I've been having an interesting email exchange with Nancy Toby today regarding Ironman.
You know she's a straight shooter as she uses her actual name when blogging. It can be so easy to take potshots at people, companies, other athletes, or Ironman when your online persona is tricop or supertridude, and nobody knows who the hell you really are.
Anyway, she sent me a part of today's post from Martin Dugard Blog "Training Ground"
Martin is an endurance athlete, writer and published author of several pretty well know books. Today he writes:
"So I got to wondering what was relevant and irrelevant about modern
endurance sports:
"Irrelevant: Hawaiian Ironman. Back in the day, it mattered who won Ironman. Dave Scott, Mark Allen, Scott Tinley... it was a race worth watching. But as Ironman mania has exploded all over the globe, thanks to rabid franchising (look for the Ironman Antarctica soon to come), the Hawaiian Ironman has devolved from the Toughest Race on Earth to an annual convention of obsessive compulsives -- and as anyone who has been to Kona can tell you, it's usually the same faces each and every year. Ironman is a business, owned by a corporation bent on making as much money from the franchise as
possible. So what would it take to make the Ironman relevant?
"The Olympics. By the way, these are very relevant. Snowboarders suddenly earned mainstream advertising dollars, thanks to Olympic inclusion. Same with short-course triathletes. If there was an Ironman-distance Olympic event, the sport would become legit once again. However, that would involve Ironman's owners ceding power to an international governing body. Not going to happen."
While I tend to agree with Martin I really think that the reason that triathlon in general is, and will always be irrelevant, is that it is a pretty boring sport to watch.
Let's face it gang triathlon is all about the doing, and not the watching.
In bike racing like the Tour de France you have so much strategy, in fighting, and intrigue. It's like watching a daytime soup opera on wheels.
In marathon running you have head to head competition with the best of human endurance live and in Technicolor.
In track and field you have the raw energy of the sprint combined with the length and beauty of endurance racing with such events as the mile or the 10K.
In recent Kona lore you have the Hoyts and the Blazeman. Please don't get me wrong there is nothing wrong with either the Hoyts or Jon Blaze. Their stories are poetic, tragic, and truly inspirational, but they are not about the clock or racing triathlon per say.
They are about the human spirit, and not athletic ability and their in lies the rub. NBC knows this and that is why they televise so little of the professional race from Kona. In fact, they televise only snippets of the pro race while using huge chunks of time for the human interest stories.
Today your homework is to compare and contrast that to the Tour de France coverage on Versus. Versus will spend hours on the actual race when it seems that the only thing that's going on is a long ride through the countryside.
But there is almost always some sort of drama (in front or behind the scenes) on the tour while during your typical Ironman you have very little outward drama that can be captured by the camera.
And unlike a marathon, you rarely have head to head running, and/or finishes as the pros usually all start the run at different times.
So I'm sorry Virginia but there is very little athletic drama in Ironman.
It is all about the doing and very little about the watching...unless you happen to have a loved one or friend in the race.