Newsletter ep. 104: lessons from the world champs

I’m currently in Davos, Switzerland—which is super awesome and super cold and super expensive—and I’m currently sick. It’s as if I made it through the very stressful and busy week of 70.3 Worlds and then my body immediately tapped out. So I’m trying to recover in time for my race on Saturday and this week’s newsletter may be stream-of-conscious. We’ll see how that works out.

Also, hi! *waves* to everyone who said hi to me in France. Made me feel like a minor pseudo-celebrity in a very small niche.

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A few notes from the World Championships

There were a lot of better photos from the 70.3 championship races in Nice this weekend, but I like this one I took of Daniela and Holly just past the finish. I like it for the obvious reasons—Holly stumbled across the line after giving it her all and laid down, and Daniela came over to congratulate and check on her. But I also like it for one other reason: It’s just them out there. Everyone else can look on and cheer and support, but when it comes down to it it’s just the athletes out there and only they can know what they go through.

I spent a lot of time covering the races for Triathlete Magazine and it was weird being distinctly on the other side of the athlete barricade. I didn’t like it. It maybe resulted in the most philosophical race coverage ever turned into an editor—read my women’s and men’s recaps—but what are you going to do.

One of the things I kept thinking about was this: belief. 

Sure, the women didn’t manage to beat Daniela, but they believed they could. You could see it out there. Standing on the sidelines, I understood what Jocelyn McCauley meant in her Instagram post. You can’t be a fan of someone and an equal to them. And she believes she’s Daniela’s equal.

The men’s race, even more so, was an execution of belief. It’s amazing how many people now knew all along that Gustav Iden was going to win, but even he said afterwards he was only joking on Instagram beforehand when he said he’d be world champ. (Apparently, so few people actually know who he is, he even went on Slowtwitch to do an AMA that was basically ‘Hey, this is who I am.’) I was watching the race, though, and I saw when he decided just to go for it. I saw when Rudy von Berg made a move so decisive even Alistair Brownlee sat up and looked surprised. I wrote this in my recap and I keep thinking about it:

“Commentators made much of both Iden’s choice to ride a road bike, which evidently was influenced by the fact that his time trial bike is from 2011, and they made more of Rudy’s choice to ride a disc wheel. But maybe it’s not so much about the specifics of the decision as it is about making a choice and believing in it.”

Other thoughts:

– Lucy Charles got a five-minute drafting penalty for rolling into the draft zone on a downhill-to-uphill and then exiting out the back. She hasn’t said much about it publicly, but her husband/coach posted to Insta an argument I did hear from her and others: Rules should be enforced equally for everyone. (It was not the only strict rule interpretation some people got hit with and others didn’t. There was also extensive passing on the right, center line violations, etc.)

– Alexandre Vinokourov, the disgraced former cyclist, won his age group. There were actually a number of former Olympians and cyclists in the age groups, some of whom had gotten the boot back in the day for doping. Obviously, there were also some hard feelings about this. But I’m not sure. I have mixed feelings.

– The Americans, especially among the men, were noticeably absent from the top amateur rankings. There’s a degree to which that’s geographic—more Europeans are going to show up in Europe. But I also think there was a degree to which we, Americans, were shocked by the course. I think we all assumed something like that would never show up in a triathlon.

– Of the pro podiums, three wore the new Nike Next %s, one wore the Nike Vaporflys, and the other two wore sponsor shoes. Looking at the amateur ranks, it was waves and waves and waves of Next %s. 

– Can we all agree the new Di2 sucks? I don’t know if Ellie Salthouse is on eTap or Di2, but her electronic shifting took her out of the race. And when I was getting my Di2 fixed by the race mechanic, they told me 90% of the problems they’d been dealing with were Di2 (which correlates with what I’ve heard from other mechanics). 

– I haven’t been to a 70.3 World Championships since they became a two-day event, so I don’t know if the amount of shitshow-ness was simply inevitable because there are too many people now. But there was an amount of logistical details that seemed a mess. I appreciate every effort that’s been made to turn the 70.3 Worlds into the big deal it is now, so I hope this is some constructive criticism: The level of security was insane, counter-productive, and at the same time a farce. It created huge back-ups with nowhere for the crowds to go on narrow sidewalks, yet you could walk a block down and around the barricades straight onto course. The maze of barricades around the transitions and finish was confusing and hard to navigate. You’d repeatedly find yourself back behind the security gate when you thought you were outside security. It made traffic flow a mess. Turning in T1 and T2 stuff the day before took over an hour with the line. The finish was completely blocked off with a fence that had been covered by a tarp, so spectators couldn’t see their athletes, which just led to stopped crowds along a narrow ocean path trying to talk to their athletes through the banners. The start was 100% blocked off to the public; I’m not even sure anyone without a media or VIP pass could see it. Yet, despite more security than I’ve ever seen at a race, we still had a Garmin stolen *out of a T2 bag* while it was hanging in transition. And then it turned out there was a rash of people who’d had computers stolen from transition bags or off their bikes. Come on.

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• I can’t post to Lauren Goss’ Instagram because it’s private, but you can see the screenshot here. She’s accepted a six-month doping ban for a CBD cream she used to treat an ankle injury, which had higher levels of THC than stated on the package. Look, obviously I have no inside info on this incident and CBD products are getting super super popular, but there’s a reason I’ve been staying away from them until the whole unregulated insane market sorts itself out. (SCMP/USADA)
  


• Caster Semenya announced she signed with a soccer team. So that’s one way to go. (Instagram)
  


• The World Surf League announced a massive new overhaul that gets rid of some key events/competitions (like Mavericks) and creates a whole content creation system, where big wave surfers chase waves for cool videos. I think. Honestly, I’m not 100% sure. I’m not a surfer, but it’s an interesting model and one that has caused massive concerns among surfers and calls for boycotts. (World Surf League/Beach Grit)
  


• Selfies are the new autographs. (New York Times)
  


• Or maybe it’s sketchy stories you’ve heard over drinks about sports stars. This one about Lance reminded me of some I heard about him during college when he was on a partying roll through SoCal. (Twitter)
  


• California officially passed a law allowing college athletes more ability to make money. The NCAA is not happy about it. (USA Today)
  


• This is just your regular reminder that our massive reliance on Amazon and next-day delivery is problematic and so many of the very real costs are hidden. (BuzzFeed News)
  


• Worker wellness programs sorta suck. (New Republic)
  


• I have almost zero patience for everyone hating on the rise of the scooter and e-bike apps. Like, you’d rather all those people be in cars instead?? Sure, there are some issues that need to be worked out, but the place I’ve seen more bike shares and scooters and rentals than any other city is in Paris and it worked flawlessly. They weren’t scattered everywhere; the infrastructure was set up for bikes and scooters; people rode them all over town and had precedence over cars without getting in the way of cars. Try it. (New York Times) 

Comments & thoughts

Quite a few people agreed it’s nice actually *not* having too many people crammed into the course for the women’s race. But those poor men.

My mom’s voicemail was also another crowd pleaser.

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‘If We Were Riding’ is a weekly triathlon-ish newsletter written by Kelly O’Mara and produced by Live Feisty Media. Subscribe to get it in your inbox every Wednesday morning. You can also read past issues. This episode is from Sept. 11, 2019.