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Dev Paul: An Open Letter To The WTC
By Devashish Paul
11/17/2009 |
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Editor's Note: Since the inaugural event in 2006, the 70.3 World Championship held in Clearwater, FL, has come with an asterisk in the minds of many triathletes, both pro and age grouper. The nature of the course sets athletes up for very fast times; we've seen outstanding performances that have made history for our sport. However, it is also widely regarded as a draft fest, where cheaters come out on top and good guys (and gals) finish last - and often angry.
We've all read forums and race reports trashing the marshals, the athletes and of course, the WTC. That's not what this letter is about. Instead, Dev takes a realistic look at what happened this Saturday, and offers constructive ideas for how we can work together to maintain the integrity of the World Championship of a beloved distance, the Ironman 70.3...
Dear World Triathlon Corporation,
First of all, thank you for putting on the Championship event of your 70.3 Ironman Series in Clearwater Florida on Nov 14th. I started my participation in triathlon 25 seasons ago, and have raced every one of the triathlon seasons since. Over the time, I’ve done 18 Ironman events including Kona, countless half Ironman events, the ITU Age Group World Championships and the World Military Games Triathlon. Let’s just say, I’ve seen every part of this sport now on 4 different continents at the age group level. It was exciting to close off my 25th year at your event in Clearwater.
When I first qualified at Timberman, (which was a fabulous event with flawless execution put on by Keith Jordan in New Guilford New Hampshire), I decided that I would race Clearwater. It was the third time I qualified in the past 4 years and decided this was the time to do it. A great way to close season 25. I talked with your original 70.3 World Champion runner-up Simon Lessing, who responded to me, “I guess you’re going to find out what ITU racing is like and do your first age group ITU race”. I replied, “Well, Simon, it is part of the sport. I want to go down, see what it is all about and race clean and in the rules, just to prove that you don’t need to be part of the packs”.
As I talked to more and more athletes, many being elite age groupers, they said, “why are you wasting all that training time and money going to compete in that draft fest?”. This is not something that people would say of Kona. People literally put their lives on hold for Kona, quit or change jobs, mortgage their homes, and transform their lives in an effort to qualify for Kona.
My personal journey to Kona qualification took me 14 years. While I never put my life “on hold” to make it to Kona, having that carrot transformed my life over a period that spanned greater than a decade. My story is not much different than thousands of age groupers worldwide. Kona is a lifetime dream. Currently Clearwater is not. In fact, the very presence of an athlete going to Clearwater almost brands that athlete as someone who goes to an event to cheat their way to the finish line.
This is simply not right.
My main event is the half Ironman distance. I love it for all the reasons why your 70.3 series is hugely successful. Half Ironman is a distance for real people with jobs, families and commitments outside of sport. We can race the half Ironman distance from wire to wire without having to go into survival mode. We don’t need to spend so much time training for this event that it detracts from our lives. In fact the training for a half Ironman is almost additive to success in other parts of life. You are fit, but have more energy to devote to work and family. It does not take every morning, lunch hour and evening and also two half days on weekends. AWESOME.
So where am I going with this?
I want Clearwater to be a hugely successful event like Kona. I came to Clearwater to be part of the solution.
I can’t comment on a race I have never done. Having raced for a quarter century, I needed to know what goes on during the second weekend in November by the Gulf of Mexico. I’ve seen the good, bad and ugly of the sport over 25 years. Thankfully most of it is not just good, but simply outstanding, or I would not be part of this sport. And I should say that the WTC does way more things right than it does wrong.
The Clearwater location is simply spectacular. While the rest of North America, Japan, Korea and Europe go into winter hibernation, and while New Zealand and Australia and South Africa just move towards their spring and summer season, Florida in November is just perfect for racing. There is a ton of great accommodation near the race site and the beaches are to die for.
Your execution of race logistics are impeccable as I have grown to expect having done Ironman Lake Placid 10 times, Ironman Canada 6 times, Ironman Europe once and Hawaii once. I’m in business and I completely understand the various aspects of customer service and marketing. Hats off on a fabulous job! In fact, Harvard or Stanford could do a good case study on how you have successfully transformed a small event with a niche following on an island in Hawaii into a global marketing and business machine. More power to you.
So let’s come back to Clearwater and how it is perceived as a “Championship Event”.
As athletes and competitors, we want our champions to be legit. When I see MANY age group women riding faster than Michellie Jones and Magali Tisseyre and within 2 minutes of a World ITT Champion and multiple-time Olympic medalist like Karin Thurig of Switzerland we all know that there is something fishy going on out there.
60 year old women riding sub 2:30. That should take around 210 watts for most smaller athletes. Again, something fishy going on. Age Group men riding faster than Tim O’Donnel an ITU World Champ? Age Group men running faster than Terenzo Bozzone your champion from last year?
