Good morning, Motivators.
Over the last few years, on this YouTube channel and other podcasts
and magazines and the general Triathlon culture, there's been a lot of talk about
whether or not Iron Man is operating in the best interests of the sport,
has been owned by private equity companies, by large conglomerates,
and the talk is generally that all the money that they're making is really
just going back to make rich people richer and not necessarily going into the sport
in any sort of way that is conducive to a healthy sport.
Now, over the last month, we have separately seen Jan Fridino
announced that he isn't going to be racing in St.
George in one Ironman World Championship,
and Sam Long announced that he won't be racing Ironman Kona.
We have another I won't be going
to an Ironman World Championship announcement to make here.
And this all just gets me thinking,
has Iron Man finally gone too far and we're going to start seeing cracks
in the foundation and that is what we are going to discuss.
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So just recently, Jan Fridino announced that he won't be going to Iron Man St.
George.
This is not terribly unexpected, and there have been a number of pros
and media people that I've heard of saying, you know what, it's not Kona.
They are just flooding the world
with spots that they are selling to athletes who haven't qualified
for the World Championship to get more registration fees.
Also, Jan says that he is injured, which totally understandable.
He wants to focus on Kona separately, which I think is a fair bit more
interesting, is that Sam Long announced that he won't be racing Ironman Kona.
Kona. Kona.
This is the race, the number one race that is synonymous with the sport in general.
You talk to anyone who isn't a triathlete, but knows that you are doing Triathlon.
One of the first things I'll ask you is, are you doing Kona?
And here's Sam actively saying that he won't be racing Kona.
He also says here in an article
with Triathlete Magazine, by the way, I'm a writer with Triathlete Magazine.
You should go check it out. He says that part of what made his
decision is which organizations and races are showing that they value me.
I put together a spreadsheet here that shows something very interesting.
It used to be the case where pro athletes
would talk about having to raise an incredible amount because Iron Man was
the only game in town and their payouts for the prize money was very small.
We look at an average 70.3 payout like Indian Wells here,
and it starts at $7,500, goes down to $1,000 for the 8th place finisher.
Average Ironman race like Lake Placid
starts at $12,000 for the winner, $1,000 for the 10th place finisher,
73 World starts at 50K, only pays 15 athletes deep.
Kona starts at 1250 for the winner and drops down to again, only paying 15 deep.
Where this starts getting really interesting is when we show the PTO money
that has all of a sudden come into the sport.
This is the prize money for the PTO World Championship that was
held at Challenge Daytona a couple of years ago.
It was a slightly larger prize purse than what is being offered for the PTO majors
being the PTO US Open and the Canadian Open.
But it's going to be really quite similar
in this case just for a PTO major, not a world Championship.
We can see that the only athlete
that doesn't do better by placing higher in a PTO major is the winner.
So when you look at placing for placing
all the way down here, you see that you're better off placing
in the same position for a PTO major than being at the number one race in the world.
For Triathlon, that is synonymous with our
sport from the biggest 100 plus million dollar company in our sport and who's
beating them, an upstart company that is financed by an investor.
And this is all fine for it to be an upstart company financed by an investor.
But when this is the payout
and the situation from the number one organization that is driving our sport
in the world, that leaves Ironman very vulnerable.
Now, it's not just when an athlete like Sam Long decides to race the PTO US Open
over Kona, because that's the decision that he's making here financially.
In addition to that, there's also the PTO bonus where
the athletes are judged on their three best races that they've performed,
and they have payouts going from all the way of $100,000 at the end of the year
down to $5,000 for the 21st to 50th ranked athlete.
And then the 51st ranked athlete down to the 100 ranked athlete gets $2,000.
Why this is really interesting is there's always been this idea that athletes have
to basically sacrifice their health and grind themselves into race after race
after race trying to chase these $3000 to $7000 checks with Iron Man to cobble
together $50 to $70,000 in the course of a year.
Well, instead of doing 6810, twelve races throughout the year, well,
maybe they instead just say, hey, I'm going to race five and try to do three
really well and make a similar amount by making it up in the PTO bonus.
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Now, it's not just the prize money that we're talking about.
We're also talking about sponsorship.
Historically, Iron Man Kona is the place
that every sponsor wanted their athletes to be.
That's where my sponsors wanted me to be.
We'll talk about that in just a second.
But something that I've seen over the past
couple of years, first is that the Ironman World Championships in St.
George lost a bit of special magic that made Kona Kona.
They're just flooding the market with age group world Championship spots.
And I have no judgment against people that want to take one of those spots.
I would take one of those spots.
If you could have the opportunity to race a world Championship, absolutely.
Go race it.
But what I'm saying is Iron Man can't expect to do that and still have that same
bit of special magic for the race, for anyone, for sponsors or for athletes.
The second thing is I've heard from a number of sponsors over the past
four years that Iron Man is demanding more and more and more from a sponsorship
commitment, and they're charging more for companies to be able to sponsor
Ironman races and expos and things like that and giving less and less.
So what I'm getting is far fewer sponsors that are actually asking me to be at well,
none have asked me to be at the Ironman World Championship in St.
George.
Some are just barely starting to talk about the Ironman World Championship
in Kona, but a lot of them are just saying, I don't think we're going to go.
So in my case, I don't really have an incentive to go.
Now with regards to all that, as a media person going to Iron Man Kona,
I didn't talk about this tremendously publicly, but back in 2019,
they gave me media accreditation, and we flew out there.
We spent.
I think it was about $8,000 in cost to get to Kona.
And then the Tuesday before the race,
they said, here's your media badge, by the way.
You can't publish anything from race day. What?
And they said this to every single media outlet out there.
And when we can't do that, we can't cover the race.
Our sponsors are paying tremendous amounts.
What we're going to see is media outlets,
athletes that all of a sudden don't really have any sort of incentive to go and race
Ironman races now, do I like that this is happening?
I actually don't because iron man is still the glue that holds Triathlon together.
It is the driver of our sport.
It is the biggest company that is
dictating what happens in our sport and PTO.
While I do think that they are doing good
things, I don't know if they are there just yet.
I've always been skeptical and openly questioned Sam renuf, the CEO of PTO,
saying, I like what you're doing, but I'm really curious to see how it plays out.
So when I'm seeing one of the greatest
athletes of all time decide not to race an Ironman world Championship,
probably the youngest and best upstart that is coming into our sport and adding
a lot of exhilaration to our sport in Sam long deciding not to race Kona.
When I am announcing here that we aren't going to iron man, St.
George and Ironman Kona because they have
made it so punitive for us to even go there, we have no reason to support them.
How many other dominoes are going to fall making iron man less and less appealing?
And this isn't a good thing for the most powerful brand in our sport.
So I say this bringing to light what is going on.
But as I've always said to iron man, I am rooting for you.
I want success for you,
but you have to give us a reason to actually invest in you.
You have to make it financially feasible for the pros to come and you have to make
it financially feasible for the media and the sponsors to come instead of just
constantly taking and not giving anything back.
Thank you for watching motivators.
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Also, if you rather listen to these tips, we also publish these videos in podcast
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Later. Motivators.