<?xml version="1.0"?><rss version="2.0"><channel><title>Henry Budgett - Tri247</title><link>http://www.tri247.com/index.html</link><description>Latest articles submitted by Henry Budgett on Tri247</description><item><title><![CDATA[Confused? You will be...]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_1482.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[Someone else will be writing the weekend preview piece this week so I thought that I would get in an early observation or two about the coming weekend&#039;s interesting mathematics. To be honest, I&#039;m still not really sure I have all the intricate details worked out, despite several lengthy conversations with people who do, but then (as long-term readers of the old Triathletes Homepage may remember) I do have a history of being bamboozled by numbers!

This weekend&#039;s BG World Cup race in Ishigaki, Japan is the last opportunity to score ranking points that will ensure an athlete a place on the starting pontoon at Madrid - the race which many countries, including GB, are using to decide their squads for Olympic selection. (Technically a British athlete can&#039;t be selected for the Olympics based on their result at Madrid, only put forward to the British Olympic Association for their selection.) So, with the entry list for Madrid closing one day before the World Cup race in Korea, there&#039;s everything to play for.

To get an automatic slot on the pontoon you&#039;ll need to be in the top 25 of the ITU&#039;s World Rankings - which currently puts Tim Don and Andrew Johns there for sure and, barring an excellent result by Will Clarke in Ishigaki, should also mean that Stuart Hayes and Olly Freeman are there as well. For the women there&#039;s Andrea Whitcombe, Liz Blatchford, Helen Tucker and Kerry Lang in there at the moment but there&#039;s a statistical possibility that both Lang and Tucker could get dislodged.

So, who is racing in Ishigaki to defend their positions? In the men&#039;s field there&#039;s just Tim Don and Will Clarke while the women&#039;s field includes Tucker and Lang plus Jodie Swallow and Hollie Avil. So there&#039;s still the chance of a bit of a change-around in the rankings to make life more interesting!

Those who know the World Cup system will have spotted that we have only talked about the fact that start slots based on the top 25 rankings and the fact that, as far as GB is concerned, we could get up to four men and four women onto the start at Madrid as a result. Each nation gets a maximum of six slots and, as far as GB is concerned, the other two slots are allocated on a discretionary basis. The first of those slots goes to a ranked athlete who isn&#039;t in the top 25, the next-in-line if you like while the other is a completely discretionary slot and can be used to get World Cup experience for an athlete. If there are less than four GB athletes in the top 25 after Ishigaki then the number of discretionary slots will expand accordingly.

And, after Ishigaki, there&#039;s Tongyeong in Korea - which gives us a perfect example of how the system works. Down on the men&#039;s start list are Don, Hayes, Johns, Clarke, Brownlee and Nicholls while the women&#039;s start list shows Whitcombe, Blatchford, Avil and Wellington. Yes, you read that right, Chrissie Wellington is down to start in Korea.

Now, there&#039;s no way that she can get enough points from even a win in Korea to get into the rankings that will count for Madrid - if you have been reading carefully you&#039;ll remember that the Madrid start lists close the day before Tongyeong. So, why is she down to race? Well, the obvious answer is to see how she goes in a World Cup field after she&#039;s recovered from Ironman Australia. But, surely, if she cannot qualify to get a start in Madrid, what&#039;s the point?

And, gentle reader, this is the bit that still confuses! Totally theoretically and setting aside all that&#039;s been previously said, it would be possible for an athlete to be selected to go to the Olympics based on their potential as opposed to the number of points that they have scored! They do have to be in the ranking system and they do have to be above a certain level but the choice of which athletes are put forward to the BOA is down to the selection policy set out by British Triathlon.

Given that, while we have three slots secured for the men&#039;s field in the Olympics, we currently only have one secure woman&#039;s slot and a second one which, statistically at least, ought to be secure it seems strange to be speculating on the chances of a complete outsider making it into the selection process. There is an outside chance of getting a third slot if we can get ahead of both Austria and France in the rankings - Kate Allen&#039;s crash last weekend may have helped us in that respect as she may be out of competiton for a while and the prospect of having ex-Brit Jess Harrison getting a slot for France ahead of her former team-mates is indeed ironic...

One thing is for sure, there&#039;s going to be massive determination on the part of the lower-ranked GB women to either make, or secure, their position in the top 25. Tucker and Lang need good results in Ishigaki to secure their hold but a blinding race from Avil or Swallow could still upset that. Dillon has set everything on being given one of the discretionary slots for Madrid - although there is the alternative path of getting a top result at the European Championships - which leaves at least three athletes vying for the one remaining Madrid slot.

While the results at Ishigaki this weekend represent the end of the beginning of the process, it&#039;s only the beginning of the end for the ultimate process which will culminate in an athlete getting a start in Beijing. There&#039;s still everything to play for!



