Episode 116: Inside the T100 Shake-Up with PTO CEO Sam Renouf

The T100 season is about to look very different. In this episode, Jenna-Caer (@jennacaer) and Josh (@joshmvernon), sit down with PTO CEO Sam Renouf to unpack the biggest changes coming to the T100 Triathlon World Tour and what they mean for pros, age-groupers, and the sport’s future.
Highlights

From contracts to prize money:
Sam explains why the PTO is shifting away from athlete contracts to a fully merit-based model and how that opens the door for new athletes through rankings and performance.

Nine-race global calendar:
The 2025 T100 season will feature nine events, alternating men’s and women’s races, with a grand final in Qatar. Sam shares why the PTO chose this structure and what it means for fairness, broadcast quality, and athlete recovery.

Why split the men and women’s races:
A shorter four-hour race window means better TV placement, improved storytelling, fewer road closures, and more spectator engagement — all designed to make triathlon easier to follow and more exciting to watch.

Olympic ambitions:
Long-term goal of seeing the 100 km distance become part of the Olympic Games, aligning the T100 with the broader world-sport model.

Investing in the future:
Sam breaks down the PTO’s new funding partners and how those investments will help grow triathlon globally — from elite racing to mass-participation events.

Data and storytelling:
Expect more live metrics, improved GPS accuracy, and enhanced on-screen analytics. Sam discusses why real-time data is the key to turning triathlon into a broadcast-ready product that rivals Formula One.

Age-group racing redefined:
The PTO wants to retire the term “age-grouper” altogether. Sam talks about elevating the amateur experience, long-term city partnerships, and what made Vancouver one of their most successful events yet.

Looking ahead:
Could a U.S. race be returning to the calendar? Sam leaves us with a hint that the largest triathlon market in the world might not be left out for long.

Listen to the full conversation for an inside look at how the PTO plans to grow triathlon from a niche endurance sport to a mainstream global product — and what it means for the next generation of athletes and fans.
🎧 Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.

Transcript

Another Triathlon Pod (00:02.073)
Welcome back to another Trathlon podcast. As mentioned, we're going to have Sam Renouf of the PTO. He's the CEO of the PTO, which does the T100. So if you don't know what all of those are so far, we're going to jump into everything going on with the pro Trathlon organization, as well as the T100 races with all of the change ups that have been going on. Sam has been kind enough to give us some time to give us the rundown of why they made some of the changes and what they're looking to do in the future. But first we'll welcome on to the show.

Sam, how are you doing today?

Sam (00:32.777)
Good, thank you. It's taken us a little while to get this one scheduled, so completely my fault. But happy to be chatting. For those of you who can see the video, you'll see I'm not quite soaking wet, but I was. Just finished a site visit here in London where we're working on our course for next year. Really getting into the details on, frankly, we're not happy with the course. Anyone who watched it would have seen it goes round and round about. It's pretty boring.

And so we're working on improving that, but in typical London fashion, it is raining like cats and dogs. And so I'm absolutely soaked, but just about dried off for our chat.

Another Triathlon Pod (01:05.893)
Fantastic. Well, you know, the timing actually worked out well with all these announcements of the changes with the T100. So it is perfect in our books. And then as always, joined by Josh, how are you doing this morning?

Sam (01:10.579)
Mm-hmm.

Josh (01:16.822)
I'm great. I'm excited to hear how Sam's got the plans going for next year and I'm really happy to have you on the board.

Another Triathlon Pod (01:23.899)
Well, we're going to dive right in because obviously the timing of this, like I said, worked perfectly because there have been some massive changes when it comes to the T100, especially on the professional triathlete side. So last year you had contracts for the athletes and you had a number of wild cards coming into these events. But instead of me giving an overview, I think I'll hand it over to you to kind of give us an outline of what's going to be changing next year with the pro athletes.

