- Welcome back to the GTN show,
brought to you by AMP Human.
And today we're going to be discussing
the use of painkillers in triathlon.
Is it okay?
Is it healthy?
Should we be condoning it?
And what are the risks?
- Yeah, we're also going to be discussing reports from Wanda
who are potentially in talks
about selling the Ironman brand.
We've also got news from the PTO
who are doubling their prize fund for pro athletes in 2023,
another $2 million into the pot.
As well as announcing our winners of the Amp Human giveaway.
(upbeat music)
(air whooshing)
- Okay, we're going to launch in with a little debate here
regarding painkillers in triathlon.
Now it's been reported that as many as 60% of triathletes
take some form of painkillers,
such as ibuprofen,
prior to or during triathlon event.
Why?
Well, for some people it may be that
they're carrying some form of niggle or injury
into the event
and by taking the painkillers
it will just allow them to get through the event.
Whereas for others,
they may be taking the painkillers
in hope that it's going to alleviate or minimize
the feeling of pain during that event,
and allow them just to push harder or further.
- Yeah, which technically, there is nothing wrong with that
as long as obviously these drugs as we label them
don't contain anything that's illegal
within the sport of triathlon.
But Ironman actually came under
quite a lot of scrutiny last year
when they partnered with the pain relief company Aleve,
for the 2019 World Championships.
And it was very much questioned to whether
that's sending the correct message to the athletes.
- Yeah, so what is the deal with painkillers?
Well they're essentially powerful drugs
that can interfere with our nervous system's
transmission of the signals that we perceive as pain.
They can also stimulate portions of the brain
associated with pleasure,
and therefore blocking that feeling of pain,
and can sometimes have a subtle high effect from that.
And they can also be anti-inflammatory,
which can obviously reduce the swelling.
- Yeah, I mean all of that sounds rather wonderful.
But our body is actually producing
the inflammation and the pain for a reason.
And that is to protect us.
So what are those side effects?
Well, it could cause something on a more superficial level,
such as just damage to joints and ligaments,
'cause you're pushing yourself through that
without realizing.
But then it can even affect your organs.
For example, you could get stomach issues,
or even kidney or cardiovascular problems.
And then at the extreme end,
it can be fatal
if it gives you hyponatremia,
which is when you have low salt levels,
which can lead to kidney failure
and even at the far end of things,
stroke or a heart attack.
- Yeah, now obviously we are not doctors.
But aches and pains as a result of say
a 3.8k swim, 180k bike,
a 42.2k run for example,
are pretty normal.
That's the result of the stresses and strains
you're putting on your body during exercise.
Now some of events, some ultravents,
have actually taken this a step further
and banned painkillers during their events
due to the health risks.
Now although that is obviously fairly hard to enforce,
at least it sends out a pretty good message.
Now personally speaking,
if I felt the need to dose up on a bunch of painkillers
to get myself through an event,
I probably wouldn't do the event.
I'd probably feel like I'm not in a position to do it.
But I do appreciate some people out there
may have a different opinion on this.
So we'd be really intrigued to hear from you guys.
Perhaps you do have a really valid reason,
a health reason,
or you just maybe wouldn't be able
to do a triathlon if you didn't take them.
- Yeah, I mean, I actually
I didn't even say this before we
we came to record here.
But actually as an athlete,
there were a couple of times when the doctors
gave me the highest painkillers they could,
they were allowed to prescribe,
because I'd fallen off my horse just before competition
and it was the World Champs and I had to compete.
- I can understand that. - So, so there's kind of,
I guess it's sort of how important that is to you.
- Yeah. - Isn't it?
- Absolutely.
- And what extreme you'll go to.
- Yeah, we would love to hear from you guys.
So please drop any of those comments
in the comment section below.
- Yeah, and it's now time to find out really what you think.
And it's time for the GTN poll.
So we want to ask you guys,
do you take painkillers?
I think we mean on a regular basis here,
not just if you've got some really, really acute injury.
But would you take painkillers generally before you race?
And you can enter that poll just up here,
with a yes or a no.
- Yeah, now for last week's poll
we asked you how many of you race duathlon.
- Yeah, and I was surprised at this result.
You maybe weren't so surprised, Mark
'cause I know you would've said yes,
you've raced duathlon.
But 56% of you said yes,
and just 44% of you said no.