The above comments are based on my current best understanding of the situation. Errors, omissions and completely erroneous conclusions are entirely possible so don&#039;t go booking a trip to the Olympics based on this!!]]></description></item><item><title><![CDATA[Travelling as a sport]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_2592.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[Travel apparently, or so they say, broadens the mind... Or, as one more observant individual put it, travel broadens the backside! And, having just come back from the land of conspicuous excess, I&#039;ve been privileged to see an awful lot of broadened backsides that haven&#039;t done that much travelling! Indeed, in the case of one couple we met, so broad as to prevent virtually any travelling at all...

Given the choice, I prefer my overseas trips to be pretty short - it&#039;s not that I&#039;m hankering for what&#039;s at home but rather that I find I get bored pretty easily and so a four-day trip to Boston is an ideal time away to have a bit of fun, not do anything triathlon-related and get a bit of a different perspective on things. I&#039;m pretty familiar with the place - this was my fifth trip there in a dozen years - and, compared to a lot of the US cities that I&#039;ve been to, it&#039;s nice enough that I&#039;ll take the family along and be sure that they&#039;ll have a good time as well.

Sport, US-style
For those that follow American sports you&#039;ll possibly be aware that this season Boston got into the World Series at baseball and the first night we were there stuffed the Colorado Rockies 10-1 at the Fenway. The following night the town was on a high and the Red Soxs won again to lead the series by two to nothing. On the Saturday night the teams had moved to mile-high Denver to play three games there and the Sox won the first two of them to take the series with a whitewash. Now, to be perfectly frank, American sports aren&#039;t my bag. I&#039;d agree that baseball is more interesting than basketball but, having frozen nearly to death one night watching a game of American football that took two hours to get to and lasted for over four, pretty much nothing is ever going to get me to watch another game of that!

So, why the sudden interest in baseball? The reason is not because of the game itself, but the people playing and watching. Baseball players are pretty chunky - I guess they need a fair amount of mass to hit that ball effectively and, like sprinters, tend to be a bit more muscular than, say, distance runners. The supporters too seem to be a bit more on the bulky side but that&#039;s probably a) because of all the extra clothing they need to survive an evening sitting on the bleachers and b) because of all the beer, soda and snack foods that they&#039;ll consume! However, you could compare them to rugby players and supporters in that respect and at least the game doesn&#039;t get bogged down in tedious &#039;plays&#039; and the folk watching seem to be there for a good time rather than a fight.

Boston really is a sports mecca; there&#039;s the baseball, football, ice hockey, basketball, sailing and, of course, the Boston Marathon which is celebrated by a nice piece of pavement mosaic down at the finish near Copley Square. There are loads of sports shops too but here you&#039;ll be in for a bit of a disappointment because most seem to be offering less choice that you&#039;ll find here in the UK. The Bill Rodgers running shop in Quincy Market is stuffed with running gear, to be sure, but is seems to be stuck in a time warp and hardly reflects what today&#039;s triathlete might be looking for. In City Sports, a much larger store, we did bump into another English tourist buying a Garmin Forerunner with the intention of slipping it back into the UK under the Customs radar but the amount of information he got from the staff to inform his purchase made a shopping trip to Dixons look like a personal appointment with a technology guru! And, even in this well-stocked store, triathlon was a minority sport that you had to hunt to find with just a few items of Zoot and Craft kit on display.

To be honest, sports shops in the US are pretty much always a disappointment and seem to be trying to cater for everything from hunting and shooting to replica baseball kit. In many ways they remind me of Millets, which sounds a bit odd but there&#039;s that same, slightly unfocussed feeling about them. In all the trips to the US that I&#039;ve made over the years I can only think of a handful of sports shops that I&#039;ve found which came anywhere close to the specialist outlets we have here in the UK; R&amp;A and SBR Sports in New York and Nytro in California - there must be others but I think they do most of their triathlon shopping online!

Boston is also a walking city; it&#039;s really compact and actually very pleasant to stroll around the different neighbourhoods. And, being triathletes, we did a lot of walking over the days we were in town. Compared to some US cities where the police will virtually arrest you on the spot for using your legs, Boston positively encourages you to get out and get around; the historical Freedom Trail is marked out through the city with a red paved or painted line for a couple of miles of educational exercise and there are other well established walking and running routes. Of course, there are distractions along the way...

Regular readers will know that we like coffee so having no less than 31 Starbucks outlets, many with WiFi and free iTunes downloads, was a distinct distraction. However, while 31 might be a good enough number for Starbucks (and enough flavours for Baskin Robins...) it pales into insignificance compared to the 100+ outlets that Dunkin&#039; Donuts have around the place. Did you know that DD serves more coffee than any other retail outlet in the USA? One, hopefully not entirely serious, suggestion made for their widespread distribution throughout the entire state was that it ensured the police force was evenly spread out...

That ain&#039;t gonna happen...
And, as you would expect, with such a seriously high carb, fat and caffeine intake some of the results are not pretty. As we were walking back to our hotel on the Cambridge side, perhaps a 15-minute stroll, we made a turning  to discover two ladies looking at a map. One was actually sitting down on one of those folding &#039;walking stick&#039; seats, the other leaning on her. Both were, to be polite, morbidly obese. The seated one looked at us, figured we knew where we were going and asked, &quot;How far to the Science Museum?&quot;.

