Females got 10 medals
What is the issue for the males?
One athlete (friend of mine) I suspect could have been at least AG competitive there raced IM 70.3 Florida instead. He won a few 70.3s in the states this year.
I suspect more than anything it was the distance, travel time and cost for most. Looking at my AG, people I know and compete with… no one near the pointy end was there.
Looks like New Zealand athletes and Australians took home a lot of titles. That isn’t surprising given the location.
Short answer, pointy end of the spear Americans didn’t choose to race Taupo for probably a lot of reasons.
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The bar for an elite license is too low in US. May have been 60 men on the Indian Wells pro list that should have been racing AG Worlds instead of “professional”
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Can we start a winter-tri thread instead of this hand-grenade-in-a-fox-hole polemica?
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Maybe more threads what is the fastest helmet to come 92 Nd in my age group are needed …or will a 3000 us front end make me faster to come 53 rather than 55 th
Sorry for another polemic hand grenade .
There was a guy that asked how to improve his training last week but those threads are far and between nowadays.
But seriously I was really surprised when I went through the results , that a nation of this size has no male medals ( and of course being polemic I did exclude the gold and silver in the 80to 84 males where you had the only 2 athletes at the start line which in itself is a great achievement )
There was a guy that pointed out that male and female have about the same amount of free time in the USA ,the females seem to use it better to win medals at the half distance.
I would be interested what the reasons are for this disparity.
And just to be fair on the whole it’s not easier to get a pro license in the USA . In some countries in Europe all you have to do is to pay for a pro license.
And I would say there is as many Inbetweeners in Europe and the USA
I notice France is doing well and France has a really good club structure for instance
So what is the issue in the USA ,and I know IAM joking about the obsessive ST gear affinity but money is not the problem of the USA, well maybe it is, as you are so keen to make money that you forget to live .
So I would be interested what people think.
It might be that youse are watching to many Lionel sanders videos …
The US male age groupers capable of getting on the podium stayed home and didn’t race.
But why did they, and not the women?
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I know of one male that lives in the US who podiumed, but raced for his birth country.
At my old age, waving a flag for a sport just doesn’t mean what it did 40 years ago.
Because we won the women’s pro race didn’t make us, the U.S., a greater country or better athletes.
If Matt Hanson would have won, the U.S. would not be a better country or triathlon a better sport. It would be cool, but doesn’t real change anything.
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There must have been some Chinese age-grouper, preferably with a shady history, who sabotaged them!!
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Age group triathlon is for fun and for your own satisfaction. I don’t care how many medals age groupers from what country have won, be it the U.S. or my own country.
(Posting in a thread to say you don’t care about the issue raised is stupid, so if you tell me I’m stupid, I will have to agree.)
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Cool
Since you post on ST are you saying talking more about expensive gear is more fun than actually training…
Or are you saying to keep fit is way better than destroying your body to win an age group medal.
Hardly anybody cares about?
Cool but what about if I was to suggest that there is a strong correlation between age group and elite performance
For instance UK and France doing rather well at age group level a d also well at elite level
And Germany and Switzerland also performing well
And USA females also doing well.
IE if you don’t have a good grassroots structure it becomes harder to perform at elite sport.
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Fair. The question is, which one would you say is the cause and which one the effect? Assuming there even is a causal relationship.
I feel like i definitely would’ve taken home the gold in the male 65 to 69. A couple things though. It’s very expensive to go with kids around Christmas, very long travel, passports, i am only 49 years old so i couldn’t race the 69 year olds to see if i had it in the day. Looked like a beautiful location though.
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One likely reason is because they went to Kona or another race and weren’t willing to fork out another $10k.
If you break it down.
2 were under 30.
1 - 40s
2 50s
5 over 60.
So 1/2 are probably retired, had the time AND desire to go to New Zealand.
As for the men - the ones with time (i.e. retired) had no desire to go that far away for a race.
If the 10 were in their 30’s and 40’s - then an interest comparison to the men to look at.
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That sounds great the only little issue from 18 to 59 you made 1 silver medal in Kona this year.
