Yeh Jack isn't terrible but should really be there to support the other 2 for opinions. The race format and distance for me is the fundamental problem. I don't think I could get even my distance running friends to watch this. But my non sport friends would watch Superleague/mixed team relay.


It's the age-old challenge with longer distance triathlon - there's not a lot going on and you have to somehow make watching paint dry exciting and amazing!

I just wrapped up two days of NCAA Track & Field Live Commentary for RunnerSpace, and watched some of the PTO T100 racing.

With Track & Field every new race, I have new stories and new dynamics, and unknowns to talk about and talk to. In Field Event Coverage, it can come down to one jump or throw that can decide the outcome of the whole Event - or when a Vertical Jumper has 2 misses, and their back to the wall on the third and final attempt - the drama, is kind of baked in!

In the few times that I have been involved in Long Distance Triathlon Commentary - it's been challenging to keep the drama up, when not a heck of a lot is going on . . . for very long stretches of time!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Another idea to add interest in this format would be to give 2 time bonuses, like a 1 minute short chute. One could be for the swim exit and the other one could be at 40km of the bike. The 40km one might need some new rules to manage it like a draft legal zone for the 1km leading up to it - that would be quite exciting if you could engineer some tactics and excitement around that section of the race.

Roger that
That would be best too as you have to cover your travel and expenses.

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Technique will always last longer then energy production. Improve biomechanics, improve performance.
http://Www.anthonytoth.ca, triathletetoth@twitter

Hear me out. This race distance is both too long, and too short to be exciting. There's not enough distance to cover for there be enough changes to create a racing product around. Ironman? It's long enough where it can be a chess game often enough. 70.3 (it's 13 more Kilometers) is slightly longer, so mistakes can still happen.

The next thing though is course design, a race track could lend to a great race broadcast product. But you need a map with dots to go along with the leaderboard and estimated speed on the graphic. I say could because yesterday there were either not enough cameras or the director didn't cut the race well. Not sure what it was. So how many laps is optimal, I think the distance of each lap matters and dare I say scenery is nice to look at. Even IMAZ, valley of the PR has over 2500 feet of climbing on the bike and 350 ft or so on the run. Yesterday the gain was 0. Remember, the Tour de France and Ironman Hawaii are also tourism advertisements. Nothing about yesterday made me want to go Miami.

I think you probably need to have a bike course that ends up being between 4 and 8 laps instead of 15-20. Then your run laps can be shorters, but that should max out at like 8 laps. You want these spectactable but you know what I didn't see yesterday? Spectators. I think they don't understand that amateurs want to take a shower after their race.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

The next thing though is course design, a race track could lend to a great race broadcast product.

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You need true "road" courses like almost every F1 track is that actually has elevation gains over what 3-4km worth of track. Miami, Daytona "road" course don't even really qualify as true motosport "road" courses (even though I know they do the 24 hours of Daytona on the "road" course). A race track like Abu Dhabi has enough elevation gain, there's a track in california that has "hilly" terrain. That type of track facility would offer much better "tactic" opportunities while still pretty much being easy to broadcast.

It’s why San Fran course will tell me a lot about what is important for pto. Just putting out a course or will they want some profile to improve the racing.

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

Athletes who do not start (DNS), do not finish (DNF) or are disqualified (DSQ) receive 0 points https://t100triathlon.com/pro-series-explainer/

other hot takes from the race

most racers come from Short Course which really pushes the swim. Many guys who did not make the front pack were front pack in Nice WC : Rudy Von Berg, Mignon, and Weiss which show that there is a gap between LD and SD athletes... which can nonetheless be bridged as SL showed

in BWB Margirier who raced the French Grand Prix for several years with Metz said that his run weakness prevented him from getting better than a 15th place in the Grand Prix. Although, il was amazed that he did not ask for a relay, ironically Ali is famous for being quite vocal about the need for relays in his olympic career.
His coach is also Dorian Coninx's.

I was quite amazed that Leon Chevalier who rode over 45 km/h in Cozumel was not able to keep up with Sam Long.

The Dutch duo really made the most of their wild cards

Replying to the thread in general:

Great racing! 10/10 commentary, but otherwise disappointing coverage - mainly due to the sound issues, and the fact that there was no leaderboard whatsoever until well into the bike section of the men's race. And then the PTO always promised to show us... ah never mind.

Sam Long. Absolutely fantastic race. You can still have "teh suck" at the swim and finish second, but you have to have the day's second bike (by the slimmest of margins) and second run. Also, it helps if people are dropping like flies and you aren't.

Magnus Ditlev. Top professional in the sport. Has a magnificent team. Takes care of every detail. Has balls of steel. Wins deservedly. Gets outrun by a self-coached Sam Long.

Alistair Brownlee. Different tactics than normal, but the usual result.

India Lee. She had been flying under my radar, but I'm stupid.

LCB. Was kind enough to finish exactly where I placed her.

The finisher zone scene with Kat Matthews and India Lee. Matthews getting the ultimate consolidation from Lee's win. Beautiful.

