#122: Isn't it nice having a slow start to the year?
Hah.
issue #122: Jan. 15, 2025
All-sporters, I’m lining up everything so I can push a baby out of my body and go on leave sometime between now and five weeks from now. (Isn’t the mystery part of the fun.) And I have to tell you: Pregnancy suuuuuuucks. Sure, sure, it’s magical and I hear there are people who allegedly enjoy the experience, but really I think most people just view it as a semi-miserable, slightly fascinating necessity towards a desired end. And that’s fine.
But. One of the things that has sucked the most (IMO) is how gaslight-y the last eight months have been.
If I didn’t know it before, then I have definitely learned that when people say they want authenticity, they don’t mean from *me* or what I *actually* think. Nothing quite as alienating as having the same people who say women should be more confident and open about the realities of pregnancy then look at me like: whoa whoa not *that* confident.
It’s as if you’re allowed to say, “Oh gee, it’s hard, I get nosebleeds every day but worth it,” but you can’t say, “Intellectually, there’s no way to know if it’ll be worth it. Probably, but if I die then probably not.” You can’t say, “No one is born with a biological opinion about strollers. Stop asking me; ask Steve.” Or: “I don’t know why you would think I suddenly started caring about home decor when I never have before.” Or, just for example, go ahead and try responding when someone asks how pregnancy is with: “The entire system is designed to treat women like incubators instead of people, which leads to their underlying dehumanization and trickles out into medical recommendations and structures at every level that devalue the person involved, and ultimately lead to a terrible maternal mortality rate. Maternal deaths are the inevitable outcome of this framework of beliefs.” Fresh sushi is fine! The 140bpm heartrate cap is made up! Ride your bike if you want to and are a regular cyclist who knows the safest routes and practices! ‘Natural’ is an invented term!
Welcome to the smallest of glimpses inside my brain; you probably don’t want a full look at the whole thing.
**Shouts into the void: ‘Baby-friendly hospitals’ are dumb and offensive, all hospitals should be baby-friendly, and putting breast-feeding rates above overall health outcomes (which may not always mean breast-feeding) is counter-productive, and the practices implemented at these hospitals are mixed in terms of their results anyways. I will die on this hill.**
- Kelly
The fires in L.A.
Of course, when disasters are closer to home you’ll be more affected, and so of course I’ve had plenty of friends negotiating the fires and evacuations all week. But, also, objectively, even if you aren’t close to it, the scale and density of the L.A. fires is wild. It’s like a war zone swept though the second biggest city in the country. And because I spend a lot of time with California politics and policy, I can also say objectively it’s going to be very tough to handle 12,000 houses that need to be rebuilt, that many families that need to be temporarily housed.
Because so many sports companies are based in the area, too, and because the neighborhoods that were specifically wiped out are such hubs of the outdoors, there are also a lot of triathletes who were in the center of the firestorms. (Kind of like when the Marshall fire in Boulder affected a lot of runners.) It’s currently 30 members of the Tower 26 group who have lost houses in the last week.
And, I also understand why everyone wants there to be a reason something went wrong, something that could be done differently next time, why it’s tempting to latch onto a theory of failure, but there’s just not really a lot of evidence for failure on a large level. Other than the failure of climate change.
So, I’m going to re-post a lot of links to help below here. Plus, I’ll add that if your house burned down (because I know a decent number of you are LA-based), I have the doc a friend put together about rebuilding after her house burned down a few years ago; ping me and I’ll send it along:
The California Fire Foundation provides resources to firefighters and their families
California Fire Relief provides N-95 masks, medicine, and resources to health-care agencies and first responders
The California Community Fund has a recovery fund dedicated to helping victims of wildfires; you can donate here
The World Central Kitchen delivers meals in the disaster area
Mutual Aid LA is putting out a lot of resources that need assistance or donations
And a list of verified GoFundMe's for local victims
Random fact: When we were looking up the worst fires in U.S. history, did you know there was a fire in northern Wisconsin that killed ~2,000 people, but tends to get overlooked because it was the same day as the Great Chicago Fire. (And if you were wondering, yes it was a lumber/woodworking town in the middle of dense forests.)
One Cycling, One Track, One Triathlon
Now triathlon-ish: News came out this week that the "One Cycling” plan (league? race series? Saudi-funded pro cycling project?) actually appears to be coming to fruition and details would be announced in the very near future.
Here’s why it jumped out to me. Tell me if this sounds familiar: “…the project designed to restructure cycling’s economic model and pit the best riders against each other on a more frequent basis…”
Sounds kind of like what some well-funded new model is hoping to do in triathlon too, right? (The PTO, the answer is the PTO, if you didn’t pick up on the hints.)
Which is also what Grand Slam Track is angling to do in running, with their new track & field model/league/project. Here’s their About page: “The premier global professional track league featuring matchups between the fastest stars in the sport…the most compelling head-to-head clashes on earth.”
And we know, because Michael Johnson told us so, that Grand Slam Track modeled much of its goals and structure off of the PTO’s T100 series. And the new One Cycling plan is also structured in a similar way, with aims to create a new high-profile, well-funded race series with the biggest names signed on to go up against each other in a closed system. And they both *also* face challenges building cache within an existing grandfathered-in race calendar.
I’m only pointing this out because clearly there’s a certain kind of logic circulating within the circles in which these things bounce off each other, and there’s a reason all the rich guys in charge of those things have decided this is the model to save the sports that aren’t super mainstream sports. And they might be right.
