#93: For real fans, sports-ing starts now

Apparently, there are people who think things take a break for summer?!

issue #93: June 26, 2024

All-sporters, Substack (the email system this newsletter runs on) went down as I was trying to send this out — so there’s no voiceover this week unfortunately — but I am sharing with everyone the Q&A from our Book Club book about two runners who made their way from Kenya to the U.S. It’s a great read in the midst of the Olympic Trials.

I also feel the need to add a clarification to last week’s newsletter: ‘Triathlete’ stopped publishing a magazine two years ago; it is still very much a triathlon news website that isn’t going anywhere (and that’s been doing a lot of fun stuff lately), but it has not been a magazine since the summer of 2022. Sorry if that was new news.

Now, so much happening.

- Kelly

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Trials season is the best season

We’ve debated here many times whether the best way to qualify people to the Olympics is via a selection committee with all its arbitrariness OR via an objective ‘best on xx day’ criteria with all its brutality. I think there are arguments for both. And one of the biggest arguments against the American top three Olympic Trials system is what happened to Athing Mu on Monday. A bad day to have a bad day.

But that’s part of what also makes the American system so American.

This article is the best explanation of why U.S. track & field qualification is extra wacky right now. In short, if you’ve been confused during the broadcasts:

• World Athletics wanted to have half the Olympic qualifiers in each event come from hitting the Olympic standard & half come from world rankings

• So they made the Olympic standards a lot harder this time around — which is why there are a number of events where there aren’t three U.S. athletes who have the standard

• The rest of the spots (with caps on the number per country) will then be allocated via world rankings — but you can race through June 30 to achieve those rankings, so we don’t know for sure in some cases if the 2nd or 3rd place person in an event at the U.S. Trials will end up being ranked highly enough (often, no)

• If the top three athletes at the Trials ultimately don’t qualify via standard or rankings, then the U.S. system rolls it down to the next finisher until they fill the team — hence why Evan Jager will likely go in the steeplechase

None of the athletes like the world ranking system. Which is kinda funny to me, because athletes are always complaining about making their sports more accessible and objective and easy to follow, but also the way the rankings work is confusing.

The best things from Trials so far:

• Simone Manuel made her third Olympics team after five months of no exercise at all because of severe overtraining — and EVERYONE was psyched about it.

• Caeleb Dressel also made his third Olympics and he just seems like a good guy.

• Katie Ledecky, of course, continues to push the women’s 1500m forward.

• Katie Grimes is swimming the open water race in Paris & the 400m IM. Both of which sound tough as hell.

• Quincy Wilson is 16 years old! 16! And he’s the 6th fastest men’s 400m runner in the U.S! And he seems, like, very mature.

• Kendall Ellis getting locked in a port-a-potty before winning the women’s 400m just sounds like something that would happen to me. Minus the winning part.

• The 5,000m race was decided by .02 seconds and then Elle St. Pierre did the mom handoff.

• Cole Hocker in the 1500m!

• And I don’t even follow the heptathlon that much, but now I am 1000% behind Anna Hall.

• And, of course, Snoop Dogg’s 34-second 200m and his commentary.

• Plus, apparently we’re all bringing AC units to Paris. Which isn’t really a highlight, but it is something.

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Photo: Jacob Kupferman/IRONMAN

Canada was the triathlon hot spot of the week

There have been a lot of triathletes doubling up on sports and performances this year, but let’s take a moment to appreciate what Paula Findlay did over the weekend.

On Thursday night, her bike finally showed up from the airline.

On Friday morning, she won her third Canadian national time trial title by 24 seconds — beating some high-level pro cyclists.

On Sunday, she won Mont-Tremblant 70.3 in the pouring rain.

Let’s hope on Monday, she rested.

From Paula’s IG stories

Lionel Sanders also backed up his previous wins here, and there were dramatic battles for second in both the men’s and women’s races.

Full results here.

Now, let’s talk about the broadcast

OK, since this aired at 3:30 a.m. my time, I did not watch it all live — but I understand there were a lot (A LOT!) of complaints. You could see all the complaining on any of the IG posts Ironman put up: so much so that Ironman responded by saying the whole replay is free on Outside Watch.

Evidently the live broadcast cut out on Outside Watch near the end, missing the women’s finish and the fight for second place. But other people said they were able to watch the whole thing on Youtube in Europe and on the Outside app in N. America. It also sounds like the terrible weather affected a lot of the shots (ie. all people could see was someone wiping off the lens).

I don’t know what happened, but I do know that a lot of times the blame (and praise) for a broadcast gets somewhat misdirected because all we see is the final platform, not everything that runs behind it. Logistically, in this case, this works like this: Ironman contracts with a TV crew and operator based in Boulder (called BCC), where the commentary team is also primarily situated in studio; BCC runs the actual transmission, ad insertions, and broadcast production. The Ironman production crew works with BCC closely to coordinate and oversee the content, shots, when they go to a commentator on the ground (if there is one), etc. That broadcast feed is then transmitted to the various platforms that carry the feed — whether it’s Outside Watch or Youtube or DAZN. Each of those platforms have different technical specifications. Contracts also specify how many ads and who gets what portion of ads to sell.