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

Sonoma, which I mentioned earlier in this thread. Honestly would be a great location, it has access to the Bay. I don't think the SF course will be anything remarkable. Probably less remarkable than the actual Escape course. But if they did use a similar course that's 3000 feet elevation on the bike, so it could be fun, or not because I don't really have faith.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

I think the T100 is going to run into this issue, and we already saw it happen in Miami. They are trying to promote themselves to the world and get a following while also still "figuring it out" all in a very tight what ~3 year window. Losing audio for whatever reason is just really bad. So they are going to have growing pains in a time period where they sorta need everything to be buttoned up without many more "oops" for the longterm viability of their product/brand/race.

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

Let's stick to the 2/80/18km aggregate distance.

What if you divided it into multiple "events" each separated by 3 min. You award a score based on placements after each event. You deduct from the score if someone does not make a time cut from the winner.

Maybe something like

Event 1: 1500m swim
Event 2: 400m swim + 20km bike (bonus points to first to 5km)
Event 3: 40km bike (maybe bonus points offered at 5km to heat up the pace, then again at 20km). send them off in order of Event 2 completion
Event 4: 4 km run + 20km bike+ 4km run (bonus points to first at 1.5 km on the run and first to 5km on bike)
Event 5: 10km run

Award points that go 50, 45, 40, 35, 30, 28, 26, 24, 22, 20, 19, 18, 17.......0 per event. Deduct points if you finish too far behind on any leg. Highest number of points wins. Some bonus points for lowest aggregate times.

The Tour de France had the same problem ages ago when they ran it like RAAM. Everyone started and then they rode around france. It as in the age before live media, so people people bought "L'Equipe" sports newspaper to read about the standings. The problem was the standings never changes after a few days. So then they introduced stages, Then they introduces jerseys, daily awards etc and converted the worlds most boring "paint drying" event into something the live media would care about. Now people in France come home and tune in for the final 60 min right after work before dinner.

In terms of aggregate time, maybe the same athlete wins, but suddenly all the tactics to accrue points in each of the 5 events becomes interesting and "worth watching" and the aggregate time thing becomes another category but secondary to overall score . Going around the T100 tour, offer one event per stop that has 100 points base versus 50 points base to reward different athlete strengths at different races.

It gets incredibly uninteresting for me. Your Cricket analogy was one of the reasons why Test cricket either draws 120k or 5 birds.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Re: Leon Chevalier. Most likely explanations:
i. He crashed pretty badly on the bike
ii. He's still very much in base training, I assume that, like several others, he just came to "tick a box" and get over with 1 of his 6 races and see where he stood knowing he was not in top race shape just yet, meanwhile, Sam Long said he was targeting this race
iii. He went to Lanzarote for a short camp not too long ago but has been training in Bath where the weather has been really cold so def not as used to he heat as Sam Long

Repeating this won't make it true. If there is no wind, then there is a minor drafting effect at 20m. But on a windy day like this, the "draft" moves left or right by many meters before it hits the next rider. There's zero draft effect at 20m on a windy day like this except for the brief moments when it is at zero and 180 degrees.

I think something like this is a great idea, and is probably the only chance of mainstream success with long course triathlon. The point about repeated instances of suspense and drama is a really good point. Even golf has each shot as a moment where something awesome could happen, and then scores after each hole.

I think the races this weekend were good and I'm really excited about the T100 season. They key is getting the best to race each other many times per year.

However, besides the better fields, the experience of following the race was not very different than a 70.3, and both can be quite boring to watch for much of the race, especially the middle to end of the bike.

This is fine (and great compared to what we had a few years ago) for someone really into triathlon like me, but there's no way this is going to catch on with casual sports fans in the current race and broadcast format.

One other thought I had is that the run seems to create the most drama, at least on the men's side, when someone like West or Long is running much faster than everyone else at the same time some people are bonking and starting to jog. A shorter bike leg relative to the run leg would give this drama even more opportunity to play out as the faster runners would be not as far behind or have longer to catch up. Switching the order of events by race would also let this same catch up drama occur with different athletes each race (e.g. Sam Long leads for 2.5 hours and then gets caught on the swim by Ditlev).

Agree - great run from Sam Long, he looks lean and mean, also came across a bit more mature in the interviews post-race. Maybe fatherhood has done him well - and hope to see more top battles with him going forward. He can´t afford to be dropped 4 min on the swim however, not in Miami - not elsewhere...

That said, Magnus had a super shitty week, leading into the race (see his IG), and the fact that he didn´t attack earlier/harder on the bike was a deliberate choice, still got to take the victory - so smart racing IMO.

Slowtwitch overthinks everything,,,The race format doesn't need fixing.

Agree 100%, race itself was the best part of what we saw. Commentators were the best what we heard.

The broadcasting (audio tech issue & lighting issue, no graphics of laps, kms, anybody beyond top10) and lack of spectators / fans need fixing.

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Yep,the cool high tech production and it's delivery is what needs work. The athletes are doing their jobs well,the race day commentators and pre/post race media is getting better all the time. The only problem is the delivery.