Sam (01:48.947)
Sure, and I'd hope they're not too big changes to be perfectly honest. We very much take the attitude here of a startup that tests and learn and iterate, listen to feedback and refine things each year. That's partly because of the background of how we got started with venture capital. So we have a philosophical approach that it's not gonna be perfect straight away. You need to come and change, test, learn, et cetera. And we've done a bunch of that the last three or four years. We're certainly still...

the youngest player in the market, even though we're five years in, and we think it's important to learn and listen to feedback. And so the latest iteration of our journey is to tweak the competition structure primarily. what if I, a couple of weeks ago that we announced all this, I have to think back to get it exactly the way that we announced it, that a nine event calendar next year, which is the first thing is to come out and commit, of which the three first events we have now made public, the rest of them are coming pretty soon.

We are very conscious that we need to get our calendar out early, both for pros, but also perhaps more importantly for age groupers because they need to be able to plan their travel and the rest. And actually even the word age group is something which we're not particularly keen on. We want like a cooler name or sex to sort of resonate with triathlons. So even when I say age group, I kind of went slightly because we think there's a better way to describe like the incredible athleticism of all triathletes. anyway, that was a tangent. We need to get the calendar out earlier. So the team are working hard at the moment.

when the full calendar is announced, which is, you know, we're weeks away, frankly, just a final few iterations with a couple of hosts that when we do it, we will probably, I say, because I don't want to commit to it because we might have something that changes this, but our intention is that we'll announce both 26 and 27 at the same time. And so we can weigh, weigh ahead and just show because in the majority of cases, we're in long term hosting agreements now. So we're able to do that, right? We want to give the assurance to.

Another Triathlon Pod (03:29.732)
that's cool.

Sam (03:39.335)
the community and that's both the pro community and the amateur community. You use amateur instead of age group. Some people don't like the word amateur either. So it's always good to pick the right words. Confidence in where we're going and the long-term sort of duration of what we're doing. So that was the first thing. Nine event calendar. Secondly, a movement away from athlete compensation, away from contracted athletes of having a limited amount of people that were committing to the tour and more making it more an open structure for various different reasons.

And then the more contentious piece was our competition structure, which is that we've moved to alternating male and female races until the grand final. And I'm sure we can unpack a lot of detail about why we did that in a minute.

Another Triathlon Pod (04:20.941)
Yeah, absolutely. So why don't we kind of break it down from the changeover from going from contracts to prize money instead? Did you want to speak a little bit to that kind of why that decision was made and what it's going to look like coming in the new year?

Sam (04:35.369)
Yeah, look, it's actually this was one of the ones that we spent quite a lot of time debating the pro and con of changing because in some cases it was working really well and we've got some athletes that are really committed and we're doing everything that sort of aligns with their contract commitments to us. And we're very conscious that if an athlete commits to us, like it's a real commitment, right? And so it should be two ways. So like to change that was not a small thing for us to go and do. Equally, I think anyone who follows anyone who's listening to this podcast who follows the sport would have known that we have had issues with

contracts being fulfilled throughout the year. And that's both from the terms of maybe people not wanting to live up to it or it's injuries or it's just things that are just outside of people's control. like, we certainly don't begrudge anyone having an injury later in the year and therefore not being able to commit to their contracts, but it was perhaps an unforeseen circumstance on our side. I mean, that implies that we don't think there's gonna be injuries, maybe more than we anticipated that it probably doesn't add up from an economic perspective in terms of what we pay for contracts versus what we're getting in return.

versus going to the more traditional way of compensating for prize money, which is what, frankly, almost everybody else does. And so that's what we've lent into. The other benefit is, and we're very conscious of this, and are very much of the ambition that we think this could happen one day, and I say that with parentheses, is World Triathlon have talked about how they'd love to see the T100 as a distance in the Olympic Games. And so that's something, obviously, be game changing for the Long Distance Triathlon if we could achieve that through the partnership with World Triathlon.

Having a closed league with contracted athletes doesn't really fit the Olympic model, if we call it what it is. so moving our pathway to be a bit more aligned to how not just the rest of triathlon is organized, but the rest of the Olympic sort of family was an important one to us because these decisions get made way, way out. We're obviously way past 28, 2032, 2036 is more the timeframe. So showing as an organization that we're aligning to how the IOC or the Olympic family operates, we thought was an important part too.