&quot;Less than a mile,&quot; we replied. &quot;It&#039;s straight down that street.&quot;

&quot;A mile,&quot; said the standing one. &quot;That ain&#039;t gonna happen!&quot;

And there, dear reader, lies the heart of the problem and our new catch phrase. For unless people are prepared to make just a little effort to change things; be it diet, exercise regime, the elimination of drafting in age group triathlon, a willingness to volunteer at events or practically anything else that requires the start of a new existence then, in the words of our large acquaintances, it just isn&#039;t going to happen.

So, make 2008 the year you decide that something is going to happen and start taking your first steps towards that goal. After all, Dunkin&#039; Donuts may serve more coffee than anybody else but that doesn&#039;t mean you have to drink it...]]></description></item><item><title><![CDATA[Random ramblings]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_2089.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[It really has been a long time since I put finger to keyboard to write something for the site, as opposed to editing the hundreds of news items, features and results that get processed each month. And, while I was sitting here thinking about the last few weeks, it occurred to me that there were such a variety of stories there that I might just as well jot them down and see where it all led.

The first thing that I feel that I should share are some of the experiences from Lanzarote where Jen and I both had a great time - although the next person that suggests that it was a holiday may well regret it... In statistical terms the arrangements in our household are reversed: Jen does all the training and I occupy some of the space around that! And, as many of you will know, Ironman training takes a lot of time so, oddly, the nearer we get to a race the more we actually get to see of one another because the bulk of the training is done and it&#039;s just a matter of getting there and doing it. The first part of that being my responsibility...

Getting there is half the fun
After two years at Austria, where we had a room at the Plattenwirt which is less than 300m from transition, Lanzarote was going to be a bit more of an experiment. We knew that we didn&#039;t want to be based at La Santa because we wanted to have good access to the swim for some last-minute open water practice and didn&#039;t need the hassle of driving across the island every day. A quick hunt through Expedia produced the wonderful La Penita Apartments which are about a mile down the run course and so perfectly situated: a bit quieter than being on the strip but still well close enough to have access to everything we would need. As some will know, Jen is gluten intolerant and we always ship out a parcel of food in advance so that she has the basics to hand but we need not have bothered as, unlike Austria, there was plenty of fresh fruit and veg and even a shop in Playa Honda that stocks both vegetarian and gluten free food - and it was cheaper than here in the UK.

Flying with a bike is always a bit of a gamble; ours always travel in hard shell cases and with Jen riding a small frame there&#039;s a fair bit of room to pack the essentials like energy food and all the water bottles into the Scicon as well. Not knowing about the supply of CO2 canisters on Lanzarote we decided to take a risk and pack some in the case - technically the airlines don&#039;t like it but there are far more dangerous things loaded onto a plane every day than a 16gm canister of CO2... After two years of traveling with Ryan Air it was also a change to not be able to pre-book the bike onto the plane - passengers who bought tickets direct seemed to be able to do this but as our ticket came through Expedia they told us to turn up early, so we did. Four hours early... &amp;pound;20 later and the bike was through the scanners at Gatwick with not a hint of complaint.

Pretty much everyone who travels with a bike tries to watch it being loaded on the plane, after all the load and unload are when it is most vulnerable, and I don&#039;t know who the handling agents are for Monarch but they did a really crap job that day. I watched as the sole loader simply pulled all the soft bagged bikes off the trolley and dumped them on the ground - some falling several feet onto the tarmac - and then started to pull the boxed bikes off on top of them. Words were had with a supervisor at the gate and, in turn, by him with the loader but by then it was all academic. I never did hear reports of any bikes being damaged but if they were, that&#039;s when it happened.

One of the concerns with being away from base for a week was that using the internet abroad is an unknown. The apartments did have computers that could be used but I need access pretty much 24/7 and so the search was on for either a reliable WiFi connection or some other means. WiFi is patchy in Lanzarote - it&#039;s there but it&#039;s nowhere near as prevalent as here in the UK and I couldn&#039;t find a reliable source of information about where I could get connected. What I did find, however, was a company renting 3G modemsa&gt; for just &amp;euro;60 a week with unlimited connection. Hand-delivered to, and collected from, the airport and installed and tested first - an amazing personal service and it delivered a top quality connection all week long. I could have used my T-mobile 3G connection and paid &amp;pound;7.50 per megabyte instead but I didn&#039;t feel like being robbed blind, it was bad enough taking the 55p a minute hit each way for the calls...

How the work gets done
I had press accreditation for the Ironman which means that I can get access to all those interesting little bits that normally only the athletes are allowed into together with the option of going out on a boat for the swim or a motorbike on the bike course. Having driven the two Mirador sections, and had previous experiences on the back of a motorbike, I opted for the boat! What I totally failed to take into account was that a) it was still really quite dark at 6:30am and b) that nobody had mentioned that we would have to wade out to the boats and get soaked from the waist down... A bit of water doesn&#039;t bother me but two mobile phones and a wallet got a good bath - fortunately the cameras were grabbed from above by the boat crew! Taking pictures from a boat in even a gentle swell is tricky, doing it in the dawn light is even more so, but I think we did get some interesting ones - about 350 actually - and I even managed to find Jen in the pack and get a shot of her for the album.

