So you're bothered that the federation might use this as a benefit to offer the pros who are a part of their program? What's wrong with that?

There are pros who have chosen to develop their abilities within the federation short course structure and those that haven't.

I don't disagree the potential for political BS is there. But at the end of the day it's still going to be an elite athlete that gets a slot. And if the federations can use these handful of slots to actually provide a benefit to the pros under their stable, what is wrong with that?

I'm still not seeing it other than disliking the federations for reasons, which I don't disagree with; but that's got nothing to do with the federation passing on a slot to someone who toes their line. If the federation says in order to accept our PTO slot you need to buy a federation race kit that doesn't have your sponsors on it, but has federation sponsors on it, oh well.

That's a benefit a pro who toes the line with the federation gets. It adds real value for those pros who aren't doing it on their own. What's wrong with that? An elite athlete will still be represented and the rest of the top elites will all have been there as well.

The commentary team for T100 Miami has been announced:

Rinny
Frodo
Jack Kelly
Rick Allen

I loved this comment:

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

I suspect the PTO media crew had to tone down his first draft 'somewhat'. Frodeno and Carfrae strike me as tolerant understanding individuals.

This is probably going to be the best broadcast of the year from a production standpoint.

You have NASCAR productions, who know how to show a race, plus Rick who can control a broadcast and toss to the color commentators in a good way.

If anybody can reign Jack in a little, it'll be this crew.

From our side of the house Eric will be on site, and our new PTO Tour beat guy will have a preview article plus race coverage next week.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

As Lagoon said it upthread....Fuck federations being involved, most especially as this is far more of a "private company" behaving in the interest of a private company much closer to how IM behaaves than actdually WT race series are. When the French federation banned a top 20 athlete from racing a world championship 2 years ago that pretty much was the final nail in the coffin. Federations arleady have enough power in naming it's olymic teams; I've always thought any other races they just need to stay out of the way. No duh I get that they have the "power", that's precisely the point why I say they should stick with only the olympic racing. Don't let the political BS creed into other racing formats.

But if you want to disagree, cool.

(It may end up being much to do about nothing as this may be an move PTO "paid" to have WT sponsor it while giving a wink wink that WT really isn't going to go all WT on the series; IE PTO gets to basically set the rules but since it's a WT "governed race", it's all under the WT umbrella "officially")

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

I just love how this is a scandal and a sham and people in this thread are all aboard on it. Some think it's totally ok for the Federation to treat members differently. Idiotic.

It's like people on this board continue to have no idea what a Federation is for. It is not for winning medals. Otherwise I wouldn't have to pay them money to race.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Sorry if this has been mentioned in this thread already, but according to Pat Lemieux on Pro Tri News one federation is preventing two of its athletes from racing T100 Miami, even though the PTO has given them a spot. Supposedly in one case it's a missing medical certificate, in the other it's purely discretionary (said federation quoting the rule stating that the spots in any World Triathlon event belong to a national governing body, not to any athlete, and they can pull and replace people as they please).

If this is true, the World Triathlon-PTO partnership will be very very short-lived.

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

And that's the added layers that happen when you race under the WT flag. Like I understand completely why the medical screening is there; hell I've had a pro get a 3 month standdown because usat wanted further testing to be done (she eventually got passed). It's waaaay more layers of rules/regs that I think PTO actually wants no part of that is likely to be the relationships undoing. And imo being certified by the WT as a world championship is way more for the PR release than actual long term validity imo. If the broadcast and racing is kickass, that's all that's going to matter; no one is going to care that it's an PTO awarded championship or an WT sponsored championship (see SLT; no one cares that it's their own product; it's the best short course racing in the world). So if the relationship sours, it's really going to be no real issues for PTO to overcome. I think it certainly helps the AG side of it as it now has an "world championship", but again when it's under the WT flag, there is a whole bunch of "bullshit" for even AG athletes to qualify....hell they likely have more bullshit that they certainly don't want to follow in order to race a world championship (the overpriced itu uniforms/parade uniforms athletes are required to buy is the biggest AG complaint to federations).

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

"has been mentioned in this thread already" but you've added detail (the 'why') which I didn't pick up in the pod. Is that where you've got that from?