And then thirdly on the contract piece is just to making it more open, right? So if it's essentially meritocratic sport is like, if you're fast enough, you will get in and contracts prevent that narrative, right? Cause you're sort of committing to certain people. Whereas someone comes out of nowhere and does incredibly well through the year as has happened multiple times in the sport. You want to be able to let them let them in a race. And so those are sort of the benefits we see.

Josh (06:56.342)
And with those contracted athletes in the past iteration, there was a certain amount of contracts and athletes on the line and 20 athletes and 10 of them were under contract or at each race. And how is that going to change for the races going forward? sounds like now you've kind of got those host cities lined up for a couple of years. You're going to have some athletes that really know what they're going to be going for into the next couple of seasons. How is that lineup going to look?

when you start to announce the start lists and how is it going to look at each different city? And obviously we can get into the breakup of the male and female after that as well.

Sam (07:32.681)
Sure, so it's really simple. It's got to be rankings based and based on your performance, you're going to get offered an invite to race and you can either take it and take the slot or it'll roll down to the next person. We will start the year, I think it's probably too detailed for now, but there is a process for the highest ranked athletes to the end of this year, getting the first starts next year. We thought that was important as much as a loyalty thing. These are the athletes that are committed to us for the last two years. So let's give them the first step into the first events of the season.

But then as it rotates through the year, it's really going to work off of the PTO rankings to see how people perform. And if you were to look at the PTO rankings, you'd see many athletes that are right at the top there that have not done a PTO race at all or not done a T100 race. And to us, that shows the rankings model works. And those athletes, although they haven't done a T100 before, will now have the opportunity, if they want to, to come through and race. We won't lock them in to compete longer term, right? Because there's obviously open flexibility here. But we hope with the level of racing that we provide,

the level of support to the athletes when they come. So whether it's hotels, physio, the bike mechanics, all the kind of things that hopefully you'd see on social media. And then, you know, the compensation, because the prize money is very high versus other events. That's enough an incentive that if someone comes in, they want to continue to race. But we felt that it was the carrot rather than the stick. you used, know, carrots being a stick, sorry, contracts being a stick, you use that analogy.

Another Triathlon Pod (08:54.853)
Fair enough. And with the subtle runoff of the PTO rankings there, and there definitely there has been some criticism in the past that the T100 rankings are perhaps over weighted within that PTO ranking series, which is understandable with you being involved in both. But we see some of those high performers like Kona results obviously are getting some high rankings within your how you run the numbers there. Do you anticipate that changing at all with these new T100 races going forward? Are they going to be still

of ranked heavier or because of the change up of the contracts not being involved? Will it balance out a little bit more?

Sam (09:31.177)
So it's one of the things that hopefully we've always shown is that we listen and learn and we do change regularly. So we will take take the feedback of people and see how the results go through the obviously we're not going to change our rankings process midseason because that would be really unfair to the athletes. But it's a rate to learn and see how it applies. mean the PTO rankings as a sort of structure haven't been as important for the last 18 months because we sort of lent into the contract. Now that we're moving back away from them I think they will become more important or become more of a narrative of the sport. And for us they were always

Another Triathlon Pod (09:40.643)
Yes.

Sam (10:01.131)
a really important mechanism to drive up prize money overall, right? So not just from our prize money, but that we would essentially cause prize money inflation to come into the sport. And without singling out too many individual races, if you look at like Challenge Roth, increase their prize money.

because they wanted to be a higher level. I think it's diamond or gold, I forget the level that they were, but that was a great example of a very high profile race. But we also really regularly see it at the lower ranked. I think there's a bunch of races that were sort of 20 or $25,000 and they actually contacted us to confirm that if they increased it by five or 10,000, would they be a high level? And we're obviously thrilled when we hear that because that just means more money flowing into the pockets of the professionals, which is ultimately what we're set up to do.