Back on terra firma, not strictly true given Lanzarote&#039;s volcanic past, and with a freshly re-soaked set of shorts there was time to watch the pro athletes get out of the swim and then capture the emptying of the transition. Normally, when you are watching an event as a supporter, you get to see them go out on the bike and then head off for breakfast. Next time, do hang around a bit - there are all sorts of wonderful moments as the slower swimmers emerge and ready themselves for a long day in the lava fields. You get to see a few familiar faces and some really quite bizarre sights - one competitor must have used a year&#039;s worth of suntan cream in one go, we nicknamed him Casper... Once they are all gone - and there are always a few who don&#039;t make it onto the bike - it&#039;s time to check the clock, do a few calculations and head for the food. This is the only down-time of the day so you have to make the most of it.

WTC takes its franchise seriously and, as I have mentioned before, other websites cannot report live on the event when the IronmanLive team are in town. Having already met their Editor in Chief, Kevin Mackinnon, at the athlete briefing, I knew that I would mainly be taking photos and doing background updates - as well as keeping an eye on UK race results for Tri247 and trying to cover the World Duathlon Championships in Gyor! Half jokingly I offered Kevin use of any photos that he might like from the set that I had shot so far and, to my delight, a whole bunch of them are up on IronmanLive and have since turned up in a few other places as well. I&#039;m far from being a good photographer but it is nice to see your work getting a wider audience.

An Ironman day is a long one and Lanzarote days are often a bit longer still... When Jen finally emerged from the medical tent, no dramas but the offer of a quick IV for rehydration was just too tempting, it was a long trudge back down the run course to the apartment. On these occasions I get to push the bike (and carry most of the gear) while Jen walks along trying to get to a bed before the muscles all stiffen up - which often results in my getting complimented on doing the race... It really shouldn&#039;t be that hard to tell the difference between someone who has sat around for 17 hours and done no physical exertion at all and someone who has done an Ironman! Or do people just not expect women to do Ironman distance - certainly the women&#039;s field at Lanzarote is among the smallest of any of the full distance races.

What NOT to do
What follows is an object lesson in how not to approach the return journey...

Unlike some other athletes, or their helpers, I&#039;m just as obsessive about packing the bike for the return journey as I am for the outward leg - I want that thing back in one piece because a) it&#039;s worth quite a bit and b) Jen will give me all sorts of grief if it gets bent... So, everything gets bubble wrapped, zip tied and re-positioned until the entire box is full and nothing can move or get moved. After years of experience I also have extra anchor points in the case which get zip tied up in case the locks fail and I even use duct tape across the locks ... you can see where this is going already, can&#039;t you ...

No early check in at the airport in Lanzarote, but the queues weren&#039;t nearly as bad as at Gatwick, and then  - disaster. Or, rather, disaster number one. It was obvious that Spanish airport security was singing a different tune to the guys at Gatwick. Soft bike bags were great because they could rummage through them and they fit into the scanner - hard cases, especially sealed up ones, were being opened and searched in a very peculiar way. First they selected random bits to be taken out of the box: in our case they had one of the two pumps, the bike shoes (but not the trainers...), the gels and the storage bottle we use for spare tubes and those naughty CO2 canisters... Oh yes, they went in the bin - or did they? They didn&#039;t scan the bike frame, the wheels, the tribars, ... No zip ties or tape to reseal the box, the spares were in the bags that had already gone to the hold, so a quick patch job and the box went down the chute. Was that the end?

About ten minutes later there&#039;s a call on the PA for a &quot;Mr Budgett to information&quot; which meant going back out through security - only to be sent back through it again to go to the baggage handling in the basement. With all the camera gear, laptop and other crap that I carry on trips like this that&#039;s not something that you get to do in a hurry... I won&#039;t go into the conversation that was had at this point but remember, you can&#039;t take fluids through security but you can buy them when you are the other side... The problem, apparently, was that there was still something in the box that they didn&#039;t like. And, yes, you&#039;ve guessed, it was a CO2 canister that the first security check had missed, probably because the guy was not even being remotely thorough and I, being somewhat pissed off, wasn&#039;t helping him.

The killer punch came, however, when I pointed out to the guys in the basement that the case had already been checked and OKed. Sure, they said, we don&#039;t normally bother about the CO2, it&#039;s just that there are so many bikes... So, the moral here is that it&#039;s much, much better to follow the rules, even if there&#039;s nothing to support them, than try to be a smart arse! Especially when you can&#039;t speak their language properly...

