Women's Nice is not a World Championship

Triathlon Forum
81

It’s been said and I’ll said it again. The best appear to have chosen T100. Nice will be underwhelming and that’s a shame.

As a response to this premise, we had a really long thread about the Men’s race at Nice and a lot of people say that Kona Amateur race is the World Championship of those who can afford it since getting to Kona is expensive. Nice will be expensive for a lot of people, but if you’re French I’m sure it’s way cheaper. But a whole lot of men deferred to Kona 2024 and it took forever for Nice to fill. I think the four lap run (or is it three?) kinda sucks. A lot of women have already stated on this board that if they qualify they are deferring to Kona 2025 if that option exists.

Nice has a great bike course, but that course is also pretty difficult and we know someone on this board that was pretty messed up from that unfortunately. And he’s an experienced rider. But stuff like that happens on flat courses like IMAZ too.

Will it make it any less of a World Championship? I don’t know, but I know that if I ever get myself back in shape I probably have “one shot, one opportunity, one chance in a lifetime” (Eminem) to do it and I’m taking whichever is available.

Horses scratch the morning of the Kentucky Derby every year and an alternate and their jockey is named every year. It’s all about who shows up and if there are some unwilling people, that is on them. However, I think that Kona mythology of this sport is incredibly real in Triathlon. Yes some people aren’t interested (Gwen Jorgensen) and yet the majority are.

82

I think the Kona pull is certainly strong. I also think the covid + freakout announcment that happened sorta handcuffed IM into allowing you to “decide” which venue you wanted to race. So if you wanted to race Kona you could pass your KQ to the following year. I don’t know if that behavior is still being allowed, or they finally said you Q for the race to this year’s venue and if you don’t like that race, too bad, try again next year (or caused people to delay their Q process to the event they want to attend).

83

A lot of women have already stated on this board that if they qualify they are deferring to Kona 2025 if that option exists.

Have intentionally stayed out of this thread but I’ll keep checking in for you to back that claim up.

84

I’ve just watched “not a World Championship” in cyclo-cross. WvA and Pidcock did not start. Since two of the best three chose other race series it meets the @timr definition quite neatly I think. In Nice I reckon 2/3rds of the top 9 will be there.
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Speaking of World Championships with weak fields that nobody gives a shit about…
World Triathlon Long Distance Championships - Wikipedia

85

I totally understand the pull of Kona… but if I were to be completely honest with myself, Nice looks like a more fun/challenging/beautiful course worthy of a championship. I hope to do both before I croak.

But these people gotta earn a living. If I was a young pro, I’d choose PTO everyday of the week.

86

I totally understand the pull of Kona… but if I were to be completely honest with myself, Nice looks like a more fun/challenging/beautiful course worthy of a championship. I hope to do both before I croak.

But these people gotta earn a living. If I was a young pro, I’d choose PTO everyday of the week.
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Yep,I agree on all counts,especially about young Pro’s and the PTO. Makes total sense to go with them.

Kona has never had a draw for me as I like to combine races with holidays or bike tours. A bike tour around The Med after Nice would be awesome.

87

It’s been said and I’ll said it again. The best appear to have chosen T100. Nice will be underwhelming and that’s a shame.

Someone is definitely getting crowned, but all due respect it is a B level race.

Hopefully Ironman learns their lesson with this ridiculous move to France BS.

88

If the likely bet is its only a matter of time before PTO fades away, how could anyone be so confident that that won’t happen in the next 7 months?

I think it’s in for a good 2-3 year run of 6-10 races a year and putting that product to market. Which as I’ve said, at that point if it fails, so be it. It will fail because no one gives a shit about triathlon not because we didn’t give it the best “college try” possible.

Actually I disagree with this. Strongbro-ly.
The PTO, if it fails it will be the result of missing away it’s seed money to pros who can never have enough. And I like them, don’t get me wrong. But I’ve got a sovereign wealth fund in Saudi Arabia to sell you, if you think that just buying a bunch of pros makes the groundwork for a success. They’ve spent much much more.

