At first I’m thinking, why not go head to head against Lionel at Lake Placid and get a little friendly-revenge for Oceanside?
But maybe Sam doesn’t want to bump Lionel who is targeting his entire season on Kona from getting a slot.
So here’s where it gets juicy. Sam goes to Australia in search of a slot and will head to Kona and send it on the bike, being a domestique for the athelte he’s coaching; since that’s all the rage these days. If Sam has run legs left, he goes for glory, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Long bridge up to said athlete in Kona who will then sit on his coach’s wheel, at a race ranger assisted distance until T2.
Just dropped a new and pretty well done video. At tge very end he made a somewhat cryptic comment about personal life struggles this year. He had hinted at that in an earlier IG post. But he seems to be in a good headspace regardless.
Ya I watched it and it did seem like there were some troubled times. If I were to guess, he started off with such a bang this year, really indestructible and just on fire. Then of course the normal course of events happens and he has a couple bad races that make his question himself and his program, and that super high you were on just drops like a led balloon.
That of course would be a very normal reaction to how things have been going for him, but I have no inside information as to the exact problems. Seems like after his last race he is feeling better, but perhaps not as high as he was at the opening couple months of the season. He has two T100 races left that are very important, and I’m sure he has seem how the ones he missed have gone. No one not near the front in the swims even gets sniffing distance of top 5 anymore, so that certainly has to be producing some agitata on his psyche…
Good mindset post that “rough” swim. I think he wanted to actually compare the actual splits from the past 2 years:
'24- 28:32 (3:58 deficit top swim)
-25- 29:19 (5:36 deficit top swim)
He mentioned in a pre-race video “3 mins” would be best goal time. As I said in other thread, if he’s only now (or this off season) working on the swim more than in '24, a swim split may or may not always tell the story. Again I think the biggest difference now more than ever, is that if your not a “front pack” swimmer, there is basically no “gap fillers” in T100, and that will certainly matter for splits/effort.
If the swim in San Fran is anything like last year he should be in the mix. There must be something going on as that 29 min swim for 2k is just plain slow for a pro triathlete.Don’t know if he can’t navigate or he finds it hard to replicate his pool time in open water but he is,on paper, a much better swimmer than he is showed in all his races in Singapore and Vegas (where his solo swim was 29:59)
Actually there was a gap filler for Sam in this race, he just didnt swim with him. Maybe if he knew ahead of time, but it looked like the guy in front of him would have been the perfect puller. that guy came out about 30 seconds faster than sam’s deficit from last year, so should have been in his wheelhouse.
but you are correct in the 70.3’s there will be many more opportunities for gap fillers, but you only need one…
I think it’s one of those double whammies. Not only is he “slow” but he’s basically using the most energy to still come out of the water with the slowest swim. Some on here were saying more top swimmers can’t make the swim even faster, yet that was exactly how Signapore just happened, so a triple whammy for Long at that point?
Top swim from '24 to '25 was almost 50s faster, add in Long went slower and yeah it may be a rough year for him in the water outside of the very unique current aided swims like SF (which I think can be a good bike course for him to gain back time).
I hope he can mentally steel himself for a season of T100 races where he will likely come out of the water with a big deficit and bike/run his way to a mid-pack finish. There’s good $$$ to be had, but it’s going to be a mentality shift. His 2nd places last year were before all the ITU guys started to show up, and now they are a fixture of the field.
Like @BDoughtie, I’m asking myself why Sam didn’t take the money and focus on the swim this season, race results be damned. Brooks is correct that an opportunity like this may never present itself again.
One way he’s explaining this to himself might be that it’s about 2026, i.e., if he tanks the T100 completely and has no meaningful results in IM branded races this season, he will end up with no contract and no sponsors next season. Hence the talk of “big wins” in 2025 in IM branded races. Sam is always talking about the need to support his family, which could make him a bit more risk averse, or rationalize being more risk averse.
I have no idea if he’s right, but that could be one way to rationalize it.
Another way to explain the “business as usual” strategy might be to realize what getting spanked over and over again (with too little bike and run load) does to a man’s head.
Ultimately the real underlying reason could be that the guy just loves triathlon, and that’s swim bike and run, and he enjoys improving in training and being in the mix in races. Doing a swim focused year is just a big ask mentally, regardless of the above point about the toll of always being on the tail end of races.
It is super hard to know where he is at without actually knowing him. There is a fine line between “family first” and just going all out to win races with no contracts guaranteed.
One thing I am sure of and that is he is very well liked by Pro Tri community and that goes beyond the athletes he races against. It would not surprise me at all if he gets pulled aside by one or more Pro’s and industry types who say “Sam,come over here we are going to help you fix this swim thing.” He is one of the characters of the sport and it is worth keeping him around.
The latest video for Long with a deeper dive into his Signapore performance.
I think he said biked 15w stronger than last year, new race roster dynamics makes it more competitive swim and bikes to stay away from Wilde. Seems to need a recalibration of “reality” (success) and take the race day dynamics / course factoring into results.
Sounds happy w/ swim progress regardless of what the actual splits were. (Also admitted he needs some time to let this swim block show what he can do). T100 will always make me “look like a bad swimmer”. Needs to add LC swimming into training.
Good vibes sounds ready to get after it at 70.3 StG.
I think the big difficulty for him is they have simply looked at the results and when the gap out of the swim is over 5 minutes, it’s just too much for him to cover. The races when he was closer to 4, he was able to do some damage. I don’t think he’ll be taking anyone by surprise this year in T100 unless he gets a great swim as they now know how far they need to push the swim to leave him in no-mans land. Maybe San Francisco he’ll make something happen if he’s ready for it.
Other than the weather, SF is well suited for him. If the swim is current-assisted like last year he won’t lose much time (hard to lose 5min. in a 15min. swim), and the long run to T1 lets him bridge small gaps. Also, no time zone issues.
I actually think it’s less on the actual swim split and more to do with the race roster or more importantly who’s in front of him. If your consistently getting the ex ITU’ers to continue to fill out the individual race rosters, the swim gap is going to be almost irrelevant; he’s simply too far behind whether it’s 4 mins or whether it’s 5+ mins. (And I don’t think his swim improvement is going to be big enough to have an better swim, now maybe in SF with the “downhill” current, he’s going to likely naturally be able to have a lower split, but take out any oddity races and for the most part his swim is just too slow to have podium level finishes when everyone is there). But again I’ve also said just use this year as a free year to a) get paid like he has b) to “focus” on the swim irregardless of the results c) will have a bigger impact on his career racing other non-draft events than it ever will for T100
But to his advantage, T100 has enough races and allowances to skip races for the athletes, that if he its a race with a *weaker roster, he may potentially benefit from. It’s not really shocking that his results suddenly got worse and worse last year as the better athletes got T100 contracts/wildcard spots / race entries. So in that aspect I think he sees that and has sorta on the fly changed his “expectations”.
Based on the last video I get the sense that he’s beginning to question his decision to focus on T100. He could have been slugging it out w/Lionel in Oceanside, but instead was grinding his way to a mid-pack finish in Singapore.
