My understanding is that the USA Olympic Committee (USOC) gives funding to USAT (and others like USA Swimming, USA T&F) to develop athletes for the Olympics. This is the primary reason and really only reason these national governing bodies exist… get athletes to the Olympics. While I understand what you are getting at, driving athletes to long course goes against why USAT even exists.
USAT gets 7 million in membership fees from regular Joes like us. It gets a little over million from the Olympic committee.
I’m HAPPY to pay membership to an organization that helps triathlon in this country. I’d just rather see that membership help the kind of triathlon I and most others do.
If USAT gave a 7:1 ratio of benefits to mid/long course athletes over drafting short course thst would be proportional. If they gave 2:1 or even 1:1 that would be disproportionate for the revenue they collect from mid/long course. But at least it would be something.
I totally agree Ben Kanute has been a good return overall for triathlon. But I’m assuming they haven’t done much since he was racing short course.