Which probably goes for a lot of other triathlon-related rules as well; like keeping your helmet on, and racking your bike in the right slot, and not implying that the referee might be a complete arse of dubious parentage for suggesting otherwise. They WILL get you in the end!]]></description></item><item><title><![CDATA[World Cup for London]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_1745.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[With all the excitement about the Corus Elite Series and the fact that the concluding race will be held in Hyde Park even the quality papers are getting in on the act. There&#039;s a piece in today&#039;s Guardian, under the football section for some odd reason, which talks about British Triathlon being in discussions with the 2012 Organising Committee to bring a World Cup race to Hyde Park. Well, at some point they will have to run a World Cup race there in order to prove the venue, simply because that&#039;s where the triathlon will be in 2012 but that&#039;s not the interesting part of the story.
As most triathletes in the UK will know, we already have a World Cup race -- the Salford World Cup, a race that followed on from all the work put in for the 2002 Commonwealth Games. It&#039;s a very successful event and one that the athletes seem to enjoy. It also has enjoyed massive backing from the three cities of Manchester, Salford and Trafford over the past four years (not forgetting the years up to and including the 2002 Games).  I have no idea of exactly how much money that has cost the good people of the Northwest but the Guardian&#039;s estimate of &amp;pound;500,000 a year can&#039;t be too far off the mark.
The cost of putting on a World Cup event in London would be much, much higher.  And that has always been accepted. You see, the idea of having a major triathlon in Hyde Park is not a new one at all -- it was first proposed in 1999 as a possible solution to the emergency re-siting of the World Championships that year (just as Manchester in 1993 was a late change to the original plan).  The whole idea was re-worked and formally presented to the ITU as a bid for World Cups in 2001/2002 and the World Championships 2003 at Congress in Montreal 1999. The bid wasn&#039;t very detailed and a revised version was presented to Congress in Perth 2000 but again failed, partly because of questions over funding and logistics and probably partly because of other political issues that were going on at that time between the ITU and the ETU.
The plans for those proposed events still exist and will almost certainly form the basis of the 2012 event. The costs are known or, rather, the things that will be the costs are known and the issues regarding disruption to the capital are fully understood. For the World Cup in Manchester the bike course always bisected the tram network and, until last year, caused a significant major rout into the city&#039;s centre to be closed for much of the day. In London we&#039;re talking about shutting down half of Park Lane and Constituion Hill -- a much bigger deal altogether, especially now it&#039;s an integral part of the Congestion Charging Zone&#039;s central relief road...
And the story doesn&#039;t end there either... Not so very long ago there was a serious proposal to run a test event in Hyde Park to show whether it was, indeed, the right venue for the 2012 bid. The idea was to run a lightweight event over the route with just a handful of elite competitors so proving the concept but reducing the impact on the roads to a minimum. And guess who stood up and said that it was a bad idea? Yes, you guessed it -- the then Chair of the BTA, Peter Coulson in a piece in the Times. This is what I had to say about it back then.
Of course, the times have changed since then. And so have the attitudes. Salford bid for, and lost, the 2010 World Championships but still seems committed to playing host to the World Cup event -- Manchester dropped its commitment last year. And, of course, London won the 2012 bid so the fact that we are going to have to stage an event of World Cup status on the Hyde Park venue is a given. The BTF&#039;s bullishness is understandable, Corus are sponsoring the Elite race series and the Hyde Park race is likely to attract most of the attention -- and, because it&#039;s all going to be within the confines of the Park itself will not have a great deal of impact on the infrastructure. However, I&#039;d be prepared to bet that we won&#039;t see a World Cup there until 2010 or, possibly, 2011.
Why, because London simply can&#039;t afford it. Shutting down bits of the East End and Docklands, the Embankment and the Mall for the Marathon is an operation that has taken 20 years to perfect and it&#039;s done in the name of charity with 46,500 starters which makes it financially viable. A World Cup triathlon with around 100 competitors closing down Park Lane, Hyde Park Corner, Constitution Hill and roads down to Parliament Square and back (assuming they are working on the obvious requirement to get some culture in there for TV) will cost someone not much less than &amp;pound;1million. A year. Every year. Until 2012?]]></description></item><item><title><![CDATA[Catch that wave]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_1689.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[Triathlon has often been described as a &amp;quot;lifestyle&amp;quot; sport -- although
I&#039;m never entirely sure what that means! What I do know is that the term also
gets applied to product advertising, this or that item of current &amp;quot;must
have&amp;quot; status gets described as being a &amp;quot;lifestyle statement&amp;quot; or having &amp;quot;lifestyle values&amp;quot;. The holy grail for triathlon has always been to get the two parties together because, surely, if triathlon is a lifestyle sport then it ought to be attracting sponsorship from the people who make lifestyle products. And, in this regard, last week&#039;s announcement by Human Race that Nokia were to become the title sponsor for the Royal Windsor Triathlon and to be an event partner for all the other races that John Lunt and his crew put on was definitely a welcome indicator that things might be changing.