If what PTO wants is ownership of the broadcast to sell advertising, again they should buy what they want. The rights to market ITU, or Super League or even 70.3 races.

The things they want to broadcast already exist, the racers are already racing. You don’t need to throw money at them.

If PTO said they were going to buy major primetime TV for these five IM70.3 races or those 5 ITU races and then tripled the prize pot for those five races, you mean to tell me no one would have showed up?

The PTO has wasted millions of investor dollars with ZERO return other than a promise to waste millions more and hope someone takes notice.

Seriously, how terrible must their income statements look? I imagine many local races directors do a better job generating revenue!

It’s understandable that it can take years to become profitable. But it’s not like the PTO is “buying” a large number of cash spending customers who they will eventually make profitable. It’s not like they are building up this massive base of content that will be relevant for decades to tens of thousands of subscribers. The vast majority of their footage will never get looked at again in and significant numbers. No, what the PTO is doing is likely paying its staff well. And buying the rights to 40 athletes that only secures them the option to keep paying those athletes.

There’s nothing coming in! So I think when someone starts with a large pile of money for the good of the sport and only manages to make it small pile of money without bringing anything sustainable in, I see a negligent waste of investor resources that likely salts the earth for future investment.

That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the Pto or look forward to their races. I do. I want them to succeed. Whatever they are doing, it’s bizarre. If they stuck with the original line and simply said we are going to make an alternative to Ironman racing for pros and age groupers they’d actually look like they’d be trying to build something.

They’d have been better off buying out local races and growing them from the start and paying the race directors a salary to run the events for them. Instead they pass away money on the pros without building anything sustainable. Bizarre at best. Financially negligent at worst.

89

It’s been said and I’ll said it again. The best appear to have chosen T100. Nice will be underwhelming and that’s a shame.Someone is definitely getting crowned, but all due respect it is a **B level **race.
Hopefully Ironman learns their lesson with this ridiculous move to France BS.“It’s been said I’ll say it again.”
The best have chosen T100 because it offers assured money, great competition (playing with the big girls) and keeps open that option for 2025. But the flaw in both your hypotheses is that because the best are racing T100 they will then not race Nice. I guarantee you that this is not the case: the vast majority of the top ten long distance (>70.3) capable athletes will race Nice.
If your definition of “the best” is: “only if every top 10 athlete starts”, then (apart from the fantastic aberration in Kona last year) there has never been a World Championship, ever. There’s always someone missing, through choice or injury.
If your definition of “the best” is: “must include the winner from last year” then very many IMWCs over the years fail that criterion: did that make them ‘underwhelming’ or ‘B level’? (Of course it didn’t)

The women’s IMWC in Nice in September will be excellent and talk of “underwhelming” or “it’ll be a B level race” is naysaying of the highest order. And @thatzone you are not affording the women “due respect”: have a word with yourself!

@timr and @thatzone - name the lowly ranked athletes in this ‘B level’ race who you think will be challenging for top 5.
I have suggested that the following will race in Nice: Haug (light and suits), Ryf (GOAT), Philipp (been out recceing/training in Nice), Matthews (racing Texas and unfinished IMWC business), Sodaro (one more 70.3 to validate), Moench (NQ), Langridge (NQ), Norden (NQ).
And @thatzone’s Kona fixation is an irrelevance to this thread.

90

The things they want to broadcast already exist, the racers are already racing. You don’t need to throw money at them.

Except they have created an entirely new distance that has been accepted by WT as the “middle distance” (or whatever official title they are calling 100k distance). So if they don’t think long course is a broadcastable product and they weren’t going to go down the draft legal platform that already had SLT + WTCS. You may not like that and you keep bringing in the 70.3 distance as some equal when in reality they aren’t. It’s easily what 1/2 hour shorter race and broadcast windows are only so infinite. To be able to 100% do it under 4 horus (not possible for women’s 70.3 broadcast) is important when talking about broadcast requirements.