Another Triathlon Pod (10:42.267)
Yeah, and that's fantastic to hear because that's a talking point that we like to use as well, just kind of looking at those rankings and having an overriding kind of ranking system so that we can say, hey, these athletes are performing at the top, not just they've done one big race, so they're going to be at the top for the whole year. Seeing some changes in dynamics and stuff is definitely exciting.

Sam (10:55.134)
Yes.

Sam (10:58.781)
Well, you're going back now to sort of the core principles of what the PTO was created to do, which is elevate the sport of professional triathlon, but also cut through some of the fragmentation that we see because frankly, until we came along, and I think we can claim this, you know, outside of Roth and Kona.

you really didn't see, at least in long distance triathlon, so let's focus the conversations on long distance, which is obviously our focus, but we're doing a little bit in short distances, as you would know. Outside of Kona and Roth, you never got many occasions where the best, in fact, there were no other occasions, frankly, right, like where you would get the very best racing and no sport can grow a fan base if you only see the very best racing once or twice a year. And so that was to us a really important thing to come and change was to create a level of racing where you're going to get regularly the best of the best.

may not be the total best of the best as much as a single championship, but consistently really strong fields are how you build fandom. And fandom is one of the things that drives all sports. And so we felt that was was missing a bunch. And then obviously the being able to create the media and the storytelling that goes goes behind it. So we think that's working really well. We're pretty excited with where the sport is. I hope you'd agree like independence of the PTO. So like park the T100 or anything like that. I think it's a pretty good time to be a pro triathlete. Now, it's amazing to see what

Ironman is doing with the pro series to have 17 races with, I think it's 17 now, higher prize money with Ironman committing to media and actually broadcasting all of those, whether it's streaming or linear, it doesn't matter, it's still content that's going out about pros. I mean, this is the light years ahead of five years ago when it was just Kona, right? Kona in a live stream, that's all you had. So all good things, we think.

Josh (12:37.632)
Can triathlon become a household sport? Is that something that you see ever happening or is it just how much more of the market share can it grab?

Sam (12:47.207)
We're very ambitious and we think it can. It's never gonna be, look, this is not gonna be NFL. It's not gonna be Premier League football or soccer, as I was about to say in my part of the world. But can it be significantly larger than it is? We definitely think so because the raw ingredients of triathlon, we break it down. Obviously, I know you know this because it's a triathlon podcast, but if you break down.

triathlon into swimming, cycling, running, 1.1 billion people regularly do those sports, right? It's more participation than anything else. It is infinitely bigger than soccer. But the sport hasn't really had a good product or promotional tool behind it until frankly, we came along and now Ironman stepping up too, which is again, as I said, is a really good thing. So yes, I suppose is the simple answer, Josh, is we think it can. We've got investors that are very supportive of that and are.

frankly giving us a bucket load of money to be able to go and try and make those changes and we're investing accordingly. So it won't happen overnight, but we see the potential and we're to work really hard to try and take it there.

Another Triathlon Pod (13:46.554)
Yeah, and you definitely seen the impact that you've had on the triathlon industry as you mentioned that Ironman Pro Series that there's no question that's a direct response to the T100 Series here. They had to have a competitive model because it was making so much noise within the industry and getting eyes on the sport, which is what honestly we all want at the end of the day to grow the sport and make it bigger.

But you mentioned a little bit about that investment and how you're using that to try to make it more of a household name. Did you want to give us a little bit more information of what that investment kind of looked like and what you're planning to do with it to accomplish that goal?

Sam (14:19.177)
Sure, mean, it's nothing too new. It's more just like more of the same. So we announced quite a large fundraise earlier this summer from a bunch of different institutional investors. And that's probably the important distinction. So our original investor, and it's still the largest, is Sir Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital. But he invested individually. So he's obviously a very, very wealthy man, multi, multi, multi-billionaire, not a triathlete. So this is not a passion play. It never was. It's not like he's wanting to hang around with Jan Frodeno or Gustav Iden or Ash or any of the other athletes.