The wildcard invitations are a joint PTO/WorldTri effort (no idea how that's managed in practice: I can see an NGB might nominate. Whether they can veto is moot.). There is no World Tri /NGB control over starts for contracted athletes sfaik (per rules). I've shared upthread extracts from the PTO doc and Appx V (T100) to the 2024 just issued 2024 World Tri Rules.
"[NGB] quoting the rule stating that the spots in any World Triathlon event belong to a national governing body, not to any athlete, and they can pull and replace people as they please"
I would be interested to hear which article of the WorldTri Rules they hope to rely on for such an assertion. I hope World Tri will send them packing in the interests of sport.
If a condition of the NGB issuing/renewing a pro licence is certificated up-to-date medical tests et alia then that seems reasonable.
Might Langridge (GBR) or Pohle or Reischmann (both DEU) be athletes who've been vetoed? The affected athletes (if this is true) will be WPros.

Here's the rule:
Article 3.1 from here: https://www.triathlon.org/...ia_2024_20240219.pdf

It's up to the NFs to put athletes on the waiting list. Only *after* the NF/NGB populates a waiting list are those athletes then sorted by the criteria built between PTO and World Triathlon. So if you're someone who might not be best friends with the NGB...you may not ever wind up on a waiting list, even if you might otherwise be considered "deserving."

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

If the broadcast and racing is kickass, that's all that's going to matter; no one is going to care that it's an PTO awarded championship or an WT sponsored championship (see SLT; no one cares that it's their own product; it's the best short course racing in the world).


The way I see it, SC racing has a huge problem. It is without a doubt where the strongest athletes in the sport compete. So it is incredible that WT cannot design races that attract crowds and get real coverage beyond a bunch of us and the parents and significant others of the athletes competing. Can anyone think of another sport that requires their best athletes to literally drop down from the top tier races and smash a bunch of second-fourth tier athletes to get a bit more exposure? (no disrespect to 70.3/LC folks, but let's be realistic.) Most AGers wouldn't know who Iden and Blu were if they hadn't spend a few seasons destroying the IM folks.

The issue is the drafting. As Stapley has said, you can push 450-500 W at the front trying to make a breakaway but with so much horsepower lurking behind, it hardly goes anywhere as the likes of Blu, Wilde will pull hard and keep things together. This also affects the swim, weaker swimmers can red line a bit too much and recover in the pack while the strongest swimmers have little motivation to drill it and create gaps as it will come together on the bike. This makes the race boring and does not make the athletes justice for a hard bike ride.

The idea of letting folks draft was to make it more attractive crowds..it's not working.
I know I sound like a broken record...but the drafting has to go. Policing the race would be a bit trickier but if it can be done as it is done in Daytona...it can be done in any other 3 km circuit. It is not perfect, but I would argue that there would be more folks drafting in the third pack of any 70.3 race.

We need to unify the sport and not continue making different racing formats. This seems to be the model behind T100.

I don't think I agree with much of that. I think when you put 60 of the fastest athletes in the world and within 20s 48 of them are all coming out of the water together, you can't wag your finger at athletes and tell them to "make sure you aren't drafting". Hell I'm actually of the complete opposite viewpoint- I've always thought pro racing should shorten the rule book entirely and make all rpo racing "draft legal". But that's just my take on it when you have what we have now; we don't have "non draft" racing; we have legalized draft non-draft. So if we are only sorta going to go half in/half out on the actual "non draft", fuck it....just take out all the rules you can and make it draft legal. That imo makes far greater logical sense than this idea of giving penalties in situation when we dont even know if the athlete is or isn't in the damn draft zone. We are "eye balling it", lol? Thank god for race ranger as that seemingly is now the fix to that, atleast allows the athletes to better self-govern themselves.

I'm also suggesting draft legal because we are a very poorly officiated sport (no duh, we have a handful of officials on miles of real estate; shocking athletes cheat when not in front of an official....SHOCKING revelation). We want athletes to behave like golf where it's self monitored, but we truly only call fouls when it's done by the ref. When's the last pro that knew they cheated, seld called a foul on themselves? Yet that's essentially the protocol, but of course we don't because unless the ref calls it, you got away with it. So again makes no sense to have this complicated rulebook when you can't follow the rules.