Remember they started out in the “long course” game and very quickly realized that product would never be able to be broadcast in it’s entirety. I think they quickly cut out IM distance as even a strategy within a year and then shrinked the distances even more from 70.3. So a lot of what you say is correct but also incorrect on race selection, thus if the race distance isn’t correct, then your whole premise is invalid to the discussion at hand, right? IE- they have to start from scratch to build up a marketable distance, not take an pre-existing distance (that they realized isn’t going to work).

You conclude that you would buy in if they are making an alternative to IM for racing, and I’m kinda lost at not understanding this is basically the competitor to IM now. To the point IM created their own series to counter PTO. So I’m not really sure what you want them to do? Becuase they don’t have AG racing that’s your biggest hang up? If you think a new race organization is going to come into the non-draft spectrum and draw AG entries to what they “need” to help offset costs I would call that noobish mindset. They would then draw 448 people and you would then clown them for being a shit AG option. It kinda cracks me up that they are building a pro platform that is going to be broadcast to half the world and enough spots to have a professional series, and apparently that’s not good enought to “build something”…that sorta gives me a WTF do you want from them. They’ve already proven your point on the race distance is invalid by changing the distance already after “learning” from their investments.

91

It’s been said and I’ll said it again. The best appear to have chosen T100. Nice will be underwhelming and that’s a shame.Someone is definitely getting crowned, but all due respect it is a **B level **race.
Hopefully Ironman learns their lesson with this ridiculous move to France BS.“It’s been said I’ll say it again.”
The best have chosen T100 because it offers assured money, great competition (playing with the big girls) and keeps open that option for 2025. But the flaw in this hypothesis is that because the best are racing T100 they will then not race Nice. I guarantee you that this is not the case: the vast majority of the top ten long distance (>70.3) capable athletes will race Nice.
If your definition of “the best” is: “only if every top 10 athlete starts”, then (apart from the fantastic aberration in Kona last year) there has never been a World Championship, ever. There’s always someone missing, through choice or injury.
If your definition of “the best” is: “must include the winner from last year” then very many IMWCs over the years fail that criterion: did that make them ‘underwhelming’ or ‘B level’? (Of course it didn’t)

The women’s IMWC in Nice in September will be excellent and talk of “underwhelming” or “it’ll be a B level race” is naysaying of the highest order. And @thatzone you are not affording the women “due respect”: have a word with yourself!

@timr and @thatzone - name the lowly ranked athletes in this ‘B level’ race who you think will be challenging for top 5.
I have suggested that the following will race in Nice: Haug (light and suits), Ryf (GOAT), Philipp (been out recceing/training in Nice), Matthews (racing Texas so IM Series in sights), Sodaro (one more 70.3 to validate), Moench (NQ), Langridge (NQ), Norden (NQ).
And @thatzone’s Kona fixation is an irrelevance to this thread.

Someone being key word here. Not the current WC, or Ryf, Haug, Phillips etc etc.

The Women’s IMWC in France is like comparing the UFC to a local fighting circuit. I am sure whoever wins will have the confidence, but KONA is where the ‘big dogs’ throw down… Will make KONA 2015 more interesting.

92

the vast majority of the top ten long distance (>70.3) capable athletes will race Nice.
If your definition of “the best” is: “only if every top 10 athlete starts”, then (apart from the fantastic aberration in Kona last year) there has never been a World Championship, ever. There’s always someone missing, through choice or injury.
If your definition of “the best” is: “must include the winner from last year” then very many IMWCs over the years fail that criterion: did that make them ‘underwhelming’ or ‘B level’? (Of course it didn’t)

Someone being key word here. Not the current WC, or Ryf, Haug, Phillips etc etc.

