But let me ask the other way do you go to work if your contract says we pay you only if you get a certain benefit for us.

Kacper Stepniak to race in T100 Singapore based on a wildcard. He finished 7th there last year.

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"FTP is a bit 2015, don't you think?" - Gustav Iden

In her Triathlonish newsletter today Kelly O'Mara did a good write up on the financial side of this you've been hammering PTO/T100/Mortiz on for the last few years.

It’s a good write up but nothing we don’t suspect. PTO’s cash burn is high and they are definitely won’t be seeing a profit anytime soon but most tech startups tend to be forgiven for this as long as they have a growth trajectory.

The challlenge for PTO is that they ain’t a tech startup so investors might not have so much patience. My guess the next 2 and maybe 3 years will be critical for them. That big broadcasting contract must come otherwise money will dry up. Investors as she rightly put it have a 5-7 timeline and they want to exit.

In addition to Knibb choosing not to race...I think it's accepted that Dan Lorang is her coach. He doesn't seem like the "fuck it let's go halfway around the world to race tomorrow" type. I can't see this being more serious than, I wonder if I could do it - hey, the timing kind of works - but there was no upside for Knibb really and lots of downside in my view. You could legitimately argue that the PTO was looking out for one of their best "assets" by not encouraging this with a $10K carrot.

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DFRU - Detta Family Racing Unit...the kids like it and we all get out and after it...gotta keep the fam involved!

I thought this was more of a "of course we can't, but let's ask" hail mary. Of course it was never going to work out. You don't do this type of planning on the fly with that tight of a window. Like no duh she was never going to be able to pull this off for a myriad of valid reasons, so if we are putting blame on parties for not pulling it off......That seems completely unnecessary. Nothing was gained or lost by Knibb not racing, at some point you gotta lay in the bed you make. No harm, no foul more social media "urban legend" fodder. Sorta easy to put all the blame on PTO in this scenario because well Knibb wanted to do it, so shame on PTO for not allowing her....meh.

The bigger fuck up to me was WTCS straight up cancelling the entire weekend, that raises far more questions than shitting on PTO for not flying an athlete last min half way around the world to do a triathlon race.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Following the Series A in which Moritz invested 12.5M (after the 10M grant) the profit share went to 50%. So following Series B the profit share was cut by 17%. Clear to me that this is not an athlete owned company (not that it ever was, they didn't have much at the table, sorry but globally the cache of even a Blummenfelt isn't enough to give him equity at this level, this isn't Michael Jordan or even Stephen Curry).

I've seen this before, the athletes have a responsibility every time there is funding round, and they aren't meeting it. So every time they fail to meet their burden of the funding round their shares get diluted. This happens in bigger sports when leagues are struggling and/or [are] start ups and the team owners have to centrally fund league operations through capital calls.

Effectively at some point the athletes will own 0% (not that they owned anything). The question is, what becomes the guaranteed pay out long term if they don't have a profit share. Right now there are contracts and prize money that are sunk costs. But my supposition here is that eventually those are strictly from profits.

Also making the assumption that this will be a 600M valuation is pretty ridiculous given how small Triathlon is. If you look at the MLS, MLS teams when Beckham was signed for $250M (weird contract structure) MLS teams were trading for less than $20M. They had spent almost 300M by 2007 (maybe 400M) and they were not valued as a league at close to 1B.


Sports valuations are interesting, Angel City is supposedly valued at 130M, but there is infighting in the ownership because the eclectic group of investors is trying to get out as it is costing them a lot. Mind, they made 31M in revenue last year and they're spending a ton more. Their costs compared to other NWSL teams is kinda wild too.

Point is to say, there isn't that interest in Triathlon that there is in F1 or Soccer, and Triathlon already has the Oil Money involved, so it doesn't have much more to go I think.

At the end of the day being a mass participation sport is ok.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

I see Sam Long is attempting to do Oceanside and Singapore back to back.

Not sure what his season plan is but he really seems to be front loading it? If this is the case I don't know why he's potentially sabotaging the T100 race by competing at Oceanside.

You would assume he would try get 3 good results in the first few races and then take it easy/take a break before prepping for the grand final at the end of the season.

Now if he has a shit Singapore he's going to have to get up for another race. Seems strange to me unless he's trying to Q for Taupo as well??

Because T100 isn't as valuable as people think. As stated clearly in a bunch of threads. 6 Appearances but only 4 results matter.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Actually I think t100 is as valuable as you the athlete put into it. If you think you’re going to race bare min events and go race full IM series, something will have to give. If you go all in on this series and race max races to get max score and block other athletes, you will find huge success.

So I think it’s all in how each athlete views it.

I think it’s almost a given they’ll have closer to 30 athletes next year w so many coming off Wtcs series either full time or first 2 years in non qualification period.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Committing to 6 races is putting a lot into it.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Really doubt they will have 30 athletes for each gender. All this means incremental cost which serves no purpose. Top 20 fighting it out is exciting enough. Think the problem is getting all top 20 committing and having that season long narrative

I'd assume Sam has already qualified for Taupo?

I think he's racing for glory in Oceanside. He's racing for points and victory in Singapore. He has a decent chance of a 2nd or 3rd in Singapore if a couple competitors get unlucky with travel, humidity, local food/water issues.

