- Morning Trainiacs,
we got a good endurance adventure today, come on.
We just did a pretty chill team Traniacs Zwift ride
that
we're doing every Thursday,
open to all.
And
right now is the time
that you wanna join
because
workouts are still pretty chill.
I ended up asking the group
what they felt about
PTO World Championship at Challenge Daytona
and everyone just kinda went nuts.
It is probably
some of the best
race coverage that
I've ever seen,
from the sounds of it,
a lot of people have ever seen.
I think
it's gonna really change the game.
I'm not sure exactly how,
but I got some thoughts
and we're gonna get the CEO
of Challenge North America,
Bill Christy on the podcast
and talk about that.
It could be big.
- And ride.
- You saved that mother.
What I've been doing lately
over the past
month or so
is all my key rides,
like anything that has specific intervals
or cadence
are done on Zwift.
And I love it for that
because you just put it in Erg mode
program the workout and do it.
And then I especially love being able
to do that with the team.
So every Thursday,
it's on all the Zwift events
you can just scroll
and look forward to events, open to everyone.
It's called something like,
Team Trainiac Group Ride Workout with Triathlon Taren.
You can find it.
That's good because,
we spend most of the time chatting and hanging out
and it makes the suffering a little bit easier.
And then I'm doing the rest of the rides
on the fat bike
right now,
just all the general rides
like the goal for an hour and just spin
or
two hours on the weekend for a little bit of endurance
where there's no specific intervals,
fat bike.
So I like that mixture of inside and outside,
just so Zwift doesn't get old
and so the routes that I take out there don't get old.
Hey guys, I'm back.
So to be perfectly honest with you,
I've been
supportive of PTO,
but also fairly skeptical
because
we've seen things like this attempt to happen
in triathlon and other sports all the time
and frankly, it's never worked.
Now, of course there's been a lot of hoopla
but the PTO basically
all professional triathletes
have got on board and start supporting the PTO.
But of course, they're gonna do that
because there's
I think it's two and a half million dollars now
or maybe a little bit more
has been pumped into triathlon.
And for the pros,
it's basically free money.
And
particularly in the case of challenged Daytona
it was totally free money.
You show up
and as long as you finish
you get $2,500
all the way up to $100,000.
And it's been the only game in town in 2020.
So it all this hoopla and hype indicative
of it being that greater thing
or is it just because it's one of the only things in 2020
that has money in it for pros.
Historically, I have thought
that
the altering.
I'm back on a very serious overnight oats kick.
Wanna do this
after a workout to get the carbs in,
and then I put some protein powder in,
I cook them the night before
actually several nights before,
about five at a time.
And then I let them sit in the fridge
so that they turn to a resistant starch,
which is really good for the stomach.
And in it,
I put that oats,
I put some protein powder
but then I also have recently added chia seeds
and psyllium husk fiber
to help with
cholesterol and hormone management
and weight management
and satiety and all kinds of good things.
Plus it just looks like a sloppy, delicious mess, right?
So now PTO's entire contention,
is that
if they
do really good race coverage
what's gonna happen is more eyeballs are going to come
on to the sport.
And those more eyeballs are going to allow them
to go to sponsors that are outside of the sport
instead of the small dollars that are in
triathlon lawn by as much as I love them
like the Rokos and the Garmins and the Tacks of the world
they don't have the pockets of the Mercedes-Benz,
the American expresses.
Those types of companies
that sponsor golf tournaments.
So they have been going at the golf model.
And now,
my whole belief, however, in this
is that
we're not golf
for two main reasons.
The first thing is that golf
I believe the numbers are
about 60 to 80 million total
regular golfers all around the world.
And there are a lot of people
who also watch golf, who don't do golf.
So the audience for it is in the hundreds of millions.
Triathlon
is more like
at most 4 million around the world.
And in a lot of cases,
those people aren't even real rabid triathletes.
The second thing is that
I don't think you're gonna end up
with a whole lot of non triathletes
that are actually watching triathlon,
in the same way that non-golfers
or non-curlers watch golf and curling.
Because the reason for that is like dopamine wise,
what's happening is in golf and in curling,
there's a payoff
to watching it every
15 seconds.
You see somebody take a swing or slide out of the hack
and every 15 to 20 seconds, you see
if they've made the shot or not.
From a video producing standpoint,
that is a really, really big thing
because you need to keep having people engaged
every few seconds
or they're gonna tune out.
How you gonna do that
when somebody is riding in the same position
with basically the same
setting around them
for
two hours,
four hours,
five hours?
It's pretty tough.
But actually seeing challenge Daytona
changed a lot
of that for me.
And the reason
I think is because they brought the NASCAR format
of covering a race to triathlon.
NASCAR is really the same thing.
Just going around and around and around in circles,
nothing's really changing
besides a little bit of placement
here and there,
it's exactly the same thing that happened
and happens in triathlon.
And you know what?
NASCAR gets
millions of eyeballs.
So bringing that to triathlon, it worked, it really worked.