But also: They might be wrong. And I’m kinda guessing within those circles in which ideas bounce, collecting more and more money with each ricochet, that no one’s really pointing this out: None of these projects have actually been profitable or successful or worked yet.
And a quick PTO update
Someone suggested to me that the pros must have all been asked to go on social media and poll their fans about whether they should race the PTO or IM Pro Series. There were too many of the same kinds of posts. And I had thought: Eh, there just aren’t that many original ideas left. But now I think they were right, it probably was a targeted request.
In updates: Sam Laidlow has opted to go after the IM World Champs. So has Magnus Ditlev. We haven’t heard from the big women’s names yet really — I know everyone is wondering about Lucy CB — but I still think the rough guess is that anyone who is a long-course specialist and/or wants to win the IM world title isn’t going to sign a T100 contract.
I gather Fred Funk shared some details about how contracts changed in order to get more sign-on (which has been word among athletes), and the rumors are there will be ~10 events with fewer required. Our calendar last week had the updated dates I was given (though I’m sure some are still changing):
April 5-6: T100 Singapore
May 31: T100 San Francisco
June 27-29: T100 French Riviera
Aug. 9-10: T100 London
Sept. 27-28: T100 Ibiza
Oct. 25-26: T100 Lake Las Vegas
November: T100 Grand Final (Dubai, UAE) — listed as Nov. 15-16 in the World Tri calendar, which is already out-of-date so take that for what it’s worth
But then I realized I had totally forgotten about Vancouver being announced forever ago, with no firm date yet!
READ: Tim wrote a very detailed piece about the T100’s first year and whether it was a success
Best of the rest of the results
Hey, look at that! It’s tri season again. Sorta.
Pucon 70.3: Canadian Olympian Tyler Mislawchuk won at his first try at the distance, and it looks like Jason West in second is coming back around again so good for him. And Mexican Olympian Cecilia Perez took the women’s title.
Coming up: This weekend a bunch of New Zealanders hit the Tauranga Half, while the rest of us are still trying to get our heads around the season starting already.
The -ish
Stuff from around our sports worth knowing about this week.
Alex Yee ran a 28:07 10K in Valencia (notoriously fast course, but still). (Olympics)
Since so many of you last week clicked on Lucy Gossage’s story about taking on the Spine Race again, an update: She’s currently leading and has raised over £30,000. (Lucy Gossage/Instagram/Just Giving)
The Triton World Series was announced, with a finals that includes an event over three days where you swim, bike, and run on consecutive days. Which is kinda fun. (Triton)
SheRaces, which has done a lot of good work expanding women’s access and participation, launched a women’s only trail running series and opted to ban trans women from their races. The argument being that cis women feel threatened and/or scared of trans women, and so instead of addressing why they feel that way or trying to change that feeling because it’s not based in reality or accepting that if we want to increase women’s participation it should mean all women, they opted to just ban trans women. It’s causing some concerns and arguments within the UK running community. But I also have a fundamental problem with the overall approach that says, for example, women feel intimidated by having their times or names in the results, so therefore we should allow them to race anonymously. Or, I read a report today that said women were more likely to participate in ultra races if “walking was an option.” (Walking is always an option. Most people walk. I’ve never seen a race where walking was banned or not an option.) I understand that these are all perception issues, in every one of these cases, and perceptions are the result of socialization. And, to a degree, I understand accommodating the perceptions until you can change society to fix the underlying problems; and I understand explicitly addressing, for instance, the perception of not being able to walk by accommodating a longer walking time cut-off. But I also think we have to change society in order to change perception and I’m tired of waiting. (SheRace/Matthew B/Endurance.biz)
The NCAA president said there are 10 trans student-athletes out of over 500,000, but the House still passed a ban on trans girls playing high school sports. And, relatedly, some of you will hate this but it at least made me laugh. (The Hill/New York Times/Instagram)
Sophie Etheridge, who uses a wheelchair since being hit by a car in 2011 and swims without being able to kick, had her English Channel record certified. It was the longest swim across the channel ever, at 29 hours, because of her disabilities. Her incredibly wiggly swim GPS map has been shared around social recently, with mean comments about the wiggly-ness — but she pointed out that it’s actually a map that shows a whole lot of overcoming happening. (Swimswam/Facebook)
Shelby Houlihan is back after her four-year ban and Flotrack has a doc coming out Feb. 3 about her return. And I know you all will be shocked to find out I think they probably didn’t need to do a doc, but also that redemption and change is possible, and everyone should stop piling on her. (Instagram/Twitter)
Puma launched a Project3, where if you have a 3:10 or faster PR they’ll sponsor you to try to break three hours in the marathon. (Puma)
In post-retirement updates, Lauren Brandon is going to Varlo and Andy Potts is taking over as the head U.S. paratri resident team coach. (Instagram)
Can Wildflower Triathlon bloom again? (Triathlete)
Did you know Levi’s Fondo now has a $150K prize purse and he’s trying to revitalize pro racing in the U.S.? (CyclingNews)
And a nice profile of Sifan Hassan. (Athletics Weekly)
One last thing
Check out all the World Sports Photos of the Year.
Yes, let’s poke fun at Sophie Etheridge for swimming a squiggly line across THE FUCKING ENGLISH CHANNEL. Because I can swim the length of a 25 yard pool without smacking a lane line (except on backstroke). 🤬 Times like this I hope for a vengeful God and an actual Hell for people like that.