year). A 50km bike in 1:22 scales up to 1:55 for 80km and that’d be right up there with the best (even Knibb in theory) and she’s a handy runner over 10km.
Edit: Her Phuket ride scales up to 2:11 (my arithmetic error) - thank you @sciguy
Hmmmmm check my maths here but I see 1:22 = 1.367 hours X 1.6 the distance = 2.187 hours = 2:11 rather than 1:55 so maybe not so quite so fast.
That bike course in Phuket isn’t exactly one to compare speeds with any other race. Open,narrow,winding roads and stupidly steep hills.
LIVE STREAMING: Laguna Phuket Triathlon 30th Anniversary - YouTube
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That certainly is the case and perhaps 22.7mph on that course is superb. As Taylor Knibb so often says “We will see”
In looking back at older results is see that Imogen Simmonds did it in 1:16:49 in 2019.
Ash and Josh are about to get blasted by a Cyclone at their home in Brisbane tomorrow. Hopefully they get through it without being flooded out,or worse. Brisbane looks like it will get a direct hit while us folks up in Noosa/Coolum can still get out and ride (a bit windy though)
The famous little brother to the Noosa Tri,the Mooloolaba Triathlon has been cancelled this weekend. The local council pulled the permit the other day leaving the race directors no choice but to tell the 5,000 athletes to stay at home. Just as well as all the beaches here are currently being destroyed.
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