The Women’s IMWC in France is like comparing the UFC to a local fighting circuit. I am sure whoever wins will have the confidence, but KONA is where the ‘big dogs’ throw down. Will make KONA 2015 more interesting.Not clear what you are suggesting. Do you think Ryf, Haug, Philipp (note speeling) will NOT be racing Nice?
I’m suggesting they will be there racing to win (in between their T100 races), with the missing ones being LCB and probably Knibb given she has an Olympic torch to light and must stay fully focused on that ftw.
Nice is where the “big” b*****s (the ‘big’ ones are those who can manage 140.6 miles) throw down in 2024.
I have offered you upthread multiple occasions in the past where the current IMWC did not start, through choice or injury.
Not sure why you think IMWC 2015 was “more interesting”.
Will Kona 2024 be “not a World Championships” because Ditlev, Laidlow, Neumann, Frodeno, Keinle, RvB will not start*? Is Kanute now not going to race because he has T100?

  • I suggest most of those not retired will start, in between their T100 races.
93

If the likely bet is its only a matter of time before PTO fades away, how could anyone be so confident that that won’t happen in the next 7 months?

I think it’s in for a good 2-3 year run of 6-10 races a year and putting that product to market. Which as I’ve said, at that point if it fails, so be it. It will fail because no one gives a shit about triathlon not because we didn’t give it the best “college try” possible.

Actually I disagree with this. Strongbro-ly.
The PTO, if it fails it will be the result of missing away it’s seed money to pros who can never have enough. And I like them, don’t get me wrong. But I’ve got a sovereign wealth fund in Saudi Arabia to sell you, if you think that just buying a bunch of pros makes the groundwork for a success. They’ve spent much much more.

If what PTO wants is ownership of the broadcast to sell advertising, again they should buy what they want. The rights to market ITU, or Super League or even 70.3 races.

The things they want to broadcast already exist, the racers are already racing. You don’t need to throw money at them.

If PTO said they were going to buy major primetime TV for these five IM70.3 races or those 5 ITU races and then tripled the prize pot for those five races, you mean to tell me no one would have showed up?

The PTO has wasted millions of investor dollars with ZERO return other than a promise to waste millions more and hope someone takes notice.

Seriously, how terrible must their income statements look? I imagine many local races directors do a better job generating revenue!

It’s understandable that it can take years to become profitable. But it’s not like the PTO is “buying” a large number of cash spending customers who they will eventually make profitable. It’s not like they are building up this massive base of content that will be relevant for decades to tens of thousands of subscribers. The vast majority of their footage will never get looked at again in and significant numbers. No, what the PTO is doing is likely paying its staff well. And buying the rights to 40 athletes that only secures them the option to keep paying those athletes.

There’s nothing coming in! So I think when someone starts with a large pile of money for the good of the sport and only manages to make it small pile of money without bringing anything sustainable in, I see a negligent waste of investor resources that likely salts the earth for future investment.

That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the Pto or look forward to their races. I do. I want them to succeed. Whatever they are doing, it’s bizarre. If they stuck with the original line and simply said we are going to make an alternative to Ironman racing for pros and age groupers they’d actually look like they’d be trying to build something.

They’d have been better off buying out local races and growing them from the start and paying the race directors a salary to run the events for them. Instead they pass away money on the pros without building anything sustainable. Bizarre at best. Financially negligent at worst.

Thanks for these views. They are in line with mine. I don’t see anything sustainable being built other than fattening some pro athlete bank accounts (not a bad thing for them). But does the sport end up with something that is sustainable that can survive without investor cash.

If you rewind to 2007 (not really that long ago in sports terms), a bunch of people sat around and looked at an ancient sport (relatively) called cricket…they created a new league based on a young format that could be played in an evening versus over a day or over 5 days, packaged it up and now the league has a market value of $11B

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Premier_League

The highest value teams in the IPL with greater than $1B market value, have a higher market value than 6 MLB teams, 29 NHL team and all of MLS teams:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozanian/2022/04/26/indian-premier-league-valuations-cricket-now-has-a-place-among-worlds-most-valuable-sports-teams/?sh=896d98339514

That’s building a sustainable biz from a startup concept, where an old sport is squandering its base.

In the case of triathlon, I doubt it can be a spectator sport like cricket, so it has to build a sustainable stream off participants. How does T100 do that?