And when I put the call out to people on the Zwift ride
about what they thought of the race,
they said that,
yeah, it got them excited for challenge.
Yeah, got them excited for PTO
that iron man should probably take note
and be a little bit afraid,
but more than anything
it just got them excited again.
Excited for endurance sports
and in 2020, that's saying a lot.
So we're gonna get Bill Christie onto the podcast
and I'm gonna share
a couple of the highlights with you here in a second.
I think they're gonna make some waves.
Also, I get such a kick out of being able to do that.
I don't know why.
Good day.
First off
slowly... - Now recording Bill.
Slow clap on the event.
Holy smokes. - oh yeah.
- You guys are gracious.
- I mean the event itself looked good,
but boy did you guys nail that broadcast
for the first time out?
I mean obviously with the resources you had
for NASCAR at the track that made it a lot easier
and there was that experience there
but everything from, you know, the camera angles to...
- The tracker on the side of the TV,
letting you know where everyone was
in the top 20,
the differential between first and 17th,
the split,
- That is an enormous production,
that's an NFL level production that you put together
- Or maybe a NASCAR
- Or a NASCAR level, that would be (indistinct)
(people laughing)
- I was gonna say,
welcome to NASCAR productions you guys is what they do.
- How do you take the lessons of
what NASCAR has been able to do
and then
meanwhile, going towards
this kind of golf model, where in golf
they haven't
been able to do it in a 2020 cut.
Well, not even 2020, but a post-social media
kind of era
- And a post Tiger era.
- So I can't speak to that,
but I do think there's
some great parallels between NASCAR
and where we are today with triathlon.
Interestingly enough, NASCAR had what is called
an entitlement sponsor.
So as you remember, it was the sprint cup series, right?
Before that.
Well, I mean, I can go back to the
Winston Cup Series once in cigarettes, right?
So I mean, that's a long time ago,
I know you guys know that I'm old
and, you know you'll get the correlations there.
Now, NASCAR has several premier partners,
but it is the NASCAR Cup Series.
So
they changed their business model
to adapt to those times.
I think that we sort of need to start thinking
that way as well in triathlon
and how
TV dollars are affected,
how ticket sales are affected,
how the teams are affected,
how the pros are affected, and
what those economics are to everybody.
And
we're gonna take a hard look at that.
I think that there are some really
great correlations and lessons to be learned there,
but with regard to viewership
and what the product is,
again,
I think all of us that were hardcore triathletes
probably had a pretty good time on Sunday.
I know I did watching
but I think tonight is gonna tell the tale.
- How much effort went into planning
how to make it an enjoyable experience to watch
because something that I've speculated
for a while is
we were just talking about golf.
That golf
is a really quick payoff, but in triathlon
it's really hard to actually make that interesting
because it's people on a bike
in the Aero position for up to five hours.
So how much did they start planning ahead of time,
how to actually make it something
that was enjoyable to watch
'cause
it was night and day
between that and save the iron man lives.
- We were at the live stream product
as if it was a live TV product.
So the announcers in the booths,
were talking play by play
action by action,
going from camera to camera
we were watching penalties,
moving the cameras around back and forth,
which happens in typical live stream
but not at the speed in which they were doing it here.
A big part of that
is the number of cameras that are fixed pointed
around the stadium,
there are hard-wirings already on the ground.
- How many cameras were there by the way?
We were speculating while we were watching
and I'd let, do you have any idea of the top your head?
Okay.
- No, I wish I had that.
I don't.
But I will tell you that Miami
will have more
than what we had
because there were some shots
that
added to the storyline
that they said
we should have also at the same time
recovering this while we were covering this,
things that they pick up as live TV producers
that we don't think of, right? - Like what?
Is what they do. - Do you have an example?
- There was a point where,
and the woman's race
probably one of my favorite parts was,
anyhow, I was, she had just gotten
into the
penalty box
and she was sitting there
in the penalty box
and
it was a drafting penalty
and she was four wide trying to get by
three other cyclists.
And you know, that there was enough safety
and the protection
and the all of those rules applied on the drafting.
That'd be so many feet wide
and
she still received drafting penalty.
You know,
I would have liked to have seen that
while we saw it on the men
we had the men two and three wide at a couple of times,
I would like to have seen that one, three wide or four
I would like to have seen four wide on that.
- And TK debrief on the podcast with Bill,
what's your take on it?
- I'm really excited to see what happens
for the next challenge race broadcast in Miami, in March.
- It's true.
Like I said, I've been skeptical of PTO.
And what challenge has been supporting,
they tried to come into North America
in the past decade, didn't work.
PTO is trying a game that a lot of other people have said
they're gonna do throwing money at a sport
and saying, well, we're just gonna get big sponsors.
Once we get big eyeballs
talking to Bill
I think they might have a shot.
So if you want that full podcast
go to the Triathlon Taren podcast
wherever you get your podcasts.
And
oh, and tomorrow we're chatting with Paul Findley.
- Ooh, I can't wait.
- All Daytona, all the time.
We got some heat coming in.
And hit the subscribe button below.