Pretty much this nowadays, with the way the competition is looking. All the front pack swimmers can bike too. Joe won’t win Kona with his swim where it is; the younger competition are already up the road and they can bike/run too; the dynamic has changed.
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But that would disadvantage people like Joe even more. The Ironman distance actually de-emphasises the swim a little, the more equitable ITU distances wouldn’t suit the likes of Joe, LIONel et al.
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Was this titled ‘Burger man’?
Not caught his last couple of podcasts
They can still race IM and the Pro Duathletes Org, races
If that’s the common opinion of the pros, I think they’re over valuing themselves.
Is the pro race really what drives entries and sponsorship income? IM’s revenue must be primarily driven by the number of AGers they can get to sign up to their races and the amount of IM-branded stuff that they buy.
No one is paying for TV rights to screen the races.
I reckon most IM participants couldn’t pick the top 3 from the pro race (men or women) out in a lineup.
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I think the race loses its appeal if there are no pros, Its the world championship.
Tbh I’m like that these days too (the line-up) 
I think maybe what gets the Pros goat is having to plug stuff for free, if that is indeed the case.
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I’m not convinced sport should be professionalised at all. I enjoy watching, but would I enjoy it less if the coverage was of the AG* contenders?
I see IM as a tourist operation, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
Evidently there’s room for pros, but I’d agree they aren’t realistically a controlling force.
*I saw some footage of the bike mount line on FB and it made me laugh.
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It’s a tourist destination BECAUSE of the pro racing history though.
Maybe we just have polarised views but for me it’s where Ironwar was & Julie Moss crawled over the line. Can Alistair win it, will Joe get on the podium or will LCB ever get a win.
You would like a live race of AG ers? Bloody hell the commentary is already bad enough 
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As I said on one of the other threads, I don’t know how the PTO could operate without a sugar daddy bankrolling them. Is there any significant value to sponsors from paying for the events?
But if you ae in the race do you really care about what’s happening up the road in the pro race?
Would you be prepared to pay a streaming fee to watch the race if the income went to pay the pros better?
Rope Jono and Bevan and the IMTalk/TriTalk crowd in on amateur footage, crack open the beers, enjoy.
You might be right, I do love the pro bit, but I recognise I’m in a small minority.
Actually run channels do that, watch the marathons from the crowd, egg people on and comment.
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I only got into the sport after stumbling across TV footage of Kona. For me the pro field shows what is possible, and really brings the sport alive.
If I had just seen a few middle aged blokes plodding along the Weymouth seafront, I probably would have thought “nah” and taken up draughts 
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Are we talking about different things?
Kona, the world championships, with all it’s history. The pro race is the main event.
And Ironman the rest of the year, with a few pros no-one has heard of or cares about, just there to get their Kona slot, while the real event is the masses behind.
The PTO are trying to change that my putting big money to get big fields together at other times of the year. But as @Whisk says, how anyone outside the tri bubble knows or cares it is happening is beyond me, and surely not enough paying punters in the bubble to make it sustainable. Have heard they are trying to use golf as the business model, as the paying punters are similarly affluent and buy all the gear. And then the Ryder Cup breaks out once every 2 years to a general audience. Good Luck to them, but I’m not holding my breath.
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I think you see 500-600 streaming an IM event on FB, I wonder how many friends and family you’d get if the coverage was styled like the London marathon, between pro and am?
There was a whole bunch of a holes ruining the FPRO chat harping on about some social media twerp not getting any coverage on Kona Thursday.
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You mean the MULTI BILLION DOLLAR INDUSTRY that is sport? I don’t see that being rolled back to jumpers for goalposts & box carts.
Yes, yes I do. 
Things change. We’ll all be artists on permanent universal benefits within a generation, I tells you.
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They show the PTO and Super League on Eurosport (latter sometimes on BBC too) so that is a start to widen the reach of the coverage.
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Some of the HotChillee events used to be on Eurosport a few years back and they were 100% amateur.
I think HotChillee paid the production company to make the programmes and they gave Eurosport some corporate places on the events and Eurosport aired the programmes for free. They were just a glorified ad for the events.
I admire the ambition of the PTO thinking that triathlon is going to be the new golf, but people have been saying the same about cycling for years. Cycling is a much more established sport, is more accessible for participants and still the professional side of it struggles for sponsorship
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Never listened to his but yes did think I’d check it out to see a post Kona review.
@pacha and @Jorgan if PTO do want to challenge IM rather than being an extra race series then they’d have to offer some long-course, and change the distances to avoid copyright. So I’d agree they might as well shorten the bike slightly and even it out even if that will disadvantage Skipper.
@adam no, guest on ‘How They Train’. Aussie podcast but I’d still recommend it, skippers episode and generally, one of the better ones for giving pro insight.
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