94

Is your IPL example though supporting the opportunity the PTO is doing here by going against the “tradational” sport of what cricket was or using as what PTO should’nt do? I’m not really sure what your IPL example is actually showing what can happen with startup companies.

I don’t think anyone on here has said the PTO is going to last. I think Lurker said 7 months, which I thought it was going to be about 2-3 years and then the big decisions will have to be made (enough time for the general public to basically accept it or not accept it). I take some issue with poster like Lurker calling this neglience though. That’s a big accusatory type of verbiage imo. I don’t think anyone in this adventure is behaving anywhere close to that type of accusatory language. You may not agree with how they are doing it, but I certainly don’t think they are acting neglectly. If they get 2-3 years of 6-10 races a year in front of the general public that’s not even close to neglience, that’s exactly the goal they want to accomplish. It may fail, but I don’t think it fails for the reasons you guys think it will. I think it fails because people won’t tune in (so no advertising / no one wanting to buy rights to it) and thus no need to continue to fund it . That’s a completely different outcome that what you guys are suggesting imo.

95

If the likely bet is its only a matter of time before PTO fades away, how could anyone be so confident that that won’t happen in the next 7 months?

I think it’s in for a good 2-3 year run of 6-10 races a year and putting that product to market. Which as I’ve said, at that point if it fails, so be it. It will fail because no one gives a shit about triathlon not because we didn’t give it the best “college try” possible.

Actually I disagree with this. Strongbro-ly.
The PTO, if it fails it will be the result of missing away it’s seed money to pros who can never have enough. And I like them, don’t get me wrong. But I’ve got a sovereign wealth fund in Saudi Arabia to sell you, if you think that just buying a bunch of pros makes the groundwork for a success. They’ve spent much much more.

If what PTO wants is ownership of the broadcast to sell advertising, again they should buy what they want. The rights to market ITU, or Super League or even 70.3 races.

The things they want to broadcast already exist, the racers are already racing. You don’t need to throw money at them.

If PTO said they were going to buy major primetime TV for these five IM70.3 races or those 5 ITU races and then tripled the prize pot for those five races, you mean to tell me no one would have showed up?

The PTO has wasted millions of investor dollars with ZERO return other than a promise to waste millions more and hope someone takes notice.

Seriously, how terrible must their income statements look? I imagine many local races directors do a better job generating revenue!

It’s understandable that it can take years to become profitable. But it’s not like the PTO is “buying” a large number of cash spending customers who they will eventually make profitable. It’s not like they are building up this massive base of content that will be relevant for decades to tens of thousands of subscribers. The vast majority of their footage will never get looked at again in and significant numbers. No, what the PTO is doing is likely paying its staff well. And buying the rights to 40 athletes that only secures them the option to keep paying those athletes.

There’s nothing coming in! So I think when someone starts with a large pile of money for the good of the sport and only manages to make it small pile of money without bringing anything sustainable in, I see a negligent waste of investor resources that likely salts the earth for future investment.

That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the Pto or look forward to their races. I do. I want them to succeed. Whatever they are doing, it’s bizarre. If they stuck with the original line and simply said we are going to make an alternative to Ironman racing for pros and age groupers they’d actually look like they’d be trying to build something.

They’d have been better off buying out local races and growing them from the start and paying the race directors a salary to run the events for them. Instead they pass away money on the pros without building anything sustainable. Bizarre at best. Financially negligent at worst.

Wow; pretty much spot on. Sadly it also reminds me in many ways of USAT. Financial integrity is not even considered.

96

Is your IPL example though supporting the opportunity the PTO is doing here by going against the “tradational” sport of what cricket was or using as what PTO should’nt do? I’m not really sure what your IPL example is actually showing what can happen with startup companies.

