Kyle Glass: Warning. Pro Tri News is a podcast with different opinions, knowledge, and possibly fake news about triathlon racing. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only and some stories may be dramatized for comedic effect. Enjoy. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Pro Try News. We had an incredible weekend of racing, arguably maybe one of the best Iron Man performances both on the men's and women's side at Ironman Lake Placid. We're gonna get into that. We're gonna do some mid-season report cards on who's impressed us the most, who hasn't lived up to some expectations, and some pretty early picks for maybe 70.3 worlds and Kona. But we'll get into that all a little bit later and ending with taunt takes per usual. But we're joined by the normal gang of Mark Matthews, Pat Lemieux and Talbot Cox. Let's go with Mark first. Mark, how you doing? I'm very good. I ⁓ I was at Aaron Nichols' wedding on Saturday, which had eight other members of the Iron Man staff there. There were nine Ironman employees at his wedding, which I think is actually quite a good indicator of like, is your business a nice place to work? 'Cause you know, if you have no one from your wedding you don't want to be there, right? But that was cool. It was a banging wedding. Really, really enjoyed it. Got you know, suitably drunk. ⁓ and then the only thing that kept me awake last night till eight PM or nine PM was to watch Paula finish. I'd have been in bed otherwise about I think five o'clock yesterday, but I stayed up to watch Paula finish. Good weekend. Nice. Did they have ⁓ did they have any other for those of you that don't know, Aaron is the one who basically took Iron Man from under a million followers to one point eight million now? It's done. Yeah, I think the jump was even more than that, you know. He's the reals what I call him to his face is he's just the reels bitch. His his his job is literally just actual professional photographers sending him stuff. And what he's really good at is capturing the moment in a video, seeing something that's gonna be funny, something that's gonna be viral, something that's entertaining, and firing out. And he obviously does more than that, but he is he's the reason you might enjoy our man socials these days. Yeah. Did you have ⁓ any precision fuel and hydration to combat your hangover? I've never told that. Have I told that on the pod? No. So our w what people don't know about precision hydration, ⁓ which is what it was just then, was me and Kat were sponsored by them through some little age group team we were on, and then maybe they sponsored Kat separately for like a year or so, many, many years ago. And when we got married in twenty nineteen, they sent us boxes and boxes of the electrolyte tablets. Because the night before the wedding we did a pub quiz at my wedding with like a hundred people, which was a ⁓ like a heavy, heavy session. And afterwards we just had jugs of precision hydration for people to take on the way to their rooms to cure the hangover for the day before. So yes, you can come on the pod and listen to Pat tell you how great P and H is precision fuel and hydration is for his performance and stuff. But I will say top tier hangover cure as well, which I know is not what they want advertising, but I've been using it since about twenty eighteen and ⁓ I swear by it. I've y I've used it plenty of times. So ⁓ use code PTN P T N fifteen, get yourself some PH fifteen hundred and cure those hangovers. Is that why Brad works for Precision? Because I know he doesn't work out a lot. He works out about as much as me. No, he's training he's training for CIM. He's training to run like a sub three hour marathon or something right now. ⁓ wow. You have to sober up to get a hangover, it's Brad's problem. He hasn't had one in six or seven years, I don't think. No, but it's just a to a three age number, not as an advert. It is super amazing to think what we like when we first saw them. You know, they were just doing the tablets in the tubes, and I think we were there when it was just one strength as well. And now you go to an Ironman event, it's in the title sponsor, it's on the banners, but it's the same boys still running it. It's very cool to see what they've done in actually a relatively short space of time for What was just a garage business literally. So fair fair play. Yeah, yeah. Cool. Pat, let me how many miles did you ride this weekend? I rode quite a bit this weekend. So I yeah, I had great great rides on both ⁓ Saturday and Sunday. I I what I don't know what I did. So yeah, just a ton of riding. Watched a bunch of I mean it's there's a ton on the T V right now. Between the Tour de France, between Iron Man Lake Placid, there was World Cup in Edmonton, ⁓ World Cup Soccer. ⁓ I forgot about that. Yeah. It's a we've got black flags out at our house right now because our au pair for my two boys is Argentinian. She flew to New York for the game. and so I think we're gonna be in a couple weeks of mourning, due to the loss that Argentina had. I've got I've gotta be honest. Watching the final here. I have ⁓ for a for a village that is exclusively white English people, I have never seen so many people supporting Spain. No, I mean it was yeah, it was ⁓ that was obviously a pretty pretty clear and and decisive win. So it was it was a one sided game and I don't really watch the sport at all. So but I did watch the entire final yesterday. So yeah, great weekend. Thrilled to catch up about it, thrilled to thrilled to hop on the pod here with you guys. And you're single to admit this week, 'cause when's we're going to race? My wife leaves for the World in London in ⁓ Thank you, Kyle. ⁓ Monday night. So yeah, w she's leaving Monday night and then I'm on dad duty all week. So I think ⁓ I was pretty pump. I'm gonna toot my own horn a little bit. ⁓ there was a like a USAT high performance call beef about the race and they did a couple laps on my power numbers that I posted from Wednesday night's race. So there were a few people that recognized and sh gave a little respect. to the ⁓ to the three ninety nine that I did for thirty nine minutes. So I just want to say thank you for that. ⁓ can I just point out though, like, 'cause we haven't had our usual chance to rip on Pat. We normally get a good ten minutes while Pat can't sort his audio. So we get a chance to really put him back in his box. And I d I feel like we missed that opportunity. When you say single parent him for a week, you literally were just talking about Euro pair. ⁓ I gotta do nighttime. If you had if you if you had to do nighttime with My j my ⁓ my three year old George, I I think you would just you would just be silent after that. So I yes, I've got some padding during the day, but I'm gonna tell you from seven o'clock till as late as ten PM to say that it's ⁓ a little bit of a zoo at my house is an understatement. Jeez. Space technique. Talbot Talbot Well, I will say last June I checked my credit card statement and I had about twenty one thousand dollars of built up credit card debt and after chatting with Pat about it he kinda had to come to Jesus meeting with me and my goal was to be paid off by June of the next year. I have Amazon to blame for that and also Target. Had nothing to do with my beautiful wife and myself and our spending habits, but as of Friday, we are completely credit card debt free. So it was actually pretty cool. Weight off of our shoulders. So a lot of budgeting and selling things and all that. So for for those who probably do listen and have accumulated credit card debt and paid it off, that they they know what I'm feeling. So we're like free. So yeah. Wise decisions from here though. I don't think I'm gonna go buy a brand new Tesla. That's what Pat told me I should do. I will have a heart attack. If you if you Pat would die. Pat would have a heart attack. The quickest way to get Pat to fly to Oklahoma City is me to just tell him I'm gonna go buy a brand new car at a a car dealership and he'll be here within a couple hours. On a credit card, yeah. So it was ⁓ yeah, it was pretty exciting. And then watched a lot of triathlon this weekend and just really having fun and enjoying the family and stuff. So so yeah. Kyle? I got settled any hard house. ⁓ I spent two days building a hutch f for Addy 'cause she wanted a new hutch in the kitchen. So Honest for us is what you put rabbits in. What's the hell? I was confused by that. It's like ⁓ basically like a pantry, like a massive it's like it was fifty steps, it took me pretty much a day and a half to build it. It was insane. So Is that because you started it and then Trevor had a bad race and you spent like the next twenty four hours depressed and then you started like building back up again? Mark is Mark's gonna Yeah, is it because your DIY skills are as good as your bike maintenance skills? Is that why it took a day and a half? It could be. I it took me a little bit longer than anticipated on a couple of those ⁓ fifty steps, but we made it happen. ⁓ back to the bike skills, yes, I've been because I started moving and my bike was still maybe in my bike bag from my last trip, ⁓ I got it all built back up. And that was last year. No, no, it was it was this year. ⁓ but I put my rear derailiar on wrong. And so I had to go to the bike shop and very humbly have them show me how to correctly do it, as Mark has showed me multiple times how to correctly do it, as Pat showed me multiple times how to correctly do it. Dude, I can't I can't get it. It's the limit screw. Like I I guess that little that clamp thing needs to go on the other side of the limit screw or something like that. I always forget that part. Yeah. It's do it's doable. Yeah, we're Anyways, the only reason why I tell that story because I love embarrassing myself on how little I know about bike stuff, while I was there, I walk in the front door and what is sitting there but a beautiful brand new X Lab bike. And I'm just sitting there talking to him, I'm like, Hey, how many how many of those have you sold? And he was like, ⁓ we just that's the last one we have. We ordered twenty of them and we sold them all in the last week. And we just ordered another twenty five. And they're they're a primarily specialized bike shop. And he said, I can't even get any specialized bikes unless people are buying S Works. So he was like, I can get an X Live bike sent to the shop and I can get sold out of ⁓ in in a week. So in let me preface this. This is in Oklahoma City. Not a big bike community here. Like pretty good size, but not not it compared to some of the other places. So ⁓ I'm gonna just ⁓ a few pods ago I kinda gave a heads up on on the the Chinese brands entering the global market for cycling. So whether it's X Labs, QuickPro, WinSpace, ⁓ there's a there's gonna be and there are a bunch more, but but X Lab and Quick Pro are gonna be two of the most common ones that you'll see. ⁓ we are in the beginning of the beginning. So these Quick Pros, for instance a module. These are really, really nice bikes, but for like a frame set or for the time trial bike. Retail on these things. And these are ⁓ grand tour quality bikes, $2,100 retail here in the US. Time trial modules $2,600 retail in the US. If you put those up against the big five, we're looking at almost a third of the price full retail. So ⁓ These are gonna have an impact. Will they have deflationary pressures on on the big three? I'm not sure. I don't have great evidence on that, but ⁓ yeah, y I mean these things look awesome. I talked to a mechanic who built a Quick Pro ⁓ last week and he said, I'm blown away with the quality. Absolutely give these things two thumbs up. So yeah, interesting times. Well the massive perk they have of course is everyone knows already that if you're going to buy carbon fiber, there isn't this Western selling point about quality. You know, if you're gonna go buy a a hammer or an anvil or whatever, like something heavy, metal, whatever it might be, we can sell ⁓ you know, ⁓ made in America, Amer American steel, English, whatever it might be. But carbon fiber is already made there anyway. Your bike already comes from that anyway. It's hard. It's it's gonna be really, really interesting too. What happens what happens when you're like descending and then you hit a massive pothole and like the entire frame buckles? Who do you sue at that point? Yeah, but it's Do you just send it to a random address in China 'cause you're never gonna get a response or y these I don't think that's necessarily a fair question because these these businesses are legitimate and they are, you know, li fully licensed in in the US. or globally wherever they are. And like Mark said, these are these are the these are the companies. X Lab, you wanna know whose bikes they've been building for years? Who? Trek. ⁓ Trek is X Lab. Who makes specialized? X ⁓ Merida. Right, yeah, that's right. So so that's th these guys, it's not like they're just starting. X D S, which is X Labs, has fourteen thousand employees. Think about that. They did eight million units of bikes last year. I mean these these guys are absolute giants. So now the trick is always gonna be the Chinese brands, with all due respect, have always struggled to market properly in the US. So that's been their bottleneck. So if they can get past that, then I think they've got real weight behind ⁓ So Kyle, I didn't mean to hijack this, but I just it this is something that's I I just looked on ⁓ X D S's website. They have a lifetime frame warranty for X Labs and S D X D S guys, are we just gonna glaze ⁓ Like are they sponsoring us or what's going on here? Hey, look, the free ad reads or something. The post that Gillian put together of like the Chinese bikes got over eight thousand likes and over six thousand shares. So it made its rounds throughout the industry. Why was I I that's that's the only reason why I wanted to mention it. It's not cool yet. Still not cool. Okay. Okay, good deal. You I'm gonna still tell you what, when you see me rocking around on a quick pro wearing the stars and stripes jersey, I'm I'm I I think it's gonna get a couple points in the cool bucket, Mark. Let's get let's get into the race. What are you talking about? Wearing a Chi riding a Chinese bike wearing a red, white, and blue jersey. That sounds a real American actually now that I think about it. Exactly. Go on, that's good. All right. Fifteen minutes in. Let's get into Iron Man Lake Placid on the weekend. ⁓ I I I would say it was a really, really great race. ⁓ Martin Van Riel pretty much, with the exception of coming out of the water in second, led the entire race and had I mean, I'll say it, one of the best Iron Man performances we've ever seen. Between Sam Laidlow's performance last weekend and Roth and Martin's this weekend, I would say those are the two best performances we've seen in the calendar year of racing. Wrong? I would agree. Yeah, I'd agree. A solo mission day. KB's done some impressive stuff like back to back. But that was the best LMM. ⁓ it's hard though, 'cause now I'm thinking about it and I'm like, dude, Texas, he was only seconds off of his Ironman Cosmel time. It's crazy. It's crazy. ⁓ with with outside of Fraser Minicam taking some pool out of the water, ⁓ Martin Van Riel solo mission day is just I th Iron Man is a long, long day and to go a time like this solo mission is phenomenal. Yeah. Yeah. 741 on that course is is pretty monster. And and and we make jokes about it, and I said this in our group text too. It should also be noted that Matthew Marquot, four minutes behind that performance. And we could joke about all we want, but also going to school to be a doctor doing a full-time another full-time profession, you could essentially say. and still go four minutes off that is just as is salely impressive, yeah. No, I think I think the the two of them, like I don't I mean obviously Martin's performance was incredible. But I think Matthew should be just as proud ⁓ as I mean that is that is a absolutely dynamite performance. I mean what can you say? So I think ⁓ I yeah, I'm s I'm super happy for him both. Now It's just gonna be Martin I would say kind of squeaked in at the very end of what ⁓ I I mean I've is there a very clear signal for who can perform on the weekend of July nineteenth and then follow it up? Yeah, I saw they lost F last year. Okay, all right. I just think those days are done. I think that Mark could maybe speak to it. I think that these guys compete and train at a consistency level that is so high that they're able to bounce back very quickly. I think it would be very dumb to do this and turn around and do Kalmar and then expect to do good and Kona. it might be a bit much asking for the body, but I just think that the days are over of ⁓ you can't do a July Iron Man anymore. I totally agree. I think it's it's it's down to the way people are training now as well. You know, there's not there's not the same periodization of volume. There definitely is for sessions, like when you're doing what sort of session. So you periodise the type of training rather than the volume. You know, these the the The people are doing often the same weeks. You look at this a lot of the the Norwegians are other people. They might just be running the same weekly cycle all year. So like throwing an air race in now, recovering from it, the recovery's so much less than it used to be for some people as well. I don't think it I don't think it has a negative impact on Martin at all. I think you could say, you know, maybe if you wanted to do like a fourteen week uninterrupted build for one particular day, then you could maybe there's a there's a half a percent. But it's not like a write-off anymore, that's for sure. I totally agree with Albert. This is like I feel like this is we're in the part of the season, and we'll talk about this more mid-show, that like everyone's getting their final armor ready for battle in Kona. And you have some athletes that are probably asking questions more than they got answers. Like a Martin Van Reel got all the answers he's needed, and he's more than excited for Kona. A Trevor Foley, who was, as he said, Playing on house money, has more questions now and is scratching his head going into Kona. A Christian Blumenfeld is like racing Roth, and he's like, Okay, yes, I'll have more guys with me in the group, but also I think I cannot let Sam and that group of guys come off the bike ten minutes up the road. What am I gonna do? So the it is just setting up for an absolutely incredible world championship this year. And we might even say, This could be the greatest world championship of all time. Already. Already. Alright. Round out the podium was Ben Canoe, third place. We haven't seen Ben Canoe that kind of result from a Ben Canoe for a full distance Iron Man since I think his third place at Roth a couple years ago, back in twenty one, twenty two. Yeah. It was it was a bit back, like it was fifteen minutes back from Martin Van Reel, but it's still podium at a Pro Series Iron Man. Yeah, and I heard Will McCloy actually use a line, I think I know he listens to the podcast and gotta decide he stole it off me. ⁓ he didn't, he was brilliant all day. ⁓ about ⁓ Jason West. He did his thing right. He set out running a pace that would get him on the podium. And if he makes it, he makes it. And if he doesn't, he's lying on the floor, stretching his back off and dying of death. And he did exactly that. You know, he got to the point he needed to be. And then i the wheels just fell off and he he crumbled hard. But not that badly. Like all round. Like that was a that was a really exciting point of the men's race because and even like Trevor walking and stuff like that, it made it interesting 'cause otherwise you would just sat there watching a masterclass, which is always nice to do, but Iron Man's a little bit too long just to watch a solo master class and nothing else exciting happening in the race. So in a way that chase for me at least made it entertaining. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. ⁓ and then rounding out just from the men's race, the slots for Kona went to Jason West, Fred Funk, Dominique Souajia, and Christian Hogan Hog. So all four four men ended up in the top ten. Do you guys feel like that this is Going back to Matthew Marquot, Talbot, you said it in our group text. You think that he's America's best hope for Kona for a podium? l big fan of Matthew. Podium is gonna be so hard at this year's Iron Man World Championship. I I I hate to say that the level is Casper made a joke one time. ⁓ if I wanted to win all my races, I'd just come over to North America and take all the W's. I mean it it does unfortunately seem like any time a European comes over here they just tune all the Americans. It just shows you the level in Europe. Coming from a ⁓ fanboy triathlon who hates to say that and it pains me to say it, but it also is just the truth. The the level of athletes f from short course that have now entered in this new era of post twenty twenty Iron Man I I mean I can name ten off the top of my head to get get on the podium. Is Mark Watt our best hope? I would say so. I was quite surprised to see Rudy's result. Good result. ⁓ I was a little surprised to see it. Trevor Foley was another head scratcher here. ⁓ definitely not where we thought he would have positioned in this race. We thought he would have been up there for it, but had clearly not a good day with that eight minute loss out of the water. ⁓ but also too, this is the first time on this course that Trevor's been challenged by a real swimmer. ⁓ he's raced Marquad here before come out of the water six minutes down, so is Lionel, but Martin Van Reel pushing the swim and it just goes to show I mean These guys know exactly what they need to do in Kona to beat the Norwegians. That is, have the deficit out of the water, and let's get to work, boys. Like, let's we're only gonna do this when we work together on this bike. And I just I almost think the winner's gonna come out of the front swim group. But yeah. I ha I hate to jump that far forward, but I I think that Mark Watt I would say he is our only hope, but I would say the Podium is still a stretch. You think he's top American though? Just based on the consistency of his results. Consistency. I mean it's not even a I mean, I'm not even I'm just saying just take all the other Americans, stack up their Iron