So if your telling me ITU needs to go from draft legal to non-draft, hell to the no. Not in the current climate of miles of real estate and only handful of officials. Nah that ain't a better solution, hell no that aint. PTO's lack of officiating is already the one constant on just about any of the triathlon feeds right now. And I get it, less officiating controversy the better, but if your going to blantanly ignore calls, that's just as bad too.

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

Why can't you?

If you're in the draft zone, the only way out is to pass. Slow down on a turn? Then you have to pass.

What this means is, you almost always err on the side of passing and don't ever take a chance on the official letting it slide because of course conditions. This would cause racers to either race with a large gap and play it safe or to always make the pass rather than sit in.

What's wrong with this? You think the dynamic then would mean racers would start blowing up as they get forced into passing? Sounds great to me.

If race ranger was used with the proper programming it could force these guys to pass. You wouldn't have a simple pace line with everyone sitting in because in actuality when these guys ride the line, they are always entering. As soon as you enter and have to pass? Boom, move to the front of the pack or blow up trying.

What's wrong with that?

Watching the current Olympic distance races I'm not sure you could reasonably officiate a non-draft race on the courses they currently use.

We're in the PTO thread so talking about penalties is a bit of a joke as they don't call them round here. Hell, they just invited Youri Keulen who may be the most well known cheater in Triathlon not named Chartier. Hopefully Race Ranger gets to a reliable enough point where the head ref can have a dashboard with everyone's current position and if he gets a notice someone is in an illegal position for 3/5/7 seconds and it's not at one of the usual slowdown points they can be sent to the next penalty tent even if there's no camera on them.

In short course the time is also to oshort for no drafting, imagine 65 guys all getting out of the water within 40 seconds of each other then having to drop back to a non draft distance. That over a kilometer from front to back. They have now been forced to wait up for minutes in the early stages of riding to get started racing. Non draft at this level is the biggest, dumbest, impossible idea. Imagine 60 guys in a super sprint, the 10 seconds out the water behind 1st would blow out to minutes, last out of water maybe 15s down but would be giving away half his ride distance in draft zoning (bit exaggerated but you get the drift). The run is about 5 mins. No time to make up the distance given away. BORING.
These are triathlons not swimming races, with shorter distances non drafting becomes a swimming race, not because athletes can help each other to catch but because being forced to drop back favors only the fastest swimmer. The reason Stapley said all that is purely because he is a faster swimmer than cyclist and runner. Favors him.

Because current non-draft dyanmics suck ass for both the officials and athletes to properly regulate (no duh this is an sport raced on miles of roads with handful of officlals, no shit the officiating suck). So again until that can be improved, I'm of the mindset, make it easier on everyone....less rules the better. You can't have 50 athletes coming out of the water within 1 min of each other and then expect them to go non-draft. That just doesn't work. Full stop. There's no amount of "they should swim faster" or they just should is going to make that a valid solution. That's the whole reason why non-draft becaome DL (ITU was non-draft for years prior to going to DL and they went to DL because it was too difficult to manage with results at the conclusion of the contest...this isn't my opinion, this is what was actually happening; it's as if we forget, we tried non-draft....it didn't work).....They were taking 6 hours after the events to actual name the winner because of 8 protests because racer X got an drafting penalty but racer Y who was also drafting didnt.

And your not going to have current WTCS urban courses with a bunch of guys racing non-draft. So then your talking about a likely HUGE lose of revenue for WT. Why the hell do all these cities force shitty urban boring ass courses? Because to host these events now, it costs upwards of $2mi for the host city, so yeah they are going to highlight their "city", course dynamics be damned.

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

Moritz Events continues to just make mistake after mistake.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

I guess it depends on a few things in terms of credibility it obviously helps to be an official world champs serious race.
While it adds a lot more silly politics.
So I guess it's easy to see why they went this way and it's not they got caught out in this, it was a calculated decision.
They knew they are not a natural match.

