One bright spot was when Greg Welch mentioned the WTCS (yep!!! “Victoria Lopes coming off of a career in WTCS, the World Triathlon Championship Series”), which would’ve normally been anathema to IM commentators. (IM races and Olympics only! Other races do not exist.)
Then again, a commentator should, uh, follow the sport. Can’t say that he does, and if he does, he is hiding it.
We’ve seen an ‘over the shoulder’ picture of Ryf ‘at work’.
Her microphone looked quality, maybe a Blue Yeti.
But the room she had set up in created that degraded quality which made her contributions audibly uncomfortable.
Whenever people ‘step up to the mark’ like this they personally have to realise that sound quality is vital or however good the commentary and insights. Below ‘very good’ threshold and the audience is distracted, to everyone’s detriment.
Is it reasonable to assume Ironman production did a sound test with her and said (lazily) “that’ll do”?
More broadly I’d counsel any athlete who gets asked to do interviews to invest in
(a) a decent microphone and
(b) check the audio effect of whence they’ll be speaking, getting a second party opinion.
Applies to business too. As Lange said (to a fellow pro, training together) “just do your job”.
Did ya’ll have any discussion with the IM team about how they plan to interpret the new hydration rules? Was it brought up at the pro briefing at all?
For me it was more we saw Long and Lionel and not much else in the race, plenty happening but the cameras werent there, had to search to even find the top 5 after the race as the footage went back to the women, where nothing was happening.
Good question.
In preparation for front and rear hydration for Hamburg and Roth, I’m assuming IRONMAN will either explicitly or by default adopt the World Tri Competition Rules and Interpretation doc (which DTU refs will be executing):
“After extensive meetings with Deutsche Triathlon Union, the World Triathlon Technical Committee, and the bike manufacturers’ industry, World Triathlon has developed a rule interpretation document on the World Triathlon Fairing rules. The new rules (interpretation above) will be in place from April 15.”
eff 25th May aiui
Note:
“IRONMAN and World Triathlon (formerly ITU) are continuing to work towards global rule harmonization. The IRONMAN Competition Rules govern all IRONMAN and IRONMAN 70.3 triathlon race competitions and are based primarily on the World Triathlon Competition Rules; however, differences in the rules do exist. Within certain sections of the IRONMAN Competition Rules (e.g., the rules regarding equipment legality) IRONMAN may adhere to and/or reference the applicable World Triathlon Competition Rules. Notwithstanding, in the event of any conflict or inconsistency between the IRONMAN Competition Rules and the World Triathlon Competition Rules, such conflict or inconsistency shall be resolved by giving precedence to the IRONMAN Competition Rules.”
For what it’s worth, I asked a referee at St. George about it and she told me Ironman would start enforcing the new hydration rules on May 25th, but couldn’t tell me when it would be officially announced.
This, but also why can’t they feed the rest of us better information on screen too? The splits they show we can’t trust (was the same for Texas).
Welch gives the impression, to me anyway, that he’d take minimal notice of any information fed to him (like IT’S Rider not Dubrick leading out the swim) which would interfere with his stream of consciousness.
Ack that keeping the chat for 8 hours is hard, but leavening it with facts and deductions from moves further back (as opposed to a fixation with the current leader) would help. As you say/imply it needs someone capable of speedy math and sufficient timely data to generate insights, and then the commentators to comprehend and use.
There must be an output from the gps brick all Pros are carrying. To what use is that being put?
It appears those gps bricks seem to drop out so frequently. Athletes seem to disappear or just stop moving, which they actually have not.
I’m starting to think there is no one behind the curtain in the producer box at IM races and its actually just the same program that GoPro uses to make terrible auto movies from your footage.