My point is: It might have been an Outside Watch technical issue — and certainly the ad numbers are outlined in the contract — but it might have also been a weather issue in Mont-Tremblant causing a transmission failure back to BCC or it might have been a BCC feed issue or it’s as simple as the linear broadcast feed was set to end at a certain time and that hard time cut didn’t get adjusted with the weather.

Yeah, definitely, it’s time to get this all right. But who exactly is getting it wrong?

Mark your calendars

• T100 London: Start lists are out — and I do like the idea of giving Sophie Coldwell a wildcard

• Les Sables 70.3: The next Pro Series race, though mostly I just loved this Cam Wurf appreciation post from Ironman

  • WATCH: 9:30 p.m. PT on Friday/12:30 a.m. ET on proseries.ironman.com or Outside Watch

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As we seem to talk about perennially triathlon costs a lot of money. So my friend Chris at Campfire Endurance Coaching put together a guide called: "Are You Hunting Antelope or Mice? Six Ways to Stop Wasting Your Time & Money." The PDF is designed to help you decide what to spend your time (and money) on — and which things to definitely skip!

You can pick the free guide up here.

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The -ish

The rest of the news you should know about from our sports this week.

• The final Olympic team announcements are out: New Zealand and Australia. (Shout-out to Sophie Linn, who also works for Hammerhead while making the Olympics.) Of course, there are always athletes not picked and I think everyone learned a lot this last week about the fact that: All an appeal does is send it back to the same committee. These final announcements also mean the super-updated full start list is now updated. (Scoop/Instagram/Triathlete)

• World Triathlon is also coming out with their own version of ‘Drive to Survive’ — because everyone needs one. Premiering June 30. (Instagram/Youtube)

• I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are a crazy number of collabs and influencers and special guest commentators headed to Paris. Why? Because a lot of brands really didn’t get much out of Tokyo or Beijing (bc COVID), so they’re trying to cash in — and everyone’s betting/hoping big on Paris. I don’t know if you’ve also noticed the level of NCAA promotion being baked into the U.S. Olympics coverage. Why? Because the PR teams at work behind stopping NCAA athletes from getting paid have found a talking point that really sticks (even if it’s not 100% accurate).

• The U.S. cycling team was also announced — and, yes, Taylor Knibb was officially named to the road race team. I still don’t think she’s going to race the road race. She told multiple outlets she wasn’t, though she then answered the question in San Francisco more vaguely as a ‘I’ll let my coach make that decision.’ (USA Cycling)

• At Triathlete we once joked about compiling all of Morgan Pearson’s “rules” into one mass list, and they haven’t quite done that but they got a start. (Triathlete)

• Western States is this weekend: Women’s preview here (I’m rooting for Katie Schide & of course Heather Jackson) and men’s preview here (everyone is rooting for Jim Walmsley being back in the U.S.). (TrailRunner/iRunFar)

• The California trail community has leaned into the double weekend in Tahoe: Western States this upcoming weekend and Broken Arrow Skyrace this past weekend. Broken Arrow is super interesting — and this year there were some pros doubling up on winning the VK (vertical kilometer) and then the 23km. Plus, apparently, one woman who took second in the VK and now is headed to the Olympic Trials to race the 1500m this Thursday. (TrailRunner/Outside Run)

• Evidently, Chris McCormack made it to Kenya for the Migration Gravel Race. (Velo)

• The men’s Tour de France starts this weekend, too — thank goodness the official guide showed up at my house in magazine form again — but now Sepp Kuss is out!!! Medium COVID gets us all (this is also probably why I’m going to have to pull out of IM Lake Placid, because me and Sepps Kuss are the sames). (Road.cc/Velo)

• Gordon Ramsay had a bad crash on his bike and posted on IG that people should remember to wear a helmet and because people are insane they went insane. Which is crazy, because even though I think the world gets overly focused on helmets, which shifts the blame onto the cyclist instead of building better infrastructure to stop bikers from getting hit in the first place and if you get T-boned by a car the problem isn’t whether or not you were wearing a helmet, even though I think all of those things, I wouldn’t go on someone’s IG post about them surviving a bad crash and berate them for it because I AM NOT A CRAZY PERSON. (Velo)

• Are random friends of yours on steroids now? (GQ)

• The PTO appointed a medical director, and it will be interesting to see what they do with that role. (Endurance Sportswire)

• Apparently, a runner died and three others were seriously injured when things went badly at this ultra in France. (iRunFar)

• The poop protest in the Seine has been postponed and so I will repeat what I’ve repeated a bunch of times already: The athletes *are going to* swim in the Olympics this summer, it’s not gonna get canceled. (SB Nation)

• Why is sex testing going to be in full force this summer? How did we get here? (New York Times)

• And, OK, look, I know Roger Federer’s graduation speech went viral because of the part about how he’s won 80% of his matches but only 54% of the points — and so you have to move on from each individual point you lose, you have to quickly get past each failure. I know that’s what everyone is taking away from the speech. BUT! The other half of the speech is about how you also have to play every single point as if it’s the most important point, and then if it doesn’t go your way, move on, adjust, and play the next one as if it’s the most important one. Par of the speech is about how you also have to try really hard. (New York Times)

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One last thing

What if the relay baton instead was a pool noodle, or a pineapple, or a dozen eggs…