I don’t think anyone on here has said the PTO is going to last. I think Lurker said 7 months, which I thought it was going to be about 2-3 years and then the big decisions will have to be made (enough time for the general public to basically accept it or not accept it). I take some issue with poster like Lurker calling this neglience though. That’s a big accusatory type of verbiage imo. I don’t think anyone in this adventure is behaving anywhere close to that type of accusatory language. You may not agree with how they are doing it, but I certainly don’t think they are acting neglectly. If they get 2-3 years of 6-10 races a year in front of the general public that’s not even close to neglience, that’s exactly the goal they want to accomplish. It may fail, but I don’t think it fails for the reasons you guys think it will. I think it fails because people won’t tune in (so no advertising / no one wanting to buy rights to it) and thus no need to continue to fund it . That’s a completely different outcome that what you guys are suggesting imo.

In my example of IPL, they took a sport with a known method of getting revenue and mulitplied, it and created a $11B sports entity value.

I am not saying the TAM for triathlon is $11B. But at times Ironman’s market cap has been in the range of $1B using the age groupers/participants as the channel to generate revenue. Triathlon’s revenue base is from doers, not watchers as has been proven over roughly 50 years now.

T100 is trying to generate a model off watchers, not doers. Maybe this is what I am saying is challenging. If they just created a path to build a better business that is sustainable of revenue from doers (may be more than entry fees, but I don’t know how much they can make from merchandising and social media channels and advertising linked to participants) then I think there may be a better chance.

Or just buy Ironman and get it over with???

97

T100 is trying to generate a model off watchers,

And the PTO has gone from what 2 races (not including CC ) in '22 to what 3 in '23 and now 6-8 in '24. Aren’t they doing exactly what they should be doing in order to put this product in front of the masses and letting that be the judge of if they can gain advertisers / rights?

That’s why I’m kinda scratching my head at some of the commentary…they are accomplishing what they have sat out to do. But because they didn’t add AG to it’s ledger, that’s the issue?

98

I remember reading an article that said Harley Davidson and Ironman were two brands where buyers of the product/service loved the brand so much they were willing to get a tattoo on their body for life. That’s allegiance to the brand/user experience. Through the difficult business process of running races, that are not scalable (at least not scalable from location to location life software or media streaming) Ironman built a biz that has stood the test of time and has been valued in the 100’s of millions range (up to over a billion).

I get that incremental revenue from viewers is literally “free” once you invest in the production, not unlike scaling software, however, it assumes there is a super high untapped market of eyeballs for the T100 variant of “the show”. In the case of IPL they were literally able to tap into an aggregate market of 1.4 billion humans who already had an interest in cricket they just had to create the right product. What I am saying is triathlon does not have a high volume of people who care to watch so no matter how much free scaling you have for a streaming service, there just are not enough eyeballs who care (like in the case of cricket with 2.8B eyeballs interested) .

I do hope that I am dead wrong and more people than I think want to watch T100/PTO and pay for that and then PTO does well with revenue and can keep investing in the sport. That would be ideal!!!

99

My only push back is in the idea that PTO is running a bad business model, when in fact they are accomplishing exactly what they have sought out to do- create a professional series and take it to market.

So it may not be successful, and I agree with that. But this idea that they’ve mismanaged things, I don’t think is very fair or very accurate. That “mismanagement” isn’t what is going to led this to not being successful; the lack of buy in from the general public will be the reason why investors don’t stay in this long term imo. So that failure is far different than the narrative you guys are suggesting is going on imo.

100

My only push back is in the idea that PTO is running a bad business model, when in fact they are accomplishing exactly what they have sought out to do- create a professional series and take it to market.

So it may not be successful, and I agree with that. But this idea that they’ve mismanaged things, I don’t think is very fair or very accurate. That “mismanagement” isn’t what is going to led this to not being successful; the lack of buy in from the general public will be the reason why investors don’t stay in this long term imo. So that failure is far different than the narrative you guys are suggesting is going on imo.

I think you and I are in alignment. PTO is doing what they want to do. My question is if there are enough eyeballs out there who will get interested enough in their series to make it self sustaining and a big media growth play. In my example, IPL became a massive media growth play that could scale revenue without scaling cost. Right now PTO cost exceed revenue so the question is how they scale the revenue so that costs per unit revenue goes down and drops below the 1:1 ratio in the future.