But what he saw was typical, I mean, frankly, typical venture capital kind of lens on this is that there was a huge addressable market, which isn't the triathlon market, by the way, it's the sports market. So when we sort of look at what's the bit which we're trying to win share of, of grow the pie of Josh, as you said it beforehand.

huge, huge, huge tam in sport and a frankly, a sport that maybe hadn't innovated for a while and was lacking investments in focus. And so he came and backed it for that reason. It wasn't because it was a passion play and he believed that he could make a long term investment return from it. And some of the investments that those guys make are 10, 20, 30 years. It's like very, very long, long term. So that was Sir Michael and he, and he supported us all the way through the different fundraisings we've done, which is great. Really fantastic validation of the business model is when you're early in

investors continue to back it, right? Rather than saying, hey, we're out, someone else can sort of take the journey now. But one of the big changes this summer was that we also brought on a bunch of private equity firms. So more institutional money.

I'm not saying one is better than the other. They're just a different dynamic. And so with this latest round, particularly with some support from the Middle East, so Surge Sports Investments, which is out of Saudi Arabia, and they've invested for an almost different reason altogether, is obviously they're backing professional triathlon because they believe in the model we have. But the model is a byproduct of driving mass participation within their country. And so Saudi Arabia is doing an awful lot within sports at the moment. It's very, very high profile. But part of that is linked to them having one of the youngest populations in the

Sam (16:19.403)
world and a population that hasn't traditionally done sports because it just wasn't part of their culture. And so they've sort of said, we want to bring sport into KSA, into the kingdom. And triathlon is one of the best vehicles to do that because of, as I said, swimming, cycling, running, get people in doing those sports. And for those who haven't had the time to come to a T100 race, maybe you've just seen them on YouTube or through our broadcast partners, the majority of events we do include the component parts. So you're not just having a triathlon, you might have an Aquathon.

You might have a duathlon, relay, all different different parts, sometimes just a run. Excuse me. And to us, that's important because we want to provide a gateway for people that maybe a triathlon is too far to stretch, but they might do one discipline or they might have a friend like yourselves that's a triathlete that and then they get dragged along, but they only want to do one discipline. And our very basic thesis is that if you get someone along, they see how exciting the sport is, they get inspired. The chances are they'll take it up for the next time around or at one of our other events. And so.

That's really what we've been out building and doing. But look, long winding answer to your question of more very varied long term investment folks, sorry, long term investment in from people who believe in the ability to make this sport mainstream. And that's really what we're motoring away doing.

Josh (17:34.031)
Did the investors that you've been working with, the board and the executive team all kind of come together to make this decision to change the format next year? Was that a big driving factor of like, this is where the money's coming in. We'd really like to see it change and do something different because it's just not working with the contracts. And how did that decision finally come to be? And how much of a play did the investors have in that?

Sam (17:59.817)
So at the level of the contracts, I don't think the investors really mind too much. They want to know that the athletes are compensated, that they're motivated to perform well, and that we're going to get good value from the investment we're making in enterprise money or athlete compensation, but didn't really involve them to that level. What we did was spend quite a bunch of time talking about the male-female split and the competition structure, which we haven't touched on now, but happy to go into. And it's because if you unpack.

Let me take a step back. The headline of us doing male-female racing split always is going to get a negative reaction because people are like, well, that's change. That's not good. But once you dig into the logic of why, I would challenge any triathlete in the world not to think it's a good idea, which I'm very happy to do here. It's one of the reasons why I thought it was worth talking because in a headline and a press release, this doesn't come out. So.

Let me think. So there's five reasons. So five sort of core reasons about what we've done. Take a step back first just to explain in case anyone hasn't heard it. What we're doing is we're now operating, so we're to have nine races next year. There will be four races which will have a female pro product. There will be four races that will have a male pro product. And then the final, we bring everyone together and have two different races.

Now, the overarching logic of that is a really simple one, is that we have nine races in the calendar and what we were, feedback from the athletes is they didn't want to race nine times. And so that obviously creates a problem because the whole logic here is you're creating a season long narrative. As I said before, the sport was fragmented. You need to find a way that you're seeing the best race again and again and again. But if the athletes don't want to race, then that's fundamentally broken, right? Ultimately. And that is one of the things we felt this year. We were happy with, we actually liked the wild

card structure, I think it's got a little bit of negativity, but to us.