We should all have learned by now that triathlon will never be a mainstream sport. It is a lifestyle sport for those competing and a novelty sport for those viewing from the outside. This isn't going to change no matter how many bells and whistles are thrown at it. We have seen this from the old F1 series in Oz and the current Super League series (and even the Surf Ironman series in Oz).

It has been proven that your statement above is simply false.

There have been extensive studies about drafting now that CFD is readily commercially available? (hard to find a wind tunnel that are long enough)

Feel free to start with this:

https://www.trainerroad.com/forum/t/you-guys-seen-this-drafting-studies/49065


Even having a car behind you provides a bit of savings. Hence the recent controversy at Tour time trials with a bunch of race directors stacking their cars with like 10 spare bikes.


More importantly, it matches what we all feel when are racing. Even at 20 m there is an effect.

I don't think you read BigBoyND's post carefully.

His point is that the crosswind negates the (already diluted) draft effect at 20 m.

The thread you linked to links to an article that says that the study ignored the impact of wind:


I'd say it was definitely not one of "majority of days" referred to by Dr. Blocken, and the crosswind was a large fraction of the riding speed. Also I'd hypothesize that it has a bigger impact on a rider hanging 20 m behind than on a peloton.

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

I agree I think Margirier executed ~as good a race as he could have. Brownlee should've taken some pulls but it wouldn't have done Margirier any good to waste his best discipline, let more people ride up to the front, & leave with an even bigger crew out of T2. He got Brownlee back & would've been 2nd if Sam Long didn't have such a strong run. He ran 6/14 in the field. That's not bad but West outran him by 4min, Long by almost 3. He's a podium contender in an honest race. Not sure a tactical race favors him until his run is a little stronger.

Re-read what you quote again, because I don't think it provides the argument that you think it is providing.

BTW, some of our local bike CFD researches did a similar study and concluded that even at draft legal distance the drafting effect is NOT negligible (can't find the link, and it might have been 12 m), if you add more bicycles ahead of you the effect is increased. It is not 20% savings, but 2-3%..possibly. I love CFD, I do CFD modeling in the real world (not for bicycles) and have used it to assist with the design and construction of a few hundred $ millions of infrastructure, so I love discussing and arguing all aspects of it. If anyone would care to sponsor a study, I would be more than happy to develop a model and test whatever wind speed, number of riders, spacing ,etc.

An alternative to the rabbit hole: ask any pro triathlete (I have talked to a few) if it is their experience that the savings are zero riding 20 m behind a guy or group of guys at 50 kph versus riding 100% solo.

I absolutely read what I quoted. I quoted the entire thing, including where the doc downplays the significance of cross wind, because when she does downplay the cross wind, she does so in a way that does not correspond to the sort of situation we saw in Miami.

Also I didn't want to just cherry pick a snippet that I liked (the one that discloses that the study was done in no-wind conditions).

I do agree the draft effect at 20 m is still quite significant in general. But BigBoyND's point (which I like) is that it is not significant in a strong cross wind.

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

By "crosswind", I assume that we are talking about yaw angles? Maybe something lost in translation, but the way I read it, it is a response as to why the study was done at 0 yaw angle (i.e. this does not mean, there was zero wind velocity in the model, a CFD model of external aerodynamics does not make any sense if a fluid is not moving over a surface..unless we are doing heat transfer but that's another can of worms) At 50 kph (Margirie average) I don't see how you could end up with a yaw angle greater than 10 degrees at the wind speeds we had on race day (even then, this would not make the reduction zero)

ETA: wind speed on race day was recorded as predominant S at 20 kmh. Looking at track orientation and doing a simple vector analysis indicates that steady yaw angles would have been predominantly in the ~5-10 degree range, and again, this does not cancel drag reduction from the body in front you disturbing the air.. I know triathletes and cyclists love measuring winds using the "awesome and epic" scales, but at the end of the day, it has been accurately modeled as a vector for centuries ;-)

My point remains the same, AB was saving a few significant watts by riding 20 m behind Margirier at 50 kph. This matches physical and empirical data as well computer models using bodies of similar scales.

It's odd- Sam has always been good in the opressive heat. Past performances in Chattanooga, Idaho come to mind.

It was an odd dynamic in Miami - 1st and 2nd place men were both 6'4, 80+ kg type guys- that theoretically should be disadvantaged on an 85+ degree, high humidity day. So how do you make sense of it?

I guess it was just power rider's drag race course, favoring topline watts (vs kg), that it was to the advantage to the 400+ FTP guys. Saw on sam's Strava he did 350W in miami (before he hid his power file) and you'd have to imagine Magnus was similar. Throw in the spikes in the corners and their normalized power was probably +/ 365, which is still going to be a more manageable IF of .85-.9 for those guys over 100 minutes.

Others were probably closer to IF 1 and just cooked themselves trying to maintain contact. Ali has shown he cannot handle the heat historically, but he should have probably had enough ceiling coming off of the bike to run well.