I’ve announced a lot of Hawaii trips on this blog over the years. This might be the last one, however – little brother is planning to move off the island and my open invitation to visit whenever I like is moving with him! Anyway, 40 days till the next trip – as usual, of course, I can’t wait, it’s going to be great, I absolutely can’t wait.
In the meanwhile I’m being productive amongst all the rain and darkness here in Seattle. (Chris is trying to insist that September and October haven’t been that bad here this year, to which I am insisting he has gone senile. It’s been raining since Labor Day weekend, which was my birthday, so obviously I remember it.) I’ve been writing so much lately about how super awesome I am and how super-worthy I am of sponsorship/graduate education, that it’s really rubbing off on me! I feel like a walking Secret (the book) or Oprah disciple, or, hey, a graduate of a private all-girls school. Girl, you rule! Look at the way you are walking down the street next to that window! That is so awesome! You can do ANYthing!
Oh, to IMPORTANTLY follow up on blogs from earlier in the week: Splish is offering a 25% off promo through next Friday, November 13! Follow @splishinc on Twitter for details. So, now you can and should go buy all my favorite suits.
Second follow-up: WTC has officially announced the new Ironman Pro License, and the situation is better than I initially thought. The license fee is NOT in addition to regular entry fees. So, since I was tentatively planning to race 2+ WTC events next year, I won’t have to alter my budget, which is nice. I am not quite sure how I feel about the 5% standards for World Championship slots. On the one hand, I think it’s important to make a championship race draw the best in the sport, so qualification standards are indeed important. On the other, much bigger, hand:
1. Are there too many pro athletes going to Kona and Clearwater? Is WTC trying to make the pro field even smaller? If the athletes are still paying their way, which it seems they are because this new license does not cover the entry fee for championship events, then I am not sure of the incentive here.
2. If it’s to encourage better athlete development, I think there are more effective ways to do that than to slap a percentage standard on to the existing qualification procedures. For most athletes, financial hardship is a more significant hindrance on performance than talent, training, motivation, or pretty much any other factor. If WTC wants to encourage development in the pro ranks, they could re-organize and re-distribute the existing pro prize purses so that it’s not just the top 5 or 8 finishers who are taking home a pay check and covering their costs for the weekend, but instead the top 10-20, with more even distribution. The more “pro” athletes who can actually eek out a living in the sport and dedicate their life to it, the better the racing will be.
I think what they are ultimately trying to do is make the sport more media-friendly. There was also a big hullabaloo today about how ESPN and Fox Sports (who pays attention to Fox anyway) didn’t give Kona even a mention this year, until Lance said that he was going to race it in 2011. I guess it’s hard for WTC to sell sponsorship when the sports media don’t give two shits about stupid-ass Ironman (sorry sorry I have to reference my absolute favorite thing of the week). They have to make it more media-friendly. Lance will definitely bring a media frenzy, but what is going to happen in the meantime? I don’t think that reducing the pro field, and/or perpetuating its financial infeasibility, is the way to attract media attention. But what do I know.
(I know a LOT! Because I am AWESOME!)
Comments
This entry was posted on Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 7:47 pm and is filed under Evils of Ironman, Grad School Applications, Splish, in my opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
– Chris is right. Even as much as I bitch about the weather here, September and October were significantly nicer than normal for those 61 days.
– And I fully agree with the media issues. I was shocked to not see more information come up when doing a recent news search on Kona. But the parent companies can only do so much (although publicity *to* the media would be a start) — at some point it’s on the media for not giving it any attention. From there, they blame the public for lack of caring, assuming since they’re not getting calls, they don’t care about the coverage of the sport/issue. But how can people care if they don’t know anything about the sport, circling back to the lack of media coverage.
Sorry, rant. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle where everyone just decides to claim ignorance.
One other thing … I was actually thinking about the media issue Wednesday, when Chris Lieto was speaking at Road Runner. If one of the top athletes in a ‘mainstream’ sport, especially on the heels of a performance like Lieto’s second-place at Kona, were to come to another city and speak to a bunch of local fans, the local media (Seattle Times, maybe Tacoma, the P-I.com, the local radio stations, etc.) probably would have been there. As it is, no one knew he was there except the folks who know someone who was there. Ridiculous.
you ARE awesome!
there are a lot of weird incentives here, but I don’t think any of them are for the good of athletic development.