- Well, it is interesting
and I think you'll be pleased to hear
for those 56% of you
we are going to be doing duathlon content.
And you have confirmed that for us,
so it's coming for you soon.
- And we might end up with a higher percentage
if we ask again in a few weeks.
(upbeat music)
It's now time for Tri news.
And we're going to start things off by leaping ahead to 2022.
And there has been an announcement
of the final two potential host cities
for the Half Ironman World Championships.
And it's come down to between Lahti in Finland
and Klagenfurt in Austria.
Now obviously this year it's going over to
New Zealand in Taupo,
over in November.
And then the following year it's going to be
St. George, Utah for 2021.
- Yeah now, both of the cities
that are in the running for it already host events.
So Klagenfurt is well known.
It's an iconic event.
It's a beautiful event.
It takes place in the Southern Alps
and already hosts Ironman Austria.
And then Lahti in Finland takes place in June.
It's been running for the last couple of years
and actually starts midday in the afternoon
so the athletes can finish under the midnight sun,
which is pretty cool.
- Yeah, that is nice!
- But unfortunately that's probably not going to happen
for the Ironman 70.3 World Champs
'cause if it does take place in Finland,
it will go ahead in August,
and then if it goes ahead in Klagenfurt,
then it will take place in July.
Now we will update you hopefully fairly soon on this.
- Yeah.
- In due course as to who gets it.
- But it's definitely coming back to Europe,
which is cool for us.
Our next piece of news comes from China,
from the Wanda Sports Group,
the Chinese-based sports marketing and event promoter
who many of might know actually bought Ironman
back in 2015 for $650 million.
While I think that's fairly wide knowledge,
although, something which has come to light more recently
that with that they actually took on a debt that Ironman had
of around or reported at $220 million.
Well that, combined with apparently several other reasons,
has been brewing
and it's actually led to discussions
for the Wanda Sports Group actually potentially selling
the Ironman part of the company.
- Now apparently no agreements have been made,
and these talks may not result in any transaction.
However, it has been reported
the company has taken on some advisors
who have held discussions with some private equity buyers
that have expressed interest in the company.
Now my first thought here was,
it must be the PTO.
- Yeah, mine too.
- But apparently not.
Now the Wanda Sports Group actually says,
well they declined entering talks with the PTO
who expressed interest in the business last year.
Whether that has changed now,
maybe it is them now.
Maybe it's someone different.
We're just going to have to wait and see.
- Talking of the PTO.
Well, some more exciting news there.
We alluded to this in the introduction.
A few weeks ago we announced here
that they were going to be throwing $2 million
into the prize money at The Collins Cup.
Well they have now doubled and added another $2 million,
but this time it's going into the PTO annual bonus fund.
- This is pretty exciting.
It's going to be based upon the athletes' world rankings
in the PTO world rankings at the end of the 2020 season.
And it's going to be ranging from $100,000
to the World ranked number one
male and female in the rankings,
down to $10,000 for number 20 male and female.
And then from 21-50 they'll receive $5,000.
And then 51-100 they'll receive $2000.
- I mean that's certainly spreading it out, isn't it?
- It's quite generous, I'd say.
- I know.
Well that is a total of $4 million in prize money.
It's actually going to cover 200 professional triathletes.
And I guess it becomes quite important
when you're looking at this for ranking,
on how the rankings are worked out.
And that's being done by Thorsten Radde of TriRating.
And at the moment at the top
on the men's side there's Jan Frodeno,
and it's Daniela Ryf on the women's side.
- Now moving on.
And tri-spoke wheels used to be quite popular in triathlon.
We see less of them these days,
partly due to their value.
Add in gold to that and well,
that price is off the chart.
And that is exactly what Austrian brand Spengle
have just done.
They've hand-laid individual flakes of 24k gold
onto a tri-spoke wheel,
unsurprisingly given the name Spengle Gold.
And that comes in with a pretty hefty price tag
of 10,000 Swiss francs or 8,000 pounds.
- Now you might think they had it designed
purely as a wonderful display
'cause I think if I had those they'd be on my wall,
and they wouldn't be going anywhere.
But they are actually designed to be ridden.
So you can take them out on the road if you want.
But I think people would be avoiding the mud
if you'd spent that much on a set of wheels.
Well, if maybe you can't afford that price tag,
but you maybe want to take a look at them,
they're going to be on display.