Back in the days of Scott DH bars and wild fluorescent Tinley kit the sport
did, indeed have some lifestyle sponsorship. There was a very famous race series
sponsored by Bud Lite in the States and the earnings for the top pros were pretty
good. Looking back in the dusty archives for races over here we find references
to BUPA (the Bath triathlons), Kelloggs (the ITU World Championships in Manchester),
Gatorade (Royal Windsor Triathlon) and others who represented the world outside
the sport. So, where did they all go? And why? 

In my opinion there are two reasons why they left; the huge influx of Lottery
money and the failure of the sport to grow post Olympics. Once Lottery funding
in the form of the World Class Performance Plan for the elite athletes kicked
in the sport in this country changed into a two-tier system -- those who were
funded and those who weren&#039;t. And, in the early days of the WCPP that meant that
a lot of athletes were effectively getting more money from the system as handouts
than they would by winning races. We went into Sydney with high hopes of a medal
and came back with nothing -- yet the system simply re-focused on Manchester
and Athens and the money kept on flowing. The need to get commercial sponsorship
to fund the sport&#039;s development, which had existed pre-funding, effectively vanished
because Government and the Lottery were footing the bill and the commercial race
organisers were left to do what deals they could on a local level. Worse still
was the fact that the best athletes in the country were, generally, racing abroad
to get the ITU points needed to both keep their funding and keep GB in the top
line of Olympic slots (and so keep the funding coming in -- effectively a self
perpetuating system.)

Although the BTA did initiate a number of funded programmes for developing
the sport at grass roots level (Try a Tri) and introduced the Regional Development
Officers (RDOs) to help move things along, the focus was always on the big money
and the headline athletes. The membership levels of the BTA have (according
to sometimes questionable figures) approximately doubled in 18 years that I have
been participating, despite the numbers taking part in the sport itself increasing
far faster. And, as the governing body cannot show a dramatic growth due to its
efforts, and so convince commercial sponsors, the only people able to sell the
story to potential commercial partners were the organisers themselves.

The breakthrough here undoubtedly came with the London Triathlon managing
to attract major sponsorship from way outside the sport (Michelob, Volvo, etc)
to an event that was growing to a size where it was noticeable on the world scale.
Many people think of London as a relatively new event but there have been races
in Docklands for years. The transformation happened when the series started by
Michael Smithwick in 1997 was taken over by SBI, an events management company
better known for corporate golf events. Their experience in dealing with potential
sponsors and advertisers outside of the sport has led to an event which has more
participants each year that the national body has members and set the benchmark
for what can be achieved.

And, indeed, the tide is now turning the other way. The Lottery funding flood
has slowed, partly as a result of no medals from Athens (and only one out of
two Commonwealth Games), and the sport is now being driven from the ground up
with all the major races selling out months ahead. And it is increasingly obvious
to potential advertisers and sponsors that the sport has money to spend -- especially
on &amp;quot;lifestyle stuff&amp;quot; from iPods to GPS, mobile phones to laptops. Even more interesting is that many of these companies now have enough people within them who have taken part in the sport that they also have an internal momentum, it&#039;s so much easier to explain triathlon to someone who has at least done one than to someone who hasn&#039;t! I mean, honestly, would you sign a big cheque on the basis of having a bunch of people wearing skin tight lycra who run, bike and swim a bit wear
your logo?

Indeed, the whole problem of the sport not being based in an arena of some
kind makes it hard to focus on any potential sponsor message. There is no fixed
infrastructure and there&#039;s a limited number of times that a camera can pan through
the transition of the finish line so the message/logo has to go on the kit. Here
we are seeing brands like Asics, Adidas and Nike starting to re-invest with serious
athlete deals although, to be fair, they have always provided some degree of
support at the grass roots level through event sponsorship as well. The change,
however, is that they are now using the athletes to promote the brands as a &amp;quot;lifestyle&amp;quot; rather than to simply  remind people that they sell running shoes.And, talking briefly of television, it is also worth remembering that the BBC has stuck resolutely by the sport and kept the major events like London, the Nationals and Salford  in the frame while Channels 4 and 5 have contributed with ITU and WTC events plus domestic coverage as well. TV costs money, typically about &amp;pound;10k for an hour, and someone, somewhere has to be paying for that. 

At the other end of the spectrum too, the sport is changing. The ITU seems
to have finally sorted out a decade of poor or failed deals to market and promote
the sport and now has a global backer in the form of BG Group which is ploughing $20
million of funding in over the next nine years. Domestically too the news is
good with Corus now signed as a premier sponsor for British Triathlon in a &amp;pound;1
million two-year deal that will see a new children&#039;s series (Kids of Steel) and
a three race Elite series. Deals of this size from the commercial sector show
that there is a high level of confidence in the sport being able to deliver a
return which, in sponsors terms means medals at world level, and the string of
Golds at Lausanne must surely have been seen as an early bonus.

