Probably some dull rubbish about a new sponsor…
Maybe they’re going to hold the championships in Blackpool 
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PTO taking it over? 
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Lionel declared 2020 winner…
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They better not be getting rid of Ventum! I love seeing massive amounts of coverage of mop athletes despite what’s going on at the front of the race.
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Hoorah… Virtual KONA… and a reduced fee of only £600 to enter, or for £2,800 you can enter, get a free Kickr Climb, an IM towel and a special red coloured virtual bike racking spot!*
*Entry only available in US and for owners of Peleton bikes.
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Who the hell does their PR/marketing.
(as ghastly as it is.)
A ‘super’ announcement. What the hell is a ‘super’ announcement. For that matter what is a ‘non super’ announcement. Are most of their announcements non super, in which case should we pay attention? The mind boggles.
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Its low quality US marketing material, and they don’t have the self-awareness to realise that it comes across as utterly crass to much of the rest of the world
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Well,that was disappointing
So so exciting. I can’t wait to watch racing with real time info on how many mars bars the leaders ate yesterday.
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Supersapiens. What the hell is it?
Blood glucose measurement device, like diabetics would use.
Expensive.
Since Ford parted ways, Kona headline sponsors have been mainly third rate.
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About 20 years ago getting ear-prick blood tests during intervals to measure lactate levels was a big thing. Has this now been moved to a technology where you can get a live reading of lactate level, or are things like this glucose level patch and live blood oxygen readings (optical skin readings) an effective equivalent?
Core body temperature has been proven to be a good measure of performance with definable thresholds that if exceeded causes a drop-off in output. I know there have been electronic pills you can swallow that are used in a lab environment to read live data, but has this crossed over to consumer products yet?
Usually horse-racing is the earliest adopter of this performance measurement tech, as the physiology of the animals, plus the lower level of legislation is more permissive to trialling it, and the financial rewards are greater.
Do you think they’ll have a giant blood testing device on the swim turn buoy?
I cant be bothered to look it up - it will be yet another adaptation of medical tech that has very little accuracy or reliability, and ultimately does nothing to improve athletic performance. Add it to the list of things that don’t work or we don’t need; o2 saturation, hrv, “sleep trackers”, etc.
These things sell because “medical” sounds trustworthy and a misunderstanding that disease is on a scale that runs up through to performance.
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At least we know ‘Super’ announcement was a brilliant genius tease…
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If you follow the Norwegians on social media, they are using a lot of that tech. The way they talk more generally, I do think they put a lot of credibility in the data it provides rather than it just being solely a sponsored publicity thing.
KB is very clear what he’ll be able to run in a marathon for example, despite having never run one, as he “knows all his numbers”. It might sound a little naïve, but the three of them somewhat proved the concept at Bahrain 70.3 in 2018 when they pretty much all smashed the existing “WR” in their first ever attempt at the distance (and that was the year I did it … it was the following year the bike turnaround was shortened leading to a short course).