Though what is the rationale for paying anything outside of contracts and their own race series? If the thinking was that they wanted to elevate triathlete pay (and therefore professionalism, and ultimately your own product) it would seem that the reason for doing so has already been achieved. And if not solely on the PTO side, certainly on the Ironman side as well.
If your goal is to make a compelling TV product, then it would seem to me that you’re better served directly dumping this money either into contracts or into race/series payouts. Having a year-end payout where someone like Sanders (or whomever) can get paid for accomplishments in someone else’s race series is counterproductive to what you’re trying to achieve. What you would instead try to do is use that money to lure that person into competing for your race series - even as a wildcard.
I agree with you the issue is PTO
does not just stand for a few dozen athletes .
And every year it gets diluted more.
No doubt PTO has done a lot good and of course you can say why should they support athletes that refused the series.
But hat’s not a pro organisation it’s more like the G7 club that calls itself a pro tri organisation.
And IAM not saying that’s wrong but just call it what it is .
Sam is the king of miss naming things .
There is not a single improvement in the new system.
It’s to punish the athletes that don’t sign . And again nothing wrong with that but just call it. And don’t sell it as an improvement .
Yup: has been $2M for five years: 2020-2024.
Paid to top 100+100 including in installments in 2020 (Covid emasculated season) and then reduced to top 50+50.
Now top 40+40 and ‘only $560k’: includes contracted athletes but excludes refusees. Compared to previous (100 90 80 70 60 usv) the amounts will be relatively small. I hashed up an estimate and maybe (all $k) 25 22 20 18 16 15 14 . . . and 4 for 21-30 and 3 for 31-40. For those getting T100 Standings payouts this is a small addition.
“Contracts go to “top” athletes and not the ones who may need it to stay in the sport.” Contracts are offered to the top LC athletes to compete for the T100 World Championships. This is not a social security scheme, but see below.
Siphoning off 70% of the top (ranked) 25 athletes to T100 means greater opportunity for others to win IM and Challenge race prizes and IM Pro Series money, and lower down the feed chain (another 20 siphoned off to IM Pro Series races) to win prize money in silver and bronze tier races. Excellent results (let’s reward performance) score ranking points to lift them up the ‘Contender Rankings’: a stepping stone to both T100 wild cards and a small EoY bonus.
Never been a better time to be a Pro who can perform to a professional level. Let’s review the Oceanside results 24 hours hence for an insight to the standard required.
The second part I completely miswrote that sentence. Contracts go to whomever PTO finds popular. It sounded better in my head. But it was bout how the bonus pool no longer reaches the people who need it because that money went funding the contracts. But even then I also criticized the whole implementation of the Bonus pool, back in 2020 and 2021 they were still trying to BS people on them being an athlete representative body and that the Frodenos of the world didn’t need that money.
Let’s just be real, nothing about T100 style racing is compelling.
Agree: she was short odds ftw. An Olympian btw (Learmonth, Duffy, Spivey and Derron were the Olympic medallists competing today).
Otherwise:
By my reckoning/reading of the new T100 start list Q protocol, Perterer, Watkinson and DeBoer will get the first 3 wildcards if they want one, for T100 SF. McDonald next in line.
Listening to the PTN week recap, they sorta went after PTO/World Tri for the new “contender” rankings to help get non-T100 athletes to be able to then jump into T100 series.
I recognize WT gives “validation” to all the PTO/T100 stuff, but I swear it seems like they sorta just make up the rules however they want. Now again they are the “bag man” and so generally that affords them that luxury. Just feels like they should just go more “private” and do whatever the hell they want to with their money/series/athletes, the current setup just seems like it’s too messy when you have a governing body overseeing it.
It is convenient for PTO executives though, isn’t it? Doing “whatever they want” would mean being held accountable for the outcomes. By sharing power with World Triathlon, they are sharing responsibility, or at least they think they are.
But with that responsibility share comes accountability in return.
The ‘non-return valve’ effect, as I read it and have shared upthread, of the banishment of 2024 contract refusees is undesirable; ‘restraint of trade’ was bandied about.
The EoY bonus payments should go to genuine ‘Contenders’: not athletes already contracted and not athletes who’ve said ‘no thanks to an annual contract’, whether or not an athlete had a 2024 contract.
Aiui (and have shared upthread) it looks to me as if all Pro athletes are included except refusees: Matthews, Philipp, Sodaro, Haug, Jewett, Ditlev, Laidlow, RvB, Mignon. Excluding those from bonus payments out of the $560k is perfectly reasonable.
I observe that if the contracted athletes remain on this misnamed ‘Contenders’ list the top 15+15 contractors will sweep up (my estimate) about $400k leaving the remaining $160k between the 25+25 lower in the list.
I know it isn’t specified in the press release, but I find it hard to believe that the T100 contracted athletes will be in this contender ranking and be eligible for the money. It just seems at odds with their description of it.
I also have no idea why they’d give preference to athletes that have rejected contracts twice over those that accepted last year but rejected this year.
It seems like it should be pretty simple. You’re in on this money if you don’t have a T100 contract and weren’t offered one this year. That would make complete sense for supporting up and coming contenders.