So, back to where I started and the Nokia announcement. Does this signal a
new beginning for the sport, at least in terms of the potential for outside sponsorship? Yes, it probably does and it will be interesting to see who follows suit. While the technology companies are an obvious match, the real sign of success would
be to see some big car or clothing company step up to the plate with a multi-year
deal for a race series. With the triathlon world already looking past Beijing
to London in 2012 it isn&#039;t too much of a stretch to see a multinational with a good British presence like, and I&#039;m just using them as an example here, Ford doing domestically what they have done in the states with the Ironman series.
With the next Olympic cycle starting from next year and the chance to have four
years exposure headed into London 2012 now is the time that I&#039;d expect organisers,
athlete managers and, perhaps, even the BTF doing some serious talking with the
lifestyle people. Miss out on this opportunity and it won&#039;t be coming around
again for a long, long while.]]></description></item><item><title><![CDATA[Welcome to my new home!]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_1533.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[What was I thinking, back in 1997, when I decided to set up a very small and very insignificant little website (we used to call them &amp;quot;vanity sites&amp;quot; back then) to act as a place where people could go to get results from races. The idea was based on a site in the States, long since defunct, and it was never really intended to be anything other than a bit of fun. In 1998 a news section was added, along with a few extra bits of information and the rest, as they say, is history. Features like an online forum, first with eGroups and then with Yahoo! led to some interesting times and the realisation that some people out there were (and, in some cases still are) only happy if they have an axe on the grindstone. Even more fascinating was discovering that many triathletes spend more hours a week logged on and chatting or debating online than they do training for the sport we all love. Sadly, despite having a very active past in the sport through the 1990s and a wife who seems to be constantly training for yet another Ironman, my days as a participant seem over -- I haven&#039;t raced for the past three years and any attempt at starting to train inevitably meets with recurring back trouble. Still, those who know me probably recognise me more from my role as a volunteer or official than they ever did as a threat in a race! So, what are we going to offer you in this new website that we couldn&#039;t in the old one? For starters, it&#039;s now my job rather than my hobby so, together with Richard Downey and Tim Weeks who have set the whole thing up on a business footing and Paul Shanley who is drumming up advertising deals, the team will be providing constant coverage of the sport -- hence the catchy name! There will be advertising, we have to get paid somehow, but that also means that we have been able to go out and bring in experts in the field who will provide an unrivalled level of commentary, features and tutorials enabling you to get the best out of yourself. You&#039;ll recognise many of the names on our features and columns, we think it&#039;s a great team and we hope you enjoy what they have written. Please consider what you see here today as the start of something much, much bigger -- we are only just getting going and there&#039;s going to be lots more coming over the next few weeks and months. If you have comments or feedback of any kind please let us know, this site is intended to be for you so we need to know that we are delivering what you want. Oh, and don&#039;t worry about us losing the ability to bite back when the establishment does something silly -- they&#039;ll still let me off the leash occasionally and that&#039;s what this column is for...]]></description></item><item><title><![CDATA[One week to go...]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_1271.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[In just one week&#039;s time it will be the BTA&#039;s AGM and, potentially, the end of the current organisational structure. The proposals that are up for the vote -- and remember, you have to be there to vote as there is no postal vote and no proxy -- will effectively disenfranchise the membership from any direct influence about the way that the sport is organised and controlled in future. The proposals are to replace the BTA with a new organisation called the BTF that will run the sport by devolving power down to three national bodies for England, Scotland and Wales. While much of the sentiment is good the devil is, as always, in the details and many of the issues that were raised at the EGM in Cambridge, when a previous version of the proposal was rejected, still seem to be unresolved.Our concerns were, and still are, that once this motion passes it will be impossible for the membership to undo its consequences -- there will never again be an occasion for a membership vote to accept or reject a motion put forward at national level. Members will be able to vote for a regional committee but will have no voice outside of their region and, as each English region has the same level of representation at the national level irrespective of how many members there are in the region, it would be perfectly possible for the two largest regions to be outvoted by the smaller ones. That&#039;s hardly democratic in anyone&#039;s language.UPDATE: Norman Brook, the BTA&#039;s CEO, was obviously checking on the Internet -- he responded that the above paragraph is inaccurate as there will be an AGM of Triathlon England at which members can vote. And, he&#039;s right... ...except that the members will not have elected anybody to the Council, that&#039;s done by the Regions, and the Council appoints (note, appoints...) the Triathlon England Board. So, just what power a membership vote would have at at AGM is a complete mystery to us and others. It looks like this is one of the fixes inserted as a result of the EGM comments - the fact that it is probably completely meaninless is something that the EB hopes we will fail to recognise. Oh, and it completely ignores the fact that the AGM motion is to create the British Triathlon Federation and not Triathon England. That will be done later and, to quote the BTA&#039;s own document, &quot;the Board shall cooperate with the current English Regional organisations for triathlon with a view to establishing a Triathlon England company... In other words, it might happen that we get the BTF but we don&#039;t get TE. Now that really would be disenfranchisement!When all is said and done next weekend there is one primary issue that will not have been addressed. The current national governing body is already unrepresentative of the sport -- by its own estimates it has perhaps 8,000 members and yet acknowledges that at least 5 times that number participate. Ergo, only 1 in 5 triathletes care enough about the BTA to even consider joining it -- a situation that the proposed new bodies do not even seem to have on their radar. The point? If so few triathletes care about what the BTA does now then what is the point in caring past next Sunday...]]