I've suggested the rules lack both coherence and clarity and what matters is how the PTO and World Tri are actually managing this. I hope this is going to get visibility. The startlist and wait list criteria for the SC races is clear and seems both understood and workable.
I appreciate Article 3.1 (above) but this is for the waiting list which I've suggested upthread will never come into play. The rules make a clear distinction between "Invitation Athletes (Wildcards)" and "Waiting List" athletes.
"2.4. Any non-utilized slots at events will be allocated based on procedures under point 3 [below], and include Invitation Athletes (Wildcards) and Waiting List Athletes."
So the process is first to fill any unfilled slots (ie not taken by contracted athletes) with Invitation Athletes (Wildcards).
How are those invitations arrived at?
"3.10. . . . after creation of the start lists, invitations (Wildcards) are awarded by a panel composed by PTO and World Triathlon."
We never get to: "3.11. The start positions not filled by the invitation panel are filled by the next eligible athlete on the sorted Waiting List." because the invitation panel will fill all the slots (the 8 missing in WPro for Miami and (probably) Singapore will be the largest number. After that the only sizeable 'gap' will be MPro in Las Vegas (a week before Kona).
So is it the Lemieux / PTN case that World Tri, in the invitation panel process, are effecting on NGB vetos on specific athletes?

Are the “wildcards” the what 8 or so athletes they mentioned after the contracted athletes? The AB and Gomez’s, or is that something that can change each week?

Amelia Watkinson*NZLLucy Byram*GBRTaylor Spivey*USAFlora Duffy*BER
Rico Bogen*GERAlistair Brownlee*GBRMartin Van Riel*BELJavier Gomez*ESP
Would it not seem like they’ll easily have to use wait list athletes? There’s not a chance the same 20 athletes race the full races are they?

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

AB and Gomez are Hot Shots with contacts. Wildcards are the fillers at each race who are not contracted for the whole series.

So what’s the difference again between an “wildcard” and a wait list athlete?

If wildcard is the list they can use to keep the NF’s out of it, is everyone suddenly going to be a “wildcard” entry who isn’t among the 20 contracted athletes (per gender)?

Essentially pto reaches out to athlete for a “wildcard” entry until the field is filled and thus no need for NGB’s to get in the way? I assume that’s the “runaround”, so there basically will never be a wait list for any race because they won’t *need* to utilize it?

Being a WT pathway, one advantage is that the officiating should improve and not just turn a blind eye during the "exhibition" racing that was the races prior; IE the Frodo "assist" reasoning, etc.

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

2.4. Any non-utilized slots at events will be allocated [to] Invitation Athletes (Wildcards) and Waiting List Athletes.
3.10. . . . after creation of the start lists, invitations (Wildcards) are awarded by a panel composed by PTO and World Triathlon.
3.11. The start positions not filled by the invitation panel are filled by the next eligible athlete on the sorted Waiting List. (the one with athletes nominated by NGBs - see #3.1.)

For difference, see above. I have suggested that the 'waiting list' will never come into play (so your last paragraph: yes; well that's how I read these rules and the PTO's wildcard invitation criteria (shared upthread).
The whole waiting list stuff is just shoddy copy and paste (from short course appendices) drafting by careless bods in WorldTri and PTO.
My draft revision of Appendix V deletes the irrelevant section 3 to finish off:

2.4. Any non-utilized slots at events will be allocated to Invitation Athletes (Wildcards).
2.5. Invitations (Wildcards) are awarded by a panel composed by PTO and World Triathlon (and then write in the criteria below).

About T100 Triathlon World Tour Wildcards
https://protriathletes.org/...st-t100-womens-race/

There are four main categories of athletes who will be considered for a wildcard selection:

1. Current well performing athletes, who have had great performances outside of the T100 Tour and have moved up the PTO World Rankings.
2. Athletes whose rankings, because of injury, maternity or other reasons, do not accurately reflect the quality of their historical performances and who have demonstrated that they are capable of being in-form for the event.
3. Up and coming athletes who have shown the ability to be competitive with the qualifying field, but have not yet had the opportunity to establish a sufficiently high ranking to be an automatic qualifier.
4. Short course athletes who have a sufficiently high World Triathlon ranking so as to expect that they would be competitive in the event.

"old busted joints" with contracts.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Imogen Simmonds pulls out the weekend before.
Interesting to see who they get to fill it.

Cutting it close for someone to commit to travel, etc. No?