Man results the last three years. Yeah. There's a dude that is not even we're not even debating here. He's clearly at the top. I think though with straight away you've just you've already slept on Rudy von Berg. The last few years. You he's the When it's a championship, yeah. When it's a championship, he's spanked Marco and basically every one of them. Like Marco's not even close to him in a championship result, is he? I haven't I haven't done the head to head. I wish there was a website where I could click them both and have a quick look. But when it comes to a championship, like for once, shall we not sleep on Rudy von Berg? The the the only issue I have is I feel like this year Rudy's kind of digressed a little bit. I'm sure I'm gonna get a text message from this the second this podcast dropped. drops, but I feel like him going to Ben and getting coached by Ben, I I feel like his performances have like his fifth at Texas was better than his fifth here. Like if you look at that then I feel like he should have been like second third place here if he was fifth in Texas with the ⁓ strength of field that we had. Okay, there's seven times Rudy Von Berg's beating him on five of them. Yeah. ⁓ which the only two times that Matthews beat him is the last two races. Yeah, one was a DMF. Yeah. Like the other one. No, it was world championship in Nice, eight ⁓ eighth to thirteenth place and then second here. But Rudy does you are right, in a world championship setting he tends to be very, very consistent as of lately, outside of last year's Nice, which I think we could be an off world championship for him. But also changing coaches. He changed coaches from McCall to Ben, right? Yeah. Yeah. So he will be ready for I hate when you guys pull up the facts and my and I gotta admit I'm wrong. It's all good. Yeah, like currency at the moment Mark what's on top this year, I give you that. But yeah. Yeah. Anything else on the men's race? ⁓ tr Trevor needs to here here's my greatest fear. Here's what I have a feeling Trevor's gonna do. gonna panic and chase the Iron Man pro series now. He's gonna try and do a makeup. Sure. Why why would why shouldn't you go to Kalmore and go and get a makeup score? Okay, I know you guys proved me wrong on the July theory, but who has done a gr who's done a great Iron Man in late August and then flicked it around seven weeks later and put up a huge one on the big island. Your athlete ⁓ sorry I was about to say who did a terrible Iron Man and turned around and did a good one? ⁓ Magnus Ditlev, Frankfurt. No no no no, but that's not what I'm saying. That's not that wasn't my point. And then had a great Kona I'm sure we'll get many DMs of people who've done it, but ⁓ Thorston's gonna message us. It's a it's a Joe Joe Schmoe from Kokomo got you know sixth place and then they got third. That was a pretty good one. The thing is is they're racing so much more he's like Pete Jacobs never even did a triathlon before and he showed up in Kona and won. Kyle clearly already knows he's already on the start list for Kalmar. I I just I I don't I don't I I I don't I feel like it just screams insecurity. No, it also screams paying the bills. God girlfriend, gotta pay a living. Like life I I man, just taper, like back off things a little bit and go out to Kona. We've seen you ride a bike there before and then go toe to toe with some of the best boys. ⁓ I mean he can do it. It is hard to We saw what he was able to do in New Zealand. I'm sure a lot of people are gonna discount that performance, but we saw Trevor say, I'm gonna focus on this race and go out and won it. ⁓ I mean, when you have a performance like that and and Trevor does focus on a race that he wants to do well and perform at, he has a really good track record of saying, I'm gonna focus on this and do this. He backed off a lot of racing that he was gonna do mid season to say, you know what, I need to get in good seventy point three shape so I could win seventy point three North American championship in Happy Valley. He focused on it, did it and won it. So But now your your app he should now do something extra and random, which is exactly Nobody's good. I I didn't have an opinion. That's the thing. I didn't have an opinion on whenever he told me that he was gonna go do Calmor. ⁓ like he's toy still toying with the idea. I don't know if he's a hundred percent doing it yet, but whenever he told me that, I'm like I it c I could see it both ways. There's a lot of people that are gonna get into this situation right now that's like do I abandon the pro series to go all in on championship season, or do I s stay on this ship of like I wanted to do well at the pro series, I'm focusing it on the pro series. I don't wanna I'm not gonna I'm not I'll call Trevor separately and tell him my own thoughts. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna do it here on the pot, but we all we all know Trevor's not come out of the water in Kona eight minutes down. If he is the race is over so whatever to that. I it was just a it was just a bad swim all round. That's a traditionally. Yeah, I and I just think that's just erase it. Like just do what you're thinking. Go show up on Friday night to Kona, check into your hotel and race the next day and d do what you do best. Stomp the bike and get ready to run for your life. Hey ProTri News listener, it's WinRepublic co-founder Luke McKenzie here. 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It's been a complete Game changer for me. And here's the deal. Wove now is gonna offer our listeners a thirty day money back guarantee. That's right, you heard it. You don't like this saddle after twenty eight days, send it back. But if it's you've have your experience anything like mine, you're gonna absolutely love it. Can't wait for you to try out. They've got three models right now, many more coming. Check ⁓ out. Let us know what you think. So let's talk about someone who deserves to be talked about. And so many people have followed the sport for so long. She's so loved by so many freaking people. Did her first professional race in 2008. I mean, Paula Finley posted the greatest posts and she said, I've trained my whole life for this. And her debut Iron Man takes the W. And if you guys I don't know if you guys tuned in or saw the chat. But it was just like pollapala pollapula polo pola polo pola pol yeah everyone the whole day just cared about polapala and it was just so cool to see. It's like such a hero of our sport, so loved by so many people. ⁓ so cool to watch. Just so cool to watch. I know that's not That's not remotely true. I really Marta's really lovely, but you what's crazy too is Marta ha Marta did not let her take that easy too. Paula had to run all day long. But her pacing, the maturity of how she raced it. ⁓ my gosh, just perfect. It like the it was just a brilliantly raced debut race. You know, she didn't chase the front too hard. She got there in her own pace, pushing her own power. took control of the race, spat the rest out the back door, rode pretty well with Marta. They pulled a few turns each. And then they had a little Duke it out in the start of the run. But it wasn't like surgy, it was just like they both almost ignored each other and just got on with their run. And there was there was a while where Chelsea Saro was surging at the start, but Paula didn't react to it. I'm sure she'll have got splits, just held her pace and it was just a brilliantly executed debut Iron Man. And we know nowadays people lots of people have won their debut. It's not a crazy thing anymore. I think that's 'cause the availability of data. But I just thought it was a master class from a wonderful, yeah, advocate of our sport. Yeah. It was almost robotic in a way. Like I was looking at Paula waiting to see some sort of like reaction 'cause it was her first time doing an Iron Man, you know. And usually like Paula's pretty good at holding her emotions, I'd say, on a race course. Before a race and after the race is kind of different. You've you you don't feel like she can hold her emotions on her face, like in the race? I feel like Paula always just looks so straight and so dialed when she's racing. ⁓ yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Fine. Yeah. Like while she's racing. Like before the race and after the race, completely different. Paula's also one of those athletes that before a race you see her and you just want to go up and just give her a hug 'cause she's like like you're just like Paula, you're so amazing. Everyone loves you. And she's just so t focused on the race and so I don't want to say nervous, but also I mean there's a lot of athletes that are like that, but yeah. ⁓ no, she's super nervous before which and she won't she won't mind people saying this. Like she she's very like emotionally available to fans and the public. And I think that's a super great thing that people are lovable, right? Like Yeah. But ⁓ I d today, Carl, you're right, it was just there was nothing like yesterday. Yeah, there was no emotions at all. Like I was expecting to see like Maybe a grimace of like, ⁓ this is hard, I've never done this distance before, I've never raced for this long before. There was nothing, none of that. It was literally just Paula going out for what looked like just a long effort. ⁓ so many highs and the lows of the sport. I mean, she posted on her Instagram she said, I've been training this my whole life. Insane day. Having highs like this after twenty years in the sport is effing crazy. Gratitude. Grateful for all the love. Yeah. Well it was awesome. I can't wait to see a recap and just ha that's what they do s her and Eric do so well with their brand they built is talk about like the inside. So I can't wait to just hear about their thoughts and emotions and all that afternoon. Hear their podcast and the YouTube video? Yeah. Well ⁓ I I I I will say one interesting thing is I did note that she's racing in the older fly knits. She's not wearing the newer ones. Do you think that she finds those the older ones faster? Because Chelsea, Trevor, everyone is all racing the new ones and she's racing in the old ones. ⁓ the light spray. The ⁓ Yeah, sorry, light spray, not fly knit. Yeah. Whatever. Yeah, maybe, 'cause the other person that I've seen use the old ones quite a lot is K B. Yeah, so I just I thought it was it it was interesting. I wonder what Aunt thinks about that. Yeah, but she's racing in the older ones while I think we'd also need to talk about the other former world champion here who raced in the newer ones who Yeah, so the ⁓ the light spray up on them is a little bit different, the new ones. And I think the rocker plate's in a slightly different position. So if you like if you have a certain style, maybe you would stick with it. But I don't know. Yeah, Chelsea was in them, wasn't she? One last thing on Paula Th is this the first time we've ever seen someone's gonna be able to correct me, I'm sure. Paulo Sousa is her coach now. I don't know if Paulo Sousa has ever trained anyone over an Ironman distance. Does anyone know that? ⁓ I believe that he has. He bounced him. I believe that he's ⁓ I I believe that he's c trained. 