I think several shows,
the first time you'll be able to see them will be in Berlin
this weekend coming.
They're also going to be at The London Bike Show
later on in the month.
But there's also another option
if you go onto Spengle's website
'cause they have made some different collection
that are hand-painted,
but this time not with gold.
So you've got the Molten Lava and the Neon Glitch ranges.
And those start from I think around 6,700 pounds.
So still pretty--
- Oh, much cheaper! - Pretty hefty price tag,
but a little bit less if gold's not your thing.
(upbeat music)
- We're now moving on to announce the winners
of our Amp Human Champion Kits giveaway.
And we have five lucky winners for all this stuff here.
We've got three bottles of the Amp Human stuff.
We've got five sachets, a towel and a buff.
So, we have Mike Smith, Ines Gruetzmann,
Gregoire Montgieux,
I think I've said that right,
Kathryn Arrebola and Harry Kim.
Congratulations to all five of you.
If you have missed out, you can still get involved.
We've got a 20% off discount code,
which is GTN2020,
which is on the screen right now
or you can find it in the description below.
So, yeah get involved.
- Yeah, do.
And whilst we're talking about discounts with the GTN,
I should probably mention the GTN outlet
where currently we have up to 50% of a sale on the GTN kit.
So that's including some of the ASSOS cycling kit
that you see us wearing in videos,
including the GTN fan kit.
Then there's also some really significant discounts
on our casual wear as well.
- Yeah, for example,
we have the GTN women's organic T-shirt
in a lovely azure blue,
with a whopping 47% off.
We've got the GTN mug.
That's got 50% off.
And a GTN towel, which has 36% off.
(upbeat music)
We're now moving on to race news,
and we did have a few races this weekend.
We had Ironman 70.3 Oman, Ironman 70.3 Bahrain.
So both of which were age group races.
But we did have a pro race at Ironman 70.3 Geelong.
Now here we had quite a big battle on the men's side,
between Sam Appleton and Josh Amberger.
Now we're quite used to seeing Josh Amberger
leading out the swim,
putting in a very impressive bike performance
and hanging on to that lead.
And then in his own mission,
sort of drifting back a little bit on the run.
Well, things changed today after having
three 2nd place finishes at this particular race.
He actually caught and passed Sam Appleton on the run
to finally take that win.
Sam Appleton took 2nd place.
Tim Van Berkel took 3rd.
And just to give you a bit of a scale
of competitive this race was,
we had Tim Reed in 4th,
Matt Burton in 5th and in 6th, Craig Alexander.
- Nice, well that's a pretty packed field.
On the women's side as well.
And it was very much dominated by the Australians.
Hannah Wells did dominate the women's race.
She finished 2nd at Wanaka only a week before.
But this time it was really the bike
that made the difference,
since she road away on the bike legger.
Took the win by almost six minutes.
Adding to that from her win at the Sunshine Coast
in Western Sydney last year.
And it was Grace Thek who finished 2nd.
And in 3rd place it was Emily Loughnan.
(upbeat music)
All right it's now time to take a look at your photos.
And we've got a nice selection this week.
Starting things off, this one from Peter,
his Trek Emonda.
He's actually from East Grinstead in the UK,
which you can probably tell by,
if you look a little bit closely,
some of the mud that's around that frame chain.
- He has actually said if you zoom in,
which, well-- - Which we did.
- You do see the mud.
You also see this little snail sticker or vinyl he's put on.
I don't know if he's implying that's how fast he is.
- Well I dunno.
"The racing snail, aka the bike."
So maybe he's-- - Maybe well-paced.
I dunno.
- Maybe he's being modest.
We don't know but like the detail.
- Very cool.
Moving on we have one from Andre.
And this is,
well from Oceanside 70.3
or is he just saying that's the races
he's planning on doing?
- [Heather] I think that must be the races he did
because then he follows on to,
"They've just updated their pain cave."
But they've added another photo
because they met Fraser and I at Aton Oceanside.
- [Mark] Brilliant!
- [Heather] And Anise as well.
So I quite like,
well, I love the pain cave.
- [Mark] It's beautiful isn't it, very nice.
- [Heather] It's a work of art.
- [Mark] Yeah, two screens, either side.
- [Heather] Lovely.
- Proper couples pain cave.
Now moving on,
I think this is our first winter triathlon.
- I think it is.