I see Miami as an early season play on the fact that the field was a little less deep, early season fitness and humidity. I see the same thing being the case in Singapore.

I'd give the win in Singapore to Alistar though. I think he'll be a little more run fit, and be a little less stupid on the run this time. He keeps racing like he's breaking people early on in a 10k, but he's only just breaking himself in the last half of his 18k. Why he doesn't just run with the leader and then kick in the last 5k is beyond me. He's not going to break a well paced and practiced long distance athlete with his early-run leads.

Either that or he's pulling a season long Laidlow narrative of blowing up when you let him run away. And eventually he'll hold it together the entire time and shock the field.

How is Brownlee in heat?

Think it will be hot and/or humid in Singapore?

I think this year will basically filter out the half in / half out athletes; the ones who race the "mimimum" requirements. Add in the WTCS athletes that filter in their spots next year and I think you'll get to the point where T100 is an legit series where 90% of the athletes are "all in" for most of the events. The T100 is going to let the athletes decide how successful they want to be, and I think the ones who want to race all race distances and series are going to end up cramming a lot of races in a short period of time.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Brownlee said in interviews post Miami that he thought he's be fine and he felt fine the first few laps and then he felt himself starting to redline so he had to back it off and walk some aid stations and that at his age he wasn't going to keep pushing when he redlines it anymore. He expected he could slow his pace and then hopefully go with Magnus when he caught him, but he was unable to when he got caught. He also said he's only had 3 weeks of run volume if I recall. I'd expect him to be a lot better. But by the same token I should expect that or Magnus or Sam Long as well.

I do wonder what Sam's heat prep was. It clearly isn't training on cold dry desert mornings.

HaHa!!!!!

T100 Miami had:

1. A 2x Olympic Gold medalist
2. Current IM World Champion
3. Current IM 70.3 World Champion
4. Current 140.6 record holder
5. A 2x IM 70.3 WC second place finisher

ETA: And only 1 of those 5 dudes ended up on the Podium!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Pink? Maybe. Maybe not. You decide.

If it had Knibb, Laura, Sodaro, Spivey, Haug, etc. would it have been deeper?

If it had Van Riel, Gomez and Neuman would it have been deeper?

"a little less deep" != "weak field"

Incidentally, when I typed t100 male start list in google, the initial search suggestion was t100 testosterone booster. HAHA. From "paid time off", "parent teacher organization" to "banned drugs for athletes". I wonder if anyone suggested the EPO100?

Yes & no. Sam is fit rn & raced & won before T100 Miami. So maybe he's riding that out at these early season races. He grew up on IM racing so maybe he couldn't resist not going to the unofficial 1st big race of the year. One of the narratives for the PTO Tour will be if people who arrive fit & ready to race early can carry that fitness throughout the entire year. It's a hard thing to do & Sam Long hasn't shown that kind of consistency in the past. I would be skipping Oceanside, especially after that 1st big result in Miami. It's right that you need to fulfill the T100 appearances & that you don't necessarily have to do well in all of them. But it gets harder in harder when you add races on top of the series. The best athletes can peak 2-3 times/year. I'm not sure adding in some IM races puts you in a better position to hit in the right # of PTO races. We'll see. It's certainly going to be entertaining.

Glad to hear AB is in midseason form about he's only ran for 3 weeks, did he call the other athletes, wankers for full affect? I think he's been using the "I havent even properly run trained" for 10+ years, even while smoking the wtcs world's best for many of those years.

#ABspeak

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

I definitely agree with your analysis. Oceanside is all about glory and attention. But I can't help look at the overall season like it's a race itself from March to November/December. Sam likes to say he trains and races well at high intensity, but I would be worried about him digging himself into a hole. I suppose it is possible he's going to just make Oceanside into a training day and not compete for the win though. Why not if that's the case? But otherwise if he's racing for the win (or if he smells blood and pushes himself beyond what he intends to), I would worry he might put himself in a Brownlee-running sized hole that takes a few races to recover from. If you're in second place, what can you do to ensure you stay at that level or advance? Is the answer to do back to back weekends of races?

Ya I really don’t understand this move. Capitalizing on good fitness? The paycheck for the win isn’t that huge and unless he’s going to throw in some fulls he won’t score well in the im pro series anyway. We will have to wait and see how it will affect him but I could see this being one of those mistakes people make who coach themselves and don’t have anyone to be a voice of reason.

Here's how I make sense of it:

The day of the Oceanside race he was planning on doing a long training day anyway. Then the next day heading over to LAX for his Singapore flight.

So he does a nice promotional appearance for the sponsors and fans at Oceanside and gets in the top 10. Gets some attention on the webcast with people talking about his name. And doesn't over do it. Then heads the next day to Singapore via LAX.

I'm sure he's capable of handling the volume. Afterall, we had Gustav and Blu doing heavy volume in the heat a couple days before Kona and placing well. But then Gustav fell apart in St George and all the next year, and getting off the bike in Kona Blu said he felt empty and couldn't contend with Gustav or Laidlow for the win.

So being able to do the volume and getting the best possible performance out of oneself with the volume are two different things. Let alone the possibility of injury or other unseen fatigue issues setting in at a later day because of the long season.

Kristian Blummenfelt wasn’t there.