'Cause he's primarily I mean he had nine Olympians race in Paris, so he's he's obviously very good at the short course. I'm just saying, like maybe we'll start seeing more him coach more long distance athletes after a performance like that. Or Paula's just he knows Paula so well 'cause he coached her for so long that Yeah. We'll see. Well ⁓ Marta Sanchez, second place on the women's race. She got third place in Texas, second place here. ⁓ moved her up to second place overall in the pro series. Like, do you guys think that Marta Sanchez is gonna be I mean, a dark horse for world championship? This year? If you if you would have asked me before Iron Man Texas and I had to bet money on who was gonna have a better year, Marta Sanchez or Lisa Purtier, I would have bet my house on Lisa Purtier. ⁓ huh. And it has been almost the polar opposite. Marta Sanchez has just taken it by storm and just been it doesn't matter what course and all that. I mean she can race in any terrain, like Really, really, really excited to watch her race Kona. But yeah. What do we mark about her Daffy Dark Visor? Dude, I that was I'm saving that for a hot take. I I don't like the fairings on the helmets like what the Met has that Marta raced in and what the cask helmet. I don't know, I actually those things I I don't like No, I don't 'cause you can't see their face while they're racing. Yeah. So I don't like you can't see any emotion or anything like that. And I don't know if that was an aftermarket one. I've not seen that on because she had the it was the older Met helmet. Yeah. It was a bit of an odd one. But it's massive that one. ⁓ but yeah, well I mean if it's faster, it's faster until they ban it, they you know, crack on people and make it. That's the thing is I was talking to people, I was like, I don't understand why Iron Man's letting people wear it. That's fairing. And it's like if you look at the Iron Man rule book The fairing only applies the fairing rule only applies to the bicycle. It doesn't apply to a helmet. But I'm pretty sure there's a thing about you can't modify your helmet. And if that's not if that's not part of the helmet when you buy it, i.e. the visor and the helmet, I don't know the rule on that. So if think if Iron Man wanted to get amongst these visor flaps and stuff like that, if it's not part of the original helmet would be the way they could probably get after it. But then they'll do the They'll deal with that in February when they do the rural changes. No, no, no. Did we're gonna see someone in Kona T. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. We're gonna see people with freaking flippers on their helmet in Kona. It so it it it it will be really interesting. Clearly she didn't have the day she wanted to in Kona last year. She swam in that front group with Holly Lawrence and all of them, and then she had a pretty good bike, but began to fade and then DNF'd on the run. So clearly it wasn't her day. But I mean, with swimming that good, yeah. And so I think I mean she's been there before. It's not like that she's a Kona rookie. And so to go back, I mean as we saw last year, Lucy and Taylor ran themselves to death. They were running scared all day long and it's in it's anyone's race and it will I mean she's one that you definitely want to look at with Trading blows with Paula Finley, who I think we can all agree is a really good athlete on the bike. But although it was interesting to see, you gotta wonder if Marta just like sat up because Paula and that Chelsea group caught the front so fast, like within ten miles, and then they all just like Chelsea hung on for a while and then eventually Chelsea got popped, began to go backwards very, very fast, was losing about a minute every nine miles. ⁓ but yeah. So I've always great athlete. 'Cause she's a bit on the maybe l less followed than some of the other girls. Possibly, you know, she's not Western speaking, etcetera, naturally. She's super smiley and super lovely. Well worth like a bit of your support and time. She's a really nice girl to have around the racing as well. So big up for her. And then the rest of the women's results. Third place, Rachel's Alincas, forty s finished forty seconds ahead of Tamara Jewett. I I thought that that was a good performance by Rachel. ⁓ She'd already had her Kona slot, so Racing in this one was gonna be like a how can I do a hard effort to get ready for Kona. So it's weird not. ⁓ she had a thirteen minute P B. ⁓ yeah, that's huge. It's weird to see Tamra do it not running the fastest run split, right? Did she not? No, no, she did, she did, she did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She was slower than she was on the run last year though. Yeah, correct. Hmm. Interesting. Yeah, ⁓ I must have just bit they were they were riding pretty hard at the front, so must have just Yeah. And maybe just sewed it for a long chunk of the bike. It was overcast the year previous too, wasn't it? Like much cooler conditions. Yeah. ⁓ yes. Yes, it wasn't as sunny. Yeah. Lisa Partier. Lisa Partier, fifth place, Graysteck six, all the way down sixteenth, an hour, twenty three later, Chelsea Sidaro. It's It's a hard if I've b I've watched this plenty of times with my boss. It's a hard day and pillow to swallow on what do you do. A lot of people have messaged I mean they think they just a lot of people just messaged us and it's just from the fans perspective, you got half and half. People are like, She just had a bad day and then the other half are like, Don't go to Kona. Just don't go. and just race the back half the year, qualify early for next year. ⁓ I think that the interesting c question is I think that usually athletes ⁓ and I hate to I ever speak for a pro. I think we're all waiting to see what Chelsea says from this. I mean she just said it was generically a hard day. In a I think in a normal day like this, I don't see Chelsea historically finishing. But The reason why she had to finish this race is because it's a slot validation year and it's one I believe it might be her last year. I could be corrected on that. I believe this could be her last validation year that she just had to cross the finish line to get her slot to Kona. So if she did not finish this race, she would have to fly to Kalmar and finish that one. And it it it sits on your mind and it's like, do you just get through it and then reset Do a Kona build, etcetera so I this is a hard one. I think it's a five year exemption, right? So she won in twenty twenty two, so maybe she has one more year left. ⁓ I think so. Twenty twenty seven. One more. Okay. So her and Gustav from winning twenty twenty two. But yeah, I mean I can't imagine winning a world title in twenty twenty two and then having to walk for ten miles to get back to the big island. That was something that I was like trying to wrap my head around last year. Like that has to be super humbling for her. I I it's hard because there's a lot of people that have posted and they're like, ⁓ she's gonna win like what's she gonna what's it gonna take for her to win Kona and I just I don't see a world where Chelsea I think that her sixth place that she got the year after winning, that's probably like that's probably where the level where she's at now is like, how do I get to sixth place or better? She had a great performance in Nice. What was she? Third place in Nice for World Champs. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ she did have a good performance last year at seventy point three Eagle Man. She was second behind Lucy Charles Barclay. So it's like those performances are still there. ⁓ we'll we'll see what takes place over the next what, twelve weeks until Kona. Yep. Yeah. Maybe Mark should just sit this one out. No, just Pat to give me your thoughts. ⁓ just what Talbot said. I mean, dude, we Talbot and I've been through this with the big dog more than once. I mean I've been through this with my wife more than once. I mean, it's just like if you're in a place where you're finding joy from your job and you enjoy it and you're having fun, just keep doing it. I mean who care who cares? So if you can if you can ride the roller coaster, you gotta be ready for the highs and the lows. And just embrace it. So if this is a job that you love, who cares? Yeah, exactly. Like so I I'm I'm out there you know, I don't have to support everything that she does, but if look if you love your job, who am I to say stop doing it? I'm not. I'm not gonna you're not gonna hear that from me. So Yeah good Good honor. I mean sh dude she had to walk ten miles. That shows you how much athletes want to go and how important it is to go to Kona. Mm-hmm. And she only trained for two months, like I mean, so it's just like that's that's where I'm at with it. It's like if you're willing to walk ten miles for something, shit, you earned it. Yeah. I think to salvage the season, a top five in Kona would salvage the season for her. I'm not talking about a win. A top five in Kona for her would be a really, really good day. ⁓ Yeah, agree. I agree. Top five at World Cup. We get so fixated on winning is the only thing. Because it feels like a small sport or whatever. Most most great athletes never win a world championship in their sport. She's won one. You know, come back you take a top five, sure. Mm-hmm. can we do a lap on Kona qualifiers then as we're talking about it? So on the women's side, just 'cause I want to make a point, Paula Finlay took straight off the bat. ⁓ Lara Tombe out of Spain took another one, Samantha Scold and ⁓ Rihanna Hughes. Making that nine British women qualified for Kona. Golly. Yeah. What are they feeding you guys over there? Well, girls. Yeah, I don't know. But that's a lot, right? I'm sure they'll be says our Germans have probably had twenty eight in some year. But nine feels like quite a lot. Nine is a lot. Yeah. Men's sides. Right. Rihanna Hughes, she she decided she didn't want to do short course anymore and has now come to middle distance. Is that kind of the Yeah, that's the gist of it. ⁓ yeah, yeah, yeah. She's been out a while. She raced her first one in New Zealand earlier in the year. Which means Sam Dickinson's gonna probably come over with her since they're dating. Which means he's gonna get bit by the Kona bug. Maybe you'll have a G B athlete that can win the world title. ⁓ There's two buzzwords in performance sport that we hear all too often: carbs and protein. Protein can get super confusing. We can see it in water, snacks, you name it. But about what about if we just went back to the original source? Good old fashioned meat. That's right. Visit goodrancher.com for your own box of just it can be steak, sausages, chicken, you name it. I love Good Rancher because here's the deal. I can make my own box and have it shipped to my house super easily. Check ⁓ out for yourself. Use code IRN at checkout at goodranchers.com. American Meat Delivered. And if you don't trust me, they've got over twenty seven thousand reviews and four and a half stars. Check ⁓ out, let us know what you think. Speaking speaking of Kona, it's been already a really, really big year. How how would we rate, I guess, like a mid season report card on on everyone's ears? Like what are some of the big surprises, some of the interesting I