- Photos from Adam on his Focus mountain bike,
and this is from the Winter Triathlon World Champs
which he finished 3rd in his age group,
in the age group 20-24.
So congratulations to you.
- [Heather] Yes, nice to get an action shot isn't it?
- Brilliant.
Next one from Matt,
and this is from Vancouver in Canada.
He managed to sneak a little ride in on a Sunday.
But on a sunny, but chilly--
- [Heather] What's that, sunny?
We don't know that 'round here.
- [Mark] He had to stop and snap a photo
of the beautiful Vancouver scenery.
And thank you for doing that!
It's is very nice.
He's on his Look 765 bike.
- Yeah, it must be motivating to see a bit of sunshine
and some lovely views like that.
We can only dream.
And talking of dreaming,
I was actually scouring through some of the photos sent in
and this one caught my eye 'cause I thought
oh, it looked like a familiar backdrop.
And then I read the description.
So it's being sent in by Anatole.
And it's of his or her Bianchi Aria Disc.
And the picture is from Malta.
And yeah, basically saying
the background is the city of Mdina
and in brackets, "where we filmed,"
so that was why Mark and I recognized that one.
- That's where we started our race, didn't we?
From Mdina to Popeye Village.
- Yeah, that was two years ago,
but you sort of troll back through our archives
and check that one out if you wonder what we're all about.
- Brilliant, well yeah.
Please do keep sending in all your photos,
pain caves, what you're up to,
training photos
using the photo uploader onscreen right now.
And the link is in the description below.
(upbeat music)
Well now for the GTN caption competition.
And starting with last week's photo
which was from Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic.
It's a European cup, very good race.
And we got this rather entertaining photo of a guy
diving in on one of the laps on the swim.
And we got loads of captions in.
Len Wittrock said, "Before the dolphin kick
"there was the frog kick."
- [Heather] Nice one!
Another runner up here from Parker Kerth,
"If you're happy and you know it, clap your feet?"
- [Mark] Matthew Jerrett,
who's obviously in the know,
said, "You might want to Czech,"
Czech Republic,
"that wetsuit.
"Carlsbad diving technique can split the toughest of seams."
Really trying hard there, but yeah.
I mean it is in the Czech Republic.
It's in Carlsbad, another name for Karlovy Vary,
so well done.
- Yeah, I mean it took Mark to decide for that one,
'cause I just think of Carls Bad in the USA,
so I was a little bit thrown.
But we like the effort that's gone into that caption.
We've got our final runnerup here from chrisjboyce,
"In this lap he managed to leapfrog the competition."
- Very good.
And then we have a winner.
Who? I don't know who it is.
- Yeah, we--
- Because I can't pronounce this.
I can't read it.
I'm very, very sorry.
But if you see us on screen right now,
and you recognize your name.
Then you are the winner
of the caption competition this week,
which is, "2020, it's a leap year!"
Very simple, but it is a leap year.
- It is, yeah.
- So you win it.
It's great.
- We like that one.
Right, well hopefully the winner signs up to that one.
But if it wasn't you,
you have a chance to win a cap yourself
with this week's picture
from the Santo Domingo ITU World Cup.
- [Mark] Yeah, no idea what's going on in that conversation.
It's a bit of rivalry and well,
I don't think he's really replying to that.
- [Heather] No, use your imagination on this one please.
- [Mark] Yeah, drop them in the comment section below.
- Before you go, we have plenty more coming up this week,
including a video on DIY training camps.
So if maybe like us you've had enough
of training in the winter
and your looking at going abroad for some sunshine.
Well, there's going to be some great tips
on how to make the most of that.
And maybe you're targeting
a sub-3-hour marathon this spring.
Well we've also got a video on some tips
on how to get under that barrier.
And earlier we talked about the amazing savings
on the GTN outlet at the moment.
Well, go check that out.
It should be onscreen any time soon.
- Yeah, and there are some big saving to be had.
And if you have enjoyed today's video,
hit that thumbs up button.
And if you'd like to see more from GTN,
make sure you subscribe to the channel
if you're not doing so already,
so you'll be notified
when some of those videos come out
that Heather's just mentioned.
If you'd like to see some that are already out,
we've got "Four Ways
"You May Be Slowing Yourself Down Swimming."
You can see that by clicking just down here.
And it you'd like to see "Can You Run in Fashion Shoes?"
you can see that by clicking just down here.