></description></item><item><title><![CDATA[Leaving on a high...]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_1277.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[Well, if you&#039;re going to walk away from six years as the BTA&#039;s Performance Director then doing it the high point of your career is probably the best way to do it. The news on the BTA&#039;s website that Graeme May will leave at the end of the month sees the end of one of their more controversial eras with more than a few fumbled selections for major events marking the low points along the way. While he undoubtedly will get a lot of reflected credit for the performances of Don, Clarke, Brownlee et al at the World Championships it has never been clear to us exactly what the BTA needed from a Performance Director that it couldn&#039;t have got from the excellent team of coaches and support staff. Indeed, given the on-screen interviews at the Athens Olympics (Bert Appleton) and, most recently, Lausanne (Chris Jones) it often seemed that Maw was an invisible member of the team. No word yet from the BTA as to who will replace him, or even if the role will be continued.]]></description></item><item><title><![CDATA[The BTA AGM -- non-event of the year?]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_1283.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[The BTA&#039;s annual vote fest is nearly upon us and the information which arrived in the post today with TriNews is well worth a read. The annual elections, this year we would have voted for the Chair, Treasurer and two Executive Board slots were so compelling a prospect that there was no competition at all -- ergo who were nominated are elected by default! So, Jasmine Flatters retains the Chair, Stephen Collins is Treasurer, and Chris Kitchen and Richard Stannard get the Board seats. Exciting? You bet!!Those who know me will be well aware that I have what can be described as a cynical nature: one that comes from being frequently disappointed... The fact that there won&#039;t be any election frenzy this year (well, mild interest at best) probably plays right into the hands of the EB proposals for the re-structuring of the National Governing Bodies. Remember that their original proposals were outvoted at the EGM earlier this year -- where 75% was required to carry the motion. The revised, and hardly any less penetrable, versions are now up for an AGM vote where a straight majority will suffice. Unless we are much mistaken this is a deliberate tactic to slip the process through in the clear and certain knowledge that so few people will bother attending that the assembled HQ staff will carry the day. To be honest, I haven&#039;t had the time yet to read the new proposals very thoroughly and I suspect that 90% of the membership won&#039;t even bother at all -- which pretty much guarantees that next year will see those changes being implemented.As has been noted before on these pages, the average triathlete simply could not care less about the BTA -- all they want to do is to train and, most importantly, race. As long as organisers are prepared to work with the proposed new body/bodies and can deliver a range of events then the significant majority of triathletes won&#039;t even notice the change -- nor care. Remember, statistically more people do the London Triathlon on a Day Licence than there are BTA members in the whole country. If that&#039;s the level of representation our National Governing Body has from the sport then we would (and have) suggest that it needs fundamental root and branch reform which starts from adopting an all-inclusive approach so that anyone doing the sport can have a voice. From what we have read so far (and it doesn&#039;t seem that different from what was rejected at the EGM) this is definitely not a part of the proposals. Come the AGM, I guess we&#039;ll get what we deserve.]]></description></item><item><title><![CDATA[A year further on and what's to show?]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_1309.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[UPDATE: has anyone else spotted the deliberate mistake on the BTA page? Someone needs to be checking their dates!Glancing at the BTA website today we noted with horror that there was a posting about the 2006 AGM and a call for the election of officers and any resolutions of special business. What, already? Didn&#039;t we only just get through last year&#039;s and the resulting EGM... But, sure enough, the date is in the diary (Sunday 5th November) and it&#039;s going to be another interesting one. Interesting for four reasons. The (very) quiet and largely un-reported backroom discussions that have been going on since the Chief Executive&#039;s headlong dash into the brave new world of the One Stop Plan was pulled up short in Cambridge should be bearing fruit by then which means that this, once again, could be the last BTA AGM... If the Executive Board is going to put these new and, as yet, unseen proposals before the membership then will they be out in time for a meaningful November vote? Remember that for the original plans Norman and Jasmine did a country-wide tour explaining the proposals and their implications -- it would seem unlikely that will happen before the AGM. Which may mean that there will have to be another EGM in 2007... The post of Chair is up for election which means that Jasmine Flatters will have the difficult choice of deciding whether to campaign to be re-elected Chair and so face the possibility of then immediately making herself redundant! The two other Executive Board positions will also have a similar choice -- if the Executive Board is recommending these proposals and (big assumption, we know) they are seen to answer the criticisms which brought the last lot down to earth with a bump then who is going to bother putting themselves up for election? Let us be clear, all this is speculation -- nobody is talking to us about the proposals at any level. Given that we campaigned against the ones set before the EGM one could draw the conclusion that they don&#039;t want us to know about these in case we muddy the waters before the AGM. But that would probably be paranoia -- after all, the BTA is a model of open governance these days, or at least it would be it its website could actually deliver the Board minutes that it lists so we could find out what was going on...]]></description></item></channel></rss>