d I hate to use the term let downs without offending people, but what how do how do we think the years gone for the travel and scene in general? I think I Pat, tell us about the business side. What what are you seeing on the business side? Look, I got a report from a regional triathlon race director that does primarily sprint and Olympic distance races. And he said all of his races are sold out and it's skewing younger than it ever has. And he's been doing this for almost twenty years. So from a from a signal standpoint, like that's a really great signal. I know Iron Man has a similar like some similar parallels here with skewing younger in the iron in the seventy point three and Iron Man distances, right? So I think from a forecasting standpoint, the sport's in a very good place. Bike industry still obviously going through a huge transition, ⁓ still really struggling post COVID. What will that look like going forward? I'm I'm personally not sure yet. I think from a business standpoint, we're gonna get an announcement from we've got a press conference that the T one hundred has scheduled for Friday, July twenty-fourth. I'm presuming that they're going to just be announcing what will be the T twenty five, T fifty, T one hundred, and maybe a T two hundred for twenty twenty-seven. ⁓ look, I think the biggest opportunity here and what could really shake things up. is if somehow World Triathlon, the T one hundred and Felix from Challenge Roth could come to an agreement to make another world championship. I think that that's interesting and I think I think personally I think the sport's ready. ⁓ so I think on the whole the business side is triathlon is is interesting right now and it's front of mind for brands. There's obviously gonna be there's huge room for improvement. ⁓ but it seems to be that effort is being made on both the T one hundred and the Iron Man side. Talbot. I I I couldn't agree more and and also too, as a team collectively, we're talking with a lot of these brands about Kona and Activation in Kona. And we haven't seen this essentially since the split of the men and women in Kona. The brands are all over it. You are going to see a massive participation year in Kona from a brand standpoint of everyone just so excited, even calling and talking to people on the island, they are excited and they're like, No, yeah, we know that the men and women are coming back. It's gonna be the biggest year yet in a long time. And so just even from a brand standpoint, the brands themselves are so excited for the world championships this year in Kona. Yep. So I think I think that's gonna be I mean certainly that's been a theme. ⁓ I think from a from an Iron Man standpoint they've increased their prices on on expos. So on the ground, a ten by ten I'm hearing is now twenty thousand dollars for the week. So it's it's increased quite a bit. ⁓ you know, I don't know if that's if that's just strictly driven by supply and demand or where that's coming from. I've always been a proponent. I think the expo should be somehow moved to the back of the King Cam. And they should be using that parking lot a lot differently than what they currently use it. I'm sure that somebody's thought of it or had that idea before, but ⁓ that's how you would bring it all back to effectively under one roof, like what they did in Nice. So I my personal opinion is that and this is a balance that Iron Man tries to strike, you've got to get more people, more brands at the expo at Kona to make it feel bigger. The problem is, is when Iron Man sells sponsorship on the front end, they give category exclusivity and protect and keep others out of that. And so that's a balance. ⁓ that's a business decision that they make, right? If they do a deal with Hoka, they say, Hey, we're not gonna have any other shoe brands under the roof of the expo. look, for me, I think the consumers pick up on this and know this. There's gotta be a better middle ground here because what's but's gonna 'cause sorry, I'm gonna just cause what's gonna happen and that Iron Man doesn't want is there's gonna be gorilla marketing everywhere else around the island. And so if you're a competing shoe brand, what are you gonna do? You're just gonna rent out a space that's adjacent to the expo anyway. So they're gonna be visible. The canyon house right opposite. Massive banners, better servicing, everything. And like the the actual space that you give the sponsoring bike brand inside the expo is rubbish compared to that. And you lose control of it, yeah. So so that would just be they know they know this is going on, right? They're n they're not idiots, but I think that there's that this would be a time because of the excitement in the industry to try and incentivize everybody to come back under one roof and how are they gonna do that? I I think if that was from a sponsor standpoint, let's move on to an athlete that we'll talk about a ⁓ race organization standpoint after that. Earlier this year we launched our Pro Try News website, which we're super, super excited about. trying to lead the charge on a ranking system and a platform where you can come and see results and all things like that. But we did announce our own ranking system, and I would say it's been fairly accurate. ⁓ Let's look at the men's side first and we can talk about it, then we'll go into the women's. ⁓ Hayden Wilde still holds that number one position. Christian Blumenfeld second, Casper Stornez third, Martin Van Reel fourth, Yellow Gean's fifth. And a lot of people are like, ⁓ but but what about Christian? Christian still has not been able to get those significant points on the big days when they matter. If he would have won Roth, he would have jumped and been in that first place position. So Yeah, what what are what are our thoughts on the athletes' performances this year? ⁓ someone that kinda has let me down this year, hitting on our rankings, is Hayden Wilde. Like it would have solidified our rankings if Hayden would have just beat K B at seventy point three Geelong, but he didn't. So ⁓ Hayden Hayden's someone that kinda has let me down this year so far. With his ⁓ yeah, I guess 'cause he's Singapore, he didn't he didn't pull off that. I mean and he's not raced great on the short course. I think it's quite harsh to say he's let you down there. He's got a sick feeling. Yeah, I know. I saw that picture of him and his brand new Porsche andor and his dog that he had in it and it He's had much of a rough year this year. Yeah, he's had a tough year. Real, real depressed that kid. No, no, no. Let's let's let's do it for real. Let's do it for real. It's okay for me. G outside of n like New Zealand at the start of the year, the where he was sick as a dog when he turned up for it. That I know he's not now you know, he got beat in Roth. But that block of racing he had, Geelong, ⁓ Oceanside, Texas, that kind of romp he went on was just supreme dominance. And of course it pay he he pay he paid the b sorry, he had to pay for that at some point. And that's just a bit of a ⁓ a middle part of the year where he probably had to get back for some training, wasn't necessarily as sharp as he wanted to be, but or could be. And he's just gearing up again to go massive cum cone. For me, that was like the best block of racing of any athlete this year. Those three races, I just thought it was a magnificent showcase of like who the daddy is. And and and it should be mentioned that KB was sick in Iron Man New Zealand. That was the reason of the result. It wasn't just like he had an off day. Yeah, so sick. Yeah. Not taking away from Trevor, but I think we can all we're all aware that he was Definitely. Yeah, Trevor Trevor was magnificent. You could you can only race turns up on the day and how they perform. ⁓ but yeah, for me that was a huge one. And I then then other athletes that have really impressed, like Martin Van Riel's now back on track to be magnificent. But Casper ⁓ in a reduced Frankfurt race, sure, made that look so easy. It was like I you know, you're the reigning Iron Man World Champ, and he just dusted everyone there at what looked like a canter. And Gustaf has started to show a bit of form again. You know, he he was good in Frankfurt, he's getting back on his toes. So and Solvi Losseth will round her in with the whole Norwegian group. So that's my take. The Norwegians are still kind of the force to be reckoned with. On the woman side of things, Solvig Losseth up into first place now. Taylor Nibb in second, Lucy Charles Barclay in third, Kat Matthews fourth, and Kate Waugh, who I don't think she's on any upcoming start list. ⁓ w we haven't seen a whole lot of her, but holding on to some of her performances from last year for the Just just to clarify, the the points are on a rolling twelve month. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Taylor Nib. So it's counting last year's world championships. Taylor Nib dominates Oceanside, second place in Texas, gets run down, but was right out of front. But then what's she been on? Winning national T T champs, winning a short horse race this last weekend gone. Like I think she's just seems to be having fun with the sport and banging in good results across like a real myriad of things. So I i in terms of like having a good year, Taylor seems like she's having a great year. Especially with herself. Like super positive. And we get to now see her. It's been almost like a potpourri type of year. Yeah. 'Cause it's like I'll do a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and then just make this make this crazy little fun this ⁓ like jambalaya almost. I assume fairly soon she'll go into a bit of niece Kona focus. ⁓ how she balances the niece and koner thing is hard, you know, like it is for anyone trying to do the double. But i she'll after the start of the year she just goes into both those races as one of the standout favourites, especially especially niece. So with a climb like that, try and keep up with Taylor on a half an hour climb, the damage can be horrendous. And and with Incredible years come some of the down surprises. Magnus Ditlev is quite a surprise we haven't been able and it's not like it's he's had a bad year, it's just we haven't been able to see these athletes race a whole lot. Magnus Ditlev ⁓ Yellow Geans? I mean Yellow Geans like other than his second place at Geelong and then his DNF at Texas, we haven't seen Yellow Geans race at all. The DNF in Texas was was like a performance thing, but then it turns out stress fracture afterwards, right? Which we believe he's back from. There was talk that he might do placid if he got in a good enough shape for it. ⁓ I think last weekend he said he's doing Kalmar, so So Yellow Geans, ⁓ Lionel Sanders, I mean, this is two years in a row of just season ending injuries. We'll see if he can have a back half of the year. I know he has big plans. Patrick Longo, we haven't seen too much. It's kind of a farewell esque season. so that's for the men's side. And that's what? Mark doing the math on the big island. a Lucy Charles Barclay, we haven't got to see a whole lot of her. We did recently see her r race Roth, which did come back. She she did have a surgery ⁓ earlier in the year, but Laura Phillip, we