On Saturday I was buoyed by the announcement of a time trial start expecting a big separation of athletes on the course. GREAT, a fair race. I was excited that we’d all go home on Sunday and talk about the “success of Clearwater”….everyone was spaced apart and we got to race clean. The champions were worthy. Race times were in line with what you’d expect from age groupers. Finally people would see a clean race at Clearwater, and next year, everyone is going to fighting tooth and nail at qualifier races to get slots just like they do for Kona slots
I was athlete 1241. My original wave time was 7:45. Instead I entered the water at around 7:20 am. You just compressed double the density of athletes on the course from the previous wave spacing. I knew that the course would be EVEN MORE CROWDED than in previous years.
The race has passed and we all know the final outcome. The packs were larger than ever. I told myself that I wanted to do this race clean. I had a power meter and every time a rider passed me I dropped back 5 lengths as I should. When packs of 20-50 passed me, I dropped back 5 lengths, yet my power meter read less than 125 Watts when I first started to pedal, when my usual half Ironman effort is 220-240Watts. I needed to let the packs go in excess of 10 bike lengths before pedaling again and do a proper half Ironman pace of at least 220W. The rules say 5 lengths, but at 5 lengths back I’m still benefiting hugely from the pack. This makes me part of the problem, not part of the solution. So I dropped even further back till I was doing a legitimate effort.
Locks are there to keep the honest people honest. Thieves will always break locks, but honest people won’t. I truly believe that most of my fellow competitors are by and large honest guys and gals who wanted to “do the right thing”. But at the same time, all these guys train hard and if someone is getting away with stealing their lunch , they will resort to the same degradation of civility to level the playing field.
Of course, we know how this has played out in pro cycling. Everyone doped because they suspected the other guy was doping. But does that make it right? Ask David Millar how he is so opposed to doping after using the juice to try to win the Tour De France for Cofidis. Just because everyone is doing it does not make it right. If someone is cheating on their spouse it is not right for the next guy to copy this behavior either.
So how do we keep our honest competitors honest? How do we raise the prestige of the event and help market it as a true championship ? How do we get people to literally transform their lives to get a ticket to Clearwater like they do for Kona?
As I said, locks keep the honest people honest. What is the magic lock that will keep all of us playing in the rules. Do we need more marshalling? Frankly when age groupers say this is the solution, it is a cop out. Cheating is a personal choice. It’s what a person does when no one is looking that tells mountains about their integrity.
Let’s make it easier for athletes to keep their integrity.
We simply need a lower density of riders on the course. You can’t have drafting and packs form if there are less riders on a given patch of course at a time. You’re already breaking the larger age groups into 2 waves. Let’s go with waves of only 50 people at a time separated by 5 minutes. Or a true time trial start with one athlete only every 5 second.
Drafting is a bigger scourge to our sport at the age group level than any amount of performance that EPO, HGH or Steroids can deliver. While I applaud your efforts on the drug testing front, I believe the focus in that domain is misplaced given the fact that courses where drafting may be a problem are not properly dealt on the front of rider density.
I feel for Jimmy Ritticello who, given the working conditions he has been dealt with, does the best job he can. Jimmy has an almost impossible job. He’s almost being asked to make a chicken fly across the Atlantic when the bird has no wings.
I really do believe that an opportunity to deliver an event in Clearwater with much lower rider density was squandered when the time trial start at Clearwater 2009 effectively compressed the age goupers into twice the density. A spacing of 5-6 seconds between riders would have changed the entire make up for the course. You would not have seen age group women out biking pro women or age group men outrunning pro men after sitting in pelotons all day. These age group champions put the integrity of the sport into question.
I understand that Clearwater is going to be a fast course, with few hills, smooth pavement and a draft from traffic in the lane beside riders. All that adds up to fast times. But let’s clean the packs up so that Clearwater steps up to the stage with the same prestige as Kona. When that happens, the rest of the series will become even more successful, and no double will drive up the market capitalization of the World Triathlon Corporation making Providence Equity Partners very happy. In the process, we, your customers will value your product with a higher valuation than we do today.
Let’s remember that every Kona slot has a pyramid of underlying revenue associated with it. There is the valuation of those slots sold to qualifier events, and then there is the money that thousands of athletes spend on race related travel, merchandise, hotel nights, expenses in local communities, purchases with sponsors and general expenses in local communities that spin from the desire to capture one of those Championship slots.
Clearwater can be the same. The rest is up to you. If you build it…we will come. There were only 1300 or so in Clearwater. That tells me there is a problem. Athletes just don’t want to come and race here. Personally I look forward to coming back in 2010 as a 45-49 age grouper, hopefully with a shot at racing cleanly against my peers and having the race of my life. I will be encouraging others to do the same. “Boycotting Clearwater” is not part of the solution. We need more athletes with high integrity to overrun the event while you, the WTC give us a fair playing field.
Sincerely
Devashish Paul
About the Author: Devashish Paul is a frequent contributor to xtri.com. He’s completed 18 Ironmans and typically races 3-5 half Ironmans per year. On Nov 14th, he completed his 25th season in triathlon with a 4:22 at the WTC 70.3 event in Clearwater. His half Ironman PB is 4:14 so he was not in the group of athletes who magically PB at Clearwater.
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