The people, the races, the athletes, the venues, the career it's given me and so many other athletes.
I simply can't say enough about Loreen and the crew, amazing.
The following 2cents is meant to be constructive.
In my opinion it's time to make some changes.
Less athletes = more exciting. Races with 75 athletes in it lead to boring bike races. The swimming standard is so close now that it's one long string of athletes with very few gaps. Out of the water that string rarely breaks from the front to the back and if it does the overwhelming numbers simply swallow up the front pack and the "mass" rides to transition in one big pack, chaos ensues in transition because we have no unwritten rules (more on that later) and the running race begins. Less athletes = smaller packs on the bike, more exciting races, less crashes and more dynamic racing. Breakaways are exciting, small packs chasing each other is exciting. Large amoebae like packs rolling along eating up all the other packs... isn't very exciting.
"yes but how do we reduce the number of athletes, we already have 50+ waiting lists for WCS races".
ITT for Pole position. Follow Forumla One's lead, or take a page from Tennis. Fridays (or saturday) athletes race an individual prologue (ITT) for "pole position" IN SUNDAYS MAIN EVENT (a classic WCS Olympic distance race) How about a 300meter swim, 7k technical bike, 2k run. With the fastest 50 athletes race the WCS race on Sunday, anyone eliminated races a continental cup that morning so no ones flying all the way to Beijing (or Sydney, or..) for a ITT. If you can't get access to the course (Sydney Opera House can't be easy to commender for an extra day) then find a pool with a big parking lot. And televise it. It creates more excitement, provides a great opportunity to profile each athlete, sets qualifiable time standards for athlete development and with a technical bike theoretically it ensures that athletes with bike skills race the main event. The fittest athletes will qualify for the WCS race, new athletes will get a chance and old buggers who have just accumulated enough points to perennially be invited will have to qualify just like everyone else. damn it.
No more orange cones. Every time I see an orange cone in an ITU race I'm reminded we're still such a young sport, can you imagine orange cones in a cycling classic? And cones as turn arounds? that's one step away from try a tri's . What happened in Sydney, where athletes were able to crash into the oncoming lane SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN. Can you imagine if your sports biggest and brightest stars, Javier and the Brownlees, the Emma's and Miss Findlay were struck head on by an athlete crossing the center line, held back by a small orange traffic cone. Can you imagine if they were seriously injured by an athlete going the other direction who crossed or crashed into on coming athletes. This should not be possible. Everything and anything should be done to ensure this can't happen. No 180's (they look ridiculous) and courses should either never loop back on themselves or be required 100% to have barriers between lanes (think of the signage opportunities..).
Unwritten rules. Athletes, it's time we had some unwritten rules, an etiquette that is followed and respected. Let's start with unwritten rule #1, an athlete never ever comes to the front into transition if they haven't been near the front of the pack the entire race. An unwritten understanding that work is rewarded (even unsuccessful breakaways) with "pole position" going into transition, a maintaining of position. It's CHAOS and it's dangerous. If athletes do the work on the bike, respect dictates that those athletes lead into transition. Sit at the back then stay at the back going into transition. OBVIOUSLY this is unquantifiable, hence it's unwritten. It's a matter of respect and safety. It's time to evolve.
Race suits. The new race uniform rules are great. The country colours, being able to ID athletes, their country and if they did a good job with the logo's hopefully their sponsors, is great. Fantastic Job. Now please don't take it too far and hand over all of our logo rights to the federations. There's a balance to be had, the rights of the individual athlete and the rights of the federations. Triathlon Canada has our back, literally, their logo is on our back. They gives us tremendous support, they couldn't do more for their top athletes, they have our back and we've recognized that with their logo. Dear other federations, your athletes have a right to make a living too, the plethora of paid federation administrators can't be the only ones making a real living.....
Or ignore me. Its possible I'm just getting old and senile.
and I apologize for my grammatical indifference and poor sentence structure, my ability to write has been seriously hampered by my lack of post secondary education (I left to race in France) and twitter where you can find me at www.twitter.com/simonwhitfield where you'll find 124 characters (top 124 qualify, last 16 have to wait for the next tweet) of even more random bs.
I had an inkling a few years back that they were going to have to sooner or later split the World Cups into divisions, because there were simply too many athletes. Of course, they then brought in the Dextro series, effectively making two levels of racing. Now it seems, as you've said, that they will inevtiably have to split it again.
ReplyDeleteCourtney touched on it in that recent interview. I hope ITU consider these two great verterans have put forward!
***Q: Aaron Thomas via Facebook: As a growing sport triathlon has changed dramatically from what it was 10 years ago and so forth, if there could be one thing you could change now at this moment that will impact the future of ITU triathlon, what would it be?