haven't really seen Laura really. Laura Phillips moved down the rankings hard. She's like ranked seventieth, I believe. Yeah, we haven't really seen her race a lot. I Hamburg she was solid, you know. She was only a minute and a half off the dub in Hamburg. ⁓ a race that c took an awful lot out of Solvi, but She can afford a bit of time down in the in the she's young in the long run of her career. A few rough weeks after a couple of big Iron Man's for Solvi, a bit of lower time. Spent a bit of time with some of her partners here doing some testing in the UK to s skip Swansea. I expect to see Solvi firing on all cylinders later in the year. But Laura, yeah, she ran she ran hard in Hamburg. just been a bit sick. I think we'll see her putting a good she'll be one of the favourites for Kona again. You she'll she'll be a top five favourite for sure. And we and we would have hardly seen Lucy at all if she wouldn't have entered Roth the day before the race. So thankfully she did. And it was a solid performance, but it was just weird to see Lucy get caught on the bike and dropped, in fact. And it's just very unlucy, but like if you are completely insane if seventy point three worlds or Kona comes around and she's not in your top two, you know. Yeah, completely upset. You're in you're insane if you're you're no putner in that. Yeah. So Pro series, what do you guys think? I mean you know we guys you guys did a pod about it already like a few weeks ago. But I I'm a little bit underwhelmed right now. ⁓ and and just because we're always called pro Iron Man news, the viewing numbers were not awesome for Lake Placid. So I I just I wish they would have hyped that race up a little bit more. ⁓ and it seems it just seems like there's some gaps in these like middle of the season races where they're you know, even for Swansea, like they just Like they're choosing to not shine as big of a spotlight on that and I wish that they would have for ⁓ they had an opportunity to in Lake Blacid. Mark and th because the only opportunity I feel they had in Lake Blacid was Paula. I think they're maybe realising that the only way they get the big viewing numbers and the big hype around a race is the f the few titans of the sport they have. And like Paula, yes, she's not winning world championship races, but her draw and her fan base is up there. You know, like this is why they need KB on Starlines. This is why they need ⁓ ta Taylors, they tailor at Sol V V someone. They need they need they need a pair of giants going head to head to make the racing a viewing spectator kind of a Yeah. I I guess what I wish they would have done is just maybe collabed with Eric a little bit better ahead of time because there's so much content that he could have done for them in this process. Like He could have been going and finding clips of They did a lot. They did a lot. But dude, but I'm not I'm not I didn't see any of it. And like I'm in it. You know what I mean? Like I'm just saying like it should just be in my it should just be in my feed. I saw all the stuff that Eric and Paula did. Yeah. I didn't see any of the stuff that Iron Man did. Yeah. Yeah. It's almost it's almost like this last week It's almost like the guy, whoever runs Iron Man Social's just like checked out or something. I don't know. It's like that's what I feel like. What do you guys think? Yeah. Poor Aaron got married. That's like, why the fuck is Aaron taking the weekend off the lazy bastard? Poor Aaron got married. And half the Iron Man staff were there as well. Okay, all right, all right. But then but then that's a dip that's the thing, right? That shows you how much it's on Aaron's shoulders. It should it sh I mean, well one, that's job security for the brother and then you know, but two, like they should have somebody else. Like I I don't know. That's just my this isn't just picking on like placid. These are like the in between races. Something Irmand also has to start doing is streaming the the pre race press conference. Such like why are they not setting up a camera and just putting it on YouTube an hour later or two hours later or three hours later? Like All that is is just a waste of time for all the pros that sit there on the panel. That's The room full of what, fifty people? Like that does no one a good service. Like it does it does almost the Iron Man a disservice of having this pro panel is like no one's gonna be able to see that and what are we gonna just take all the clips that we get from from these pro panels? Their best bet would be move konas to a indoor room and pack it with chairs and people and That's that's not open to the pr it's only open to the press and they're like very strict on who gets to get in. But Yeah, and and also the athletes the athletes would love it to be moved indoors. Indoors. Yeah. Yeah. Big one of the giant event rooms inside. I I I think that to to argue what you said, Pat I think we've hit this new age of and shout out to T one hundred who that's essentially started it of we are To watch a good Iron Man back in the day was like two athletes 1v1ing each other because everyone dodged each other. And now we get a start list like Texas come around, and it's such an insane race that like even this weekend, it's just a standard Iron Man. And so I don't even know if it's as much Iron Man's fault as it is just the level of racing is so raised has raised so high that like I just think that everyone's almost in their they've already done their fall Ironmans and their the start list is just not as sexy. And luckily the only reason they got some of these people here is because they are doing the pro series. So I'm I I absolutely think you that's a you're speaking the truth there, right? I would have just loved it if this was like I don't know. I Yeah. Guess what guess what next week is, guys? Create your own Pro Series calendar. I I mean For everyone or for us? No, we'll for us. ⁓ no, we'll do it. ⁓ I I I will I will say, and I and I hate I know we're the pro Iron Man boys. I feel like we haven't even talked about T one hundred this year. Well the problem is is they they do this massive break. They had two months with no racing. There was no races in July or and then essentially beginning of June they had the race in San Francisco and they don't race again until the middle of August in Canada. And it's like you can't go eight Eight plus weeks without having a freaking race. But whatever they're announcing next weekend, the forums is gonna blow up and it'll just be discussing T one hundred. I mean i and if they're not announcing something like that, then I don't know why you're holding a press conference. It's g it's gotta be something big. It's gotta be they're gonna A million dollar prize. So do you do you think it's big Mark, do you think it's gonna be bigger than a T twenty five, T fifty, T one hundred? I think they're going to Roth. Well be o that would be awesome. Two and a half. If they go to Rothmark my words. And so will Pat. This would be the most obvious and we'll do a relay. This would be the most obvious th they're run by the Federation, so they can make another world championship. Yes, but it's like d w ⁓ what do they have to do? But it's been recognized by the the ⁓ the masses. Put a million bucks back on it. I mean they got a million bucks at Roth. That turns that's the game changer. I mean they've done it before. I mean guys, I mean this is they're like I said, they're ch they're planning to do thirty races anyway. So they've got some sort of prize money. You just throw you throw the lion's share of it at three or four big races, kaboom, dude. You're back in the game. Boom, dude. You've been watching teenage meaning and showing No, he's been he's been on dad duty all week. ⁓ World Triathlon series, they I mean, for it not being a real big Olympic cycle year, just starting off the points, I feel like it's been a really, really good year. Yeah. Massively became a but yeah, some of the best racing, massively became a Matthauser fan. I'm like I'm so biased whoever's winning. I used to be the biggest Lewis Hamilton fan in Don't even care about him anymore. ⁓ I only cared about Alex Yee, you know, I've almost forgot about him. Now I'm just a big Manahauser fan, so Yeah, and Hamburg was one of the best weekends of racing I've watched in Triathlon this year. I like I think they're doing a really good job with their racing. And like we always say to our listeners, most of you don't care about this but you checked out. You should check it out. Like it's really good, the short course stuff and there's a lot of personalities in it and and and then you get the detail that sports fans like, especially American sports fans. You're so stat driven in your sports, right? Whereas like you get to the the whole working out the Olympic, who does what, who scores where. I think it's been a good year for that. Commentary's good, coverage is good, moto pacing at the front of the racing is horrendous, but other than that. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty good. And speaking of World Drive on series, there is WTCS London on this weekend. I wanted to do picks. Are we doing our way too early picks for Nissan Kona? well that's way, way too early. And we got two minutes in already. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's let's let's let's bang through big weekend ahead. ⁓ standard prize money, Olympic qualifying points on the line. I think the biggest question is is Beth Potter gonna get it done on home soil? Or will Georgia or will Georgia upset here? I think the chance of Georgia. Just the running. Like Beth's got there's too many girls at the moment. Unless she can turn it around, and she's she's capable of it. Of course she is. But like at the moment she's got three or four girls that are all consistently out running her. It's just like Leone Leone put her on notice in Hamburg, I think. It's almost like you can't rewrite history and it's hard to even get excited as Alistair and Johnny got it done here during the Olympic Games. That day in sport. For me, that was the best sports event I've watched. So good. A lot of athletes are complaining this is T one hundred's driven this WTCS London, because if they're having the T one hundred over the weekend too, right? Like the hundred K distance for the age groupers is still gonna happen. But ⁓ like I I don't know about you guys, but I've heard by some athletes that are doing the race that they're not a fan of the course. Kind of a whack course. No. It's seven laps of the Excel Center of the T one hundred course. Is all right. When I heard they were going back to London, that's what I thought. And then now these athletes have been very vocal about the course, like what even it we're not or on the outside. It's basically the T one hundred course that everyone hated over an hour. Rather than three hours. It's not. Yep. And the kind the course of it, you know, the i i it is a dire course. And it's you write out You ride out and then it's like seven or eight laps of a two and a half K circuit. They're doing a no lap out rule, which is new for World Tri because the short the lap is so short. ⁓ bro, this is whack. But i it's my understanding is is that what year