So how can the euros do Kona and Taupo and you can’t medal in either.
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Are we talking medals (top 3) or an ag podium (top 5)? Just want to be sure its clear.
How many of the European’s who medaled in Taupo, also medaled at kona? Honestly asking… I didn’t look.
I mentioned the guys that are capable of podium’ing at 70.3 worlds. Doesn’t necessarily mean they will or will podium at kona. Look at the top Americans who raced taupo and then look at the top Americans in kona and who win AG races in the states. Many of them were not there in Taupo. Now you could argue that those individuals aren’t as fast as Europeans or even AUS/NZ which is entirely fair, but that’s a different conversation and I didn’t take it that you were trying to go down that route.
We are talking top 3
And I did not look how many podiumed twice I would imagine few. As the cost issue is certainly a point.
To be honest apart from being a bit polemic and defo a bit selective in my argument , I don’t really have a route I want to take here.
What I just dont get there is a good swim and run sceane in the USA so in theory the USA should be a lot more competitive in triathlon .
And sorry for being a bit polemic again and not just when you start with testosterone supplements ion in the 60s .
Economically it should be roughly the same for the euro countries that win most medals and the USA . So I can’t see that as the reason
It’s obviously clear on average Americans tend to work 200 hours a year more than the euros and you have less holidays
But I would say a big factor is that in most countries in Europe there is a better club structure and
We are not just slaves to ironman and have more races. And especially in France racing is rather affordable with most old distances races being around 60 us every town has a Tri club that gets some support from the council .
And to be honest I really don’t know enough how triathlon in the USA works but it seems to be clear you have less races so it can’t do to well ( and to be fair it certainly gets more difficult to have races in Europe too )
The few good thinks I see is team every man jack and Yoder performance I see frequently high up. But otherwise I really don’t know enough about the USA
But i do notice ST has turned much more into gear talk and less about training talk in the last 15 years.
So the one thing IAM actually interested in is how does triathlon work in the USA
I’ll tell you a funny story about the oddity of triathlon in the US. I lived in the triangle area of NC (Duke / UNC / NC State) and worldly famous where the “research triangle park” is (actually that area is really really good to train at on the weekends). So we had very very good 70.3 for about 5 years (Raleigh 70.3), we have a great triathlon store that I even managed for a while (Inside Out Sports…the same company that was basically the original vendor for IM in Kona 30 years ago…they have a great reputation). So about 12 years ago when we got the 70.3 suddenly more triathlon groups actually began. The “Triangle Triathlon Club (TTC)” becamse a thing. Active as hell members, weekly “training groups”, coaches like myself giving presentations to the clubs throughout the year, plenty of people to pay for coaching, etc. The 70.3 went away because the city basically didn’t want to budge on the timing of the race, and the race had a terrible early June race date…which meant for the MOP/BOP AG athletes your out in the sun the whole time…it was great for the pro’s cus they were done by 11am and it never got “hot” for them. They’d be done before 1/2 the race even got to T2 so it was like an AWESOME race for FOP athletes, but a terrible race date for the majority of the finishers. So Raleigh lost the 70.3 I wanna say somewhere around '18 or '19. Then covid hit and poooof the largest triathlon club I believe in NC just poofed. Now some athletes splintered off and built their own smaller local clubs, but it was just amazing. Like it literally went from a bustling club to NADA in less than 10 years.
And it’s amazing to me because the triangle area is so huge and active and has a bunch of people moving there and has some wealth. It’s where KZ’s new training group is going to be located. It was just sorta amazing almost in the blink of the eye, the rug got pulled out from us.
I don’t know what the moral of the story is, but I just sorta chuckle with a friend every now and then, it was like Raleigh had it’s thing and then lost it almost seemingly as quickly as it got it. I think they did 5-6 years of the race. And the oddest thing about it- the race venue/course was voted one of the best on the circuit. It was “fair”, it certainly wasn’t “easy” but it also wasn’t so hard that you were intimated by it. It was just a good honest course.
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