CA: Personally I would like to see an evolution in the design of Triathlon at the top ITU level to make it even more appealing to spectators. I have always believed that triathlon should reward the best all round swim - bike - runner in equal proportion.
My personal vision would be:
- Olympic event with heats and finals.
- Where you take the field of 50. Split into two heats of 25 on the first day of competition and take only the top 10 from each heat to a final limited to the best 20. - A final at the Olympic Games of swim - bike - run - swim - bike - run continuous where each leg is of approx equivalent time portion to make a race between 60-90mins (eg. 750m - 8km - 3km - 750m - 8km - 3km)
- the best person with the ability to swim bike and run the best with greatest endurance and speed would win.
To be honest I would think the guys who would win this type of format are the ones winning ITU WCS races now anyhow, but the racing would be on more compact courses, pace would be flat out all the time and the changes in lead would offer crowds 60 mins of pure action.
Remember this is just an off the cuff personal idea. I love the fact that ITU are proactive and motivated to see the Teams race reach the Olympic level. This race also offers heaps of fast excitement.****
I love the fact that you are still apologizing for your grammatical errors after 3+ years of blogging. The content is always great, regardless of the grammar. Write more!
ReplyDeleteFantastic, really.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a big fan of the heat. Honestly, I think that ITU need to start to design better course, that's it. And yes, we already have Two divisions in ITU. Huge different in the field between WCS and WC.
ReplyDeleteOk, if we take the most exciting race of the last season... it was kitzbuel, why? because the bike was hard. Hills make the race more fair because you can't hide that time and you need to push some watts. So, stronger cyclists can try something.
I tend to disagree here...
ReplyDelete1. Less Athletes is probably the last thing ITU racing needs at this point. You've got a sport that really doesn't generate that much money/interest at this point to justify that. You make a point that courses are crowded, but honestly one of the best ways to fix that is to just lengthen the bike to something like 80-100k to allow for actual bike racing. As it stands now, you CAN break away in a 40k or hold a break, but why the hell would you? The distance you'd be able to open up is either A. easily countered and/or B. going to leave you with no legs to fight back on the run. Large packs of everyone riding on their hoods going semi-slow isn't exciting, but neither is watching 20 guys from a small handful of countries.
2. You're definitely on to something with qualifying, but I don't think ITT is the way to go. Random draw heats the day before however, definitely could be. Mostly again for the generating interest factor. I really hope big time championship racing in the future moves to this kind of standard and away from the cowardly, "It'll ruin our race the next day attitude." Don't make it as long, but still, make it so that competition is thriving.
3. Cones... Yea that's pretty embarrassing. Course designs I've seen range from pretty good to downright terrible. Having the bike official say that a 180° turn is challenging is just foolish. Yes it's hard(more annoying than anything), but it's incredibly boring to race with/watch.
4. That's competition for ya and following rules like that only detracts from the excitement of watching the races. Again, this issue could be solved by addressing another issue, the bike is just too short and encourages packs that never break.
4. Not really sure what this one is addressing exactly.
5. What is a professional triathlete? Why aren't people on salary? What is the incentive to compete? I get it, if I want to be great, then I'll follow my dreams and maybe the stars will align and it'll be worth it... in reality, unless I'm independently wealthy, I'd be putting myself in a very foolish position. It doesn't have to be that way and once enough people realize that, then the sport can evolve into respectable levels. Don't take that as me saying I don't respect people like Simon Whitfield, that's absolutely far from it, it's just the structure of high end triathlon is deplorable compared to other sports. How many people can honestly say that make a livable income off their racing? 10 people... in the world... maybe? What should happen is independent race organizations, governed by the ITU holding races. These organizations need to actively pursue outside-the-sport industries for sponsorship and actually market this as something entertaining to watch to John Doe.
One of triathlon's most iconic moments:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hy-vee/4055716452/in/photostream/
Just another weekend in cycling:
http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/573536/canc2.jpg
Where are the spectators? Or rather, where are the people that allow for money to be put into the sport? Say you don't do contracted racing with minimum salaries and travel expenses paid... it's still absolutely shameful that race directors can pull in millions of dollars in profit from one big race and have athlete's getting paid a few thousand a few places deep.
I will say, it does look like an effort is being made, but still a very limited one. Triathletes need to move away from the idea that people want to see the individual accomplishments of one person- the strongest man wins... and more of the most competitive person wins some high stakes game.
I think I'm rambling at this point though...
I completely agree! thanks taking the time to write those suggestions on (virtual) paper..
ReplyDeleteI wish I had your post secondary education. Thank you for blogging. I am more educated about the sport, about your passion for sport, competition, Olympic athletes, and a world full of athletes. I could go on about your musical taste and great videos....but I digress.
ReplyDelete