are we in? It's twenty six. My understanding is is that twenty seven it moves to Hyde Park. Well Hyde Park they didn't want to have ⁓ this year. ⁓ I mean I'm I'm They had logistics set for the the the problem is this is where the race is headquartered out of for the Triple ⁓ the T one hundred triathlon London, whatever it's called that the T one hundred now owns. So that's that's where this is happening, but there is a plan, I guess, to to bring it to Hyde Park in twenty seven. Well hopefully that this isn't whack because this sounds pretty whack. Sounds pretty whack. I mean the course the problem the problem is the course will This weekend's course will look very bad on T V because it's effectively where they're riding, like there's no pedestrian access to. And so it's just gonna be like a smaller version of the T one hundred London course. That's got me bummed. So I haven't actually seen the course. I knew it was XL. I I was just trying to find the course, can't find it. Yeah, well travel. Unless someone sends you the ⁓ it's imp it's impossible. It's impossible. I had to do some FBI research to be able to find this. We we we we tried to build our website where you could see it's all things triathlon, but also too from a legal standpoint we can't put everything as well because a lot of this is protected IP and so ⁓ race maps is not one that we could ⁓ I mean wow the run course goes up into the Excel sensor, they have to run up that that that massive ramp three times and down. ⁓ the bike course is absolutely dire. That is so ugly. Sorry. I'm I'm just suddenly looking 'cause it's like my you know it's home. And when you get a race in your own city or country, you want them to l you want it to look good, right? And you want people to be like s London looks sweet. Yeah. No, it doesn't. Yeah. ⁓ one of the this is this is one of the ⁓ the joys of putting on a triathlon race, right? You've got to find somewhere to swim, bike and run and so This is this is what we get sometimes. So On the men's side though, you got seven WTCS winners from the last two years, so that'll be exciting, but as you are sure are aware, we're all rooting for Matt Hauser. probably a couple of people rooting for Vasco Volaka. Hayden Wilde pulled his name off the start list, unfortunately he's got some some stuff going on in his lungs, so none from him. I I would love to see a good performance here from Seth Ryder. I don't know if Morgan Pearson's had enough time between Hamburg and this race to do it. But ⁓ yeah. We'll see. Morgan went to Nice to go and train on the seventy point three worlds course. No chan if Alex Yee wins, I will give me a punishment to do on the next podcast and I'll do it. No you're gonna wear no shirt. Okay. No shirt, the whole podcast. If if Alex Yee wins, I don't want I don't know that I want to see that. Maybe just for the opening. Bro, I'm ⁓ what we'll have to I'm a hundred and seventy pounds. I've I look good. I love it. Good feature. That's that's eighty kilos for everyone listening at home or abroad. ⁓ anyways, WTC S London this weekend. There are podium picks. There's also podium picks for seventeen point three Boise, which there's there's a lot of ⁓ questionable things going on. The AQI is pretty high. They they're in a big smoke watch ⁓ for wildfires, so I don't know if it's gonna be This this race could be Carnage on Saturday. The weather is also super hot. I think it's like gonna be a hundred degrees in Boise. So this could be a great seventy point three and I'm glad Vincent Louis has made the trip over and he's gonna come and do the race. ⁓ I ⁓ mean just anecdotally, like from my own personal, like I don't really exercise any time after one fifty outside. ⁓ I'm so glad I don't live in a country where I have to worry about that. Yeah, I mean it is no what AQI is. Air quality index, I'm joking. It's insane. That's that's real high. All right, you got Vincent Louie, Sam Long, Ari Clow coming off of his first ⁓ seventy point three win, Matt Hansen. There's a lot of guys that raced placid last weekend, I'm sure just put their name on the start list. Brock Hole. I mean, pretty pretty good Men's race, Ben Faw, I think there's like ten guys that are qualified for Nice. I'm sure it's just getting another seventy point three score heading into ⁓ for the pro series. And then on the women's side, again, a lot of names that did Iron Man Lake Placid last weekend. Someone that has had their sights set on this race though is Hannah Barry. So ⁓ be interesting to see how she goes ⁓ over the seventy point three distance at this one. ⁓ so yeah. It'll be ⁓ be a fun one to watch. Y'all wanna do some hot takes? ⁓ I just love I just love Jackie Hering's video that she posted, which is me and so it says me twenty twenty six running outside. It's like bad air quality, like not going outside at all. And then and then it says me two thousand five, five hours straight into a smoke filled dive bar. Brilliant. Yeah. Not caring at all. ⁓ That's good. ⁓ man, that is so the truth. A hundred percent. ⁓ and she shows a video of her riding a ball, mechanical bull. ⁓ hot take number one, since we honored Joe Skipper for his retirement. Flora Duffy announced her retirement from triathlon. Most complete athlete. One of the absolute queens of the sport. Well her Olympic win was magnificent when she was when she was on form. She was just completely unbeatable. Like she was just completely dominating and she took the women's racing to what the men had done a couple of years before, where it wasn't just a procession to T two than a running race. With Flora in the race, it just changed the way women raced. She was so aggressive on the bike, so strong, like completely unbeatable for several years. And then some really solid races like results when she moved up. But she she moved up much later than most. Most people don't realise how long. And make no mistake, for a lot of years she was the absolute queen of Bermuda. ⁓ like her home her home country. An absolute queen. I think it feels like less of a thing because I think we kind of already all we thought she was already retired, basically. I pretty much thought she had already. Yeah. I mean, ⁓ just so many records, incredible year, ⁓ on the top five most wins list for short course racing. ⁓ Her and Emma Carney are tied for twenty five and she's one win away from ⁓ being ⁓ third most ever. So just second and WTC S wins fifteen of those. She just is so decorated. ⁓ is that really? Yeah. Wow. So yeah, really, really, really cool. ⁓ Really bum. I really wish we could have s got to see I think ⁓ Father Time took it away from us, but to see her have a a dominant seventy point three, I think everyone while she was doing short course was like, ⁓ she'll come to seventy point three and w win multiple world titles. But it feels like she'd come if she'd come to seventy point three at her peak of short course, she'd have been really damn good at it. Yeah. Like straight off totally 'cause that's what her strengths were. Yeah. But then she left it quite late. But she left it so late because she was busy winning Olympic gold medals. Busy winning black. Yeah. Yeah. There's a video that Talbot took on the big island of Flora. Remember that Talbot? That was like OG days. Yeah, we asked when she was gonna come out and race and she said sometime in her future. So bum bum wouldn't get to see her do that. But I mean what a legend of the sport. Incredible career. ⁓ hot take number two, we didn't talk about this on the Roth episode last weekend. I I hadn't even noticed it. I think I was like dozed off during the race or something. On the second lap of the bike, Sam Laylo, like came by, I guess, some age roopers going up Solar Hill. Yeah. What was that about? What was that about? Because he he was looking for his dad. If he was shouting his hands and everything, me and his dad were trying to give him a bottle and we'd pushed in way too early on the course his dad was. And the ⁓ the The aid station guys were like, No, not here, and sort of pushed him back. So Sam missed him. But it was just lit. So it wasn't Sam getting livered at age groups or anything. It was just he literally was looking for his dad and his dad wasn't there. I was that was right there. On Solar on Solar Hill. Isn't there a video of Christian yelling to get out of the way, athletes? It looked it looked a little bit carnage this year. I mean I know it's always carnage, but it looks like The problem is It looked like it was a bit much, like they couldn't go around and they were kind of getting blocked and stuff, so controversial. I'm not sure you can have that set up on Solar Hill and award a world championship title. Because you you people have lost over a minute just straight off the bat. Like Laura Phillip one year got stuck behind a a disabled athlete going up the hill and she was moving at f five K an hour. Like ten K an hour going up the hill. Is it and you lose so much time. Yeah, logistically, so it it I mean, in the event that th that there's a long distance world championship at Roth and we're really forecasting a lot of things here, can they logistically gate off that road and make it wide enough for dual traffic? They would do they could they could do it, but it would take away that crowd against the road feel. Okay, now I'm just gonna throw one more thing out here. Is there a world where they run a two day world championship format there where the pros are the I don't think I don't think that you'll be able to shut down the the roads for that. I think Felix Felix does a great job. But it's just like the town. It would it would also take away that's what Roth is so good for, the atmosphere and all the people. Yeah. Anyway, that's a mark of It be hard to get people to travel in. They can work that out. But you g i i it it would be a bit rude to try and call that like a world title event, but you could easily lose a minute and half because you just happen to get stuck behind the wrong age group or on a hill. That that's a bit rogue in my opinion. Yeah. But it's not you go there knowing it. Sorry, to finish off. The boys go there knowing it's a possibility. And that's that's what it is. Yeah. True. ⁓ last week in Swansea, I guess it came out that Gustav Eden was trying to get on the start list because he came up obviously a little bit better after Frankfurt. What are you guys thinking about? As far as Iron Man saying no, you can't get onto a start list if you weren't on a start list. Do stuff eating, guys. We're talking I'm I think is excellent. Is what professional sport is. Yes, also has an entry deadline. If it was full, they should make room for him. So if he's trying to get on within the time, which isn't what happened, if you're trying to get in within the time and there's an age group that's there's a pro that's gonna finish an hour and a half behind, make room for Gustaf Eden. If it's after the entry deadline, I'm a huge fan of them being rigid with the rules. These are the rules, follow them. Okay, so but I'm gonna use a world triathon as an example, right? So if you register for ⁓ w wor World Trathon Championship series, whatever t T fi T fifty, ⁓ London. Right? You've got to register 35 days before and then at 30 days they prepare the the entry list. Now, for instance, this past week, if London they went through the whole start list, I think the women have roughly fifty-two or r or thereabout women on fifty-one on the start list. Now there's four spots remaining. So last Friday a w a woman could have registered. Doesn't matter her ranking, doesn't matter where she felt, but there was room on the start list. But I think again, in my opinion, Iron Man has to come up with a far better and more robust start list procedure. Probably something very parallel to what World Triathlon has done. Because in my opinion, besides this is getting really nuanced here, the only thing that should change in World Triathlon start list procedure is If you have in the case of we'll use Germany a few years ago, the German women. They had five women ranked in the top twenty two. And so the sixth woman that was roughly like always twenty third or twenty fifth, didn't get to do any races. Tal Talbot is yawning, so we know how exciting this is. ⁓ The only I I I do want to counter this though, because you look at a start list like seventy point three Boise this weekend and you have I don't know, five or ten people that are gonna pull off this start list now race week that put their name on as like if something happens in plastic. No, I saw a former winner of that race this morning who told me he has to pull off of Boise this morning. So Sam Appleton. So so so this is I I just th there needs to be a system that incentivizes probably early registration without doing the cam work where you register for all eighteen pro series. And then there needs to be some sort of system that when athletes fall off, there's a world where they can step in and and come into a race. And then they could say, hey, look, it 'cause again, this is Lionel Sanders wanted to come do Oceanside the week of Oceanside. If the race is technically open on Thursday, who who who hold on, it should be clear. He told them he was not going to race on Sunday the week before and then he changed his mind, so it's kinda his fault. He should have never pulled his name off. Of cour of course. Yes, I agree. But what I'm saying is if the race is open forty eight hours, they just have to make some sort of deadline that says, hey, if the race is open, we're gonna let you in. If it's not, we're not. So there's the problem, right? The women's field is nearly always open at the moment. And what is more important to Iron Man? Being able to advertise that Lucy Charles is gonna be at your race. a month out or three weeks out or whatever it is, or being able to let Lucy Charles I'm just using her as the biggest name, the most respected, know nothing more than that. Or letting Lucy Charles register forty eight hours before 'cause the race is open and you can't advertise her, you can't talk about her, you can't do the AFC and stuff like that. I then might have way more benefit closing it three weeks out and forcing people to register for these races and say they're gonna do it. So then what they do is and they just say, Hey Lucy, we're sorry you showed up forty eight hours like you decided to do this. What we can't do this time, we can't pay you a start fee, we can't give you a free hotel. But they don't but we're thrilled that you But they don't for a lot of people, a lot of the small races anyway, 'cause that's so regionalized. Like Gustaf Eden is not commanding twenty grand to go and race Swansea. But would they really like him there? Yeah. But I w I much prefer that I get to be get excited about a race because I know who's on the start list rather than Rough rough esque thing. I did I did hear I did hear that Gustav did ask for a whole weekend supply of Nando's chicken. So that's probably Mark, but could could you agree 'cause I Mark you do have a great point, but do you agree that the startless procedure and protocol for Ironman needs to to be completely redone? Tot totally agree. Totally, totally agree. There has to be a a w mechanism that when the race is full way early, six months early, you you're not You're not f foregoing big name actually. And and why wouldn't the obvious thing to do just be t for one, just say, hey, we're gonna look at pro series ranking from the year before? Pro Chinese ranking. Well, they should use the whole pro Chin the o the open rank system, but I think the obvious one would be to just go, we're gonna go Ironman Pro Series in order of operation, you come down ru we're gonna automatically take the top twenty five and then the t you know, whatever like And they should do that. They should do that three months out. Because the athletes are planning their calendars a long way out. But that's just to show that people you haven't made the cut, even as it stands. When entry closes a month out ⁓ like they have to do something about it. But you well the problem is it's an Ironman, right? You don't you can't find out if you're gonna get a race a month before or not. And I just I wanna give I wanna I wanna shine a positive spotlight on World Triathlon here for a second. What happens is is there's a system in place at World Triathlon. I'll use Gwen as an example. A couple years ago she was nineteenth on the wait list at Hamburg. On Monday week of the race The start list cleared, so eighteen women in front of her dropped out and they went to her and they said, Gwen, would you like to race Hamburg World Series? And she said, Please put me on the start list. I'm flying there tonight. And she did that. And I just think that's what's missing at Iron Man right now is is clarity around that process because there are athletes that would like to roll on to the start list the week of a race. Mark. Just to just to be very clear though, Scott Daroo makes it clear to me that actually there have been virtually no races where the Starlist has been full and they've had turn pros away this year. I don't think there has been one. So it's just people not sorting their act out and entering in time at the moment. And then we debate when the entry point is. But they should have a policy in place for when that eventuality does happen, so we don't have an Alice Brownly Texas situation. Or a Lionel Sanders Oceanside situation. Yes, 'cause he was on the status and then took himself off, whatever. And there was a spot for him to race. Correct. So I I ⁓ yeah, beautiful. Good. ⁓ last one for me, and then we'll do a couple from the community hot takes. This is the one this is the one I got. Iron Man needs to figure out how they're doing this bib numbering system because I have no idea and I can't keep up with why they're assigning bib numbers the way that they are because it's not based on any sort of ranking or anything like that. If you look at seventy point three Boise or Swansea from last last weekend, if you look at seventy point three Boise, the s the numbers, like the people who won the race aren't even bib number one anymore. Like what are you guys doing? Last year's winner bib number one. That's what it often is. Like regardless of if like Paula was gonna do the race or not, the fact that Paula Finley like bib number eight, I believe, and then on the men's side, Sam Appleton, I think he maybe was bib number one originally but who cares what number you are in Ironman? Number one is quite nice at a world champs, your last year's winner. Who cares what your bib number is? I would just wanna be sixty nine in every race. That's good. Who who who Who's submitted to you that they're offended by their bib number? We'd just love to know I'd love to know the name. A lot of pros. I swear. At least five. Can you please name, can you please just name I just want to hear who it is. Kyle has gone and ask them if they're offended, by the way. No, no, no. No, name their names. Is Trevor offended that his bib number was lower in Placid this year? No. Go look at the Iron Man post that they put out on Boise and look at how many people commented and said, Why am I bib number this? Why am I bib number this? Why am I on the same page? Right. RT. I couldn't imagine ten meter draft rule would crack those two big issues. This is the next campaign that Pro Try News we should die on a hill about. I could not imagine being like Tell me, you ready for this one? What why do I have a low bib number? I'm gonna call the fireman. Do you wanna how many Instagram followers I have and how many sponsors I have? I need a lower bib number. I do think if you won the race last year you should be bib number one. I'm happy with that. After that. That's crazy. We've hit a level that people care about their bib number as a pro athlete. Can someone tell all right, we're going to three community picks and we're ending the show. Super fast. Can someone Can someone tell me why Marta Sanchez prefers to run with her bib number halfway down her butt? Not trying to be weird, I just find it strange. I used to do that and short course athletes and everyone used to do that when you had to race with a number. It actually just for some people it feels more comfortable because it doesn't feel like it's it's round your waist 'cause you need it quite tight to hold the number flat and then it kind of feels like it can affect your breathing or it gets in your hip. So if you tuck it on your ass, you don't feel it 'cause it's in the front of your hip. It's just a feel thing, mate, is the answer honestly. If you're twenty minutes or more behind after fifty kilometers of the bike, you should have your pro license removed for a year. Lake Placid females, five and counting. The problem is you look at the men's race, everyone was twenty minutes down from Martin Van Real. This is thirty plus, thirty plus. ⁓ thirty plus something I did see like halfway round the bike there was pro females at two hours back. Yeah, I'm mixed on it 'cause also there is like developing pros that can one day be better. Like Danielle Larief telling Cam Worf and Lionel to get the F out of the way. She's coming out of the water in Kona. Alright, last one. We're gonna end the show. Paula Finley, top five in Kona. I say yes. Just answer yes or no. I say yes, Mark. Honestly yes, just 'cause I like Paula. Tobit? Yes. Pat? Why you gotta put me on like this? I'm gonna say no just because i Kona's a learning experience the first time. I don't think Paula would put herself top five. I honestly think she's gonna get this is like God's honest truth, I think she's gonna get sixth place, which which would be incredible. She races like buttons. It's not a top five. Bodies will fall apart in front of her if she puts a performance like that down. Easy. Yep. Yeah. There there's no better place to follow Triathlon than the Pro Tri News podcast. We hope you guys enjoyed the show. Please follow us on Instagram. Head over to do podium picks this week on our website and share this episode with some of your closest friends. Hope you guys enjoyed the show. We have an exciting championship season, some really, really exciting plans in Kona. If you haven't booked a ticket to Kona and you're gonna go out there just to watch the race or you're thinking about it, Totally do it. If you're not going, we got a lot of stuff planned for you. Hope you guys enjoyed the show. We'll you in.