Sam (19:39.965)
We always wanted to not be a closed league. And so even though we have the contracts, if you have wild cards, you're allowing people to come in. So to me, I never find it a negative thing when I see occasionally social media posts. And by the way, we consume all of this. We follow all of the posts. like a sponge for feedback at the sort of cultural philosophical level within the group. So we read a lot of the feedback and take it on. Whether we'll respond to it is another thing. We've got pretty thick skin here. And I do delve in deep occasionally. If I want some cathartic weekend motivation, I will

go on to some of the forums where we get absolutely slammed because I like hearing it. I actually enjoy it. These people don't necessarily believe in us, but we believe in what we're doing and let's go and change the sport. But anyway, that's a side topic.

The fundamental reason to make the changes is obviously you need to have great racing all the way through the year. so unless the athletes want to race at every event, then it's not going to work. where this has been covered a few times is people have said, it's because the PTO has got commitments from host cities, so they've got to fulfill those contracts, but they can't get the athletes. that's actually not quite the right way to look at it. It's more that for triathlon to grow, Josh, to answer your question a bit earlier, for triathlon to go mainstream, you can't have three or four

big races. You've got to have regular competition of the best of the best, like basically every month, right? Everyone can have an off season, but you've got to be going bang, bang, bang, bang, getting in front of people again and again and again.

And so if that's, if volume is an important part, but the athletes aren't wanting to race, that creates a really difficult conundrum. And we spent about six months sort of thinking this through, eventually coming to the conclusion of like, there's actually a massive win-win here, which is that we can keep our season long narrative. We can keep the nine events that we want and we can allow the athletes to race less. So actually it becomes a win-win. That's the headline answer. But if you go a little bit deeper, I don't want to spend, well, I can spend as much time as you guys would like on this, but.

Another Triathlon Pod (21:32.411)
think that's my entire time.

Sam (21:34.181)
So, shorter TV broadcast, better placement on TV.

Better gender equality in the storytelling itself, because you're not jumping in between the two different things. That's number three. A better spectator experience on site, because you're now talking about a four hour race to go and watch, not a seven hour race. And perhaps most importantly, from an operational perspective, less road closures for the cities that we're asking for. those are like the five reasons which even beyond athlete choice are really important. And I'm happy to unpack any of those and go into greater detail, but it just shows there's a lot of nuance that goes into it. To us, take it a step back and you say, what was the PTO

created to do, was to make long distance, elevate long distance triathlon, make it a more exciting product. And our original thing in creating the 100k was to say, Ironman, with the greatest respect to it, is too difficult to make a nine hour broadcast compelling for mainstream media, therefore we should have the 100k.

But then if you end up having 200Ks back to back, or it's men and women staggered, you end up with a six or seven hour broadcast, you're stuck in the problem Ironman has, which is it's too long to make a decent product. So having a four hour broad window, whether it's for broadcast or spectators on site, like we think it's the right product ultimately to drive the sport forward.

Another Triathlon Pod (22:45.561)
that with this fewer races, is there going to be an overreaching series bonus for this with having four races and the final? Is there an overreaching bonus and how many races do they have to do to be a part of that?

Sam (22:46.761)
you

Sam (22:59.943)
Yes, I thought that would have been announced, maybe we're waiting for Qatar to announce that. But yes, you're right in everything you just said. So there is very much still a series bonus at the end because we want to incentivize people to come back, not just do individual races. So the race to Qatar rankings will be who gets crowned the world champion. So it's both from a status perspective that this is an officially sanctioned world championship.

Another Triathlon Pod (23:13.039)
Yeah.

Sam (23:23.003)
and then the financial incentive around it. What we've decided to do, again, maybe I'm leaking this on the podcast if it hasn't come out yet, is that although you could race four times plus the final, we're only gonna have three plus the final count. And the logic for that is that everyone can have a bad day or a mechanical, like this is a difficult sport, and so we don't want someone to lose the season in race two and then not be incentivized to go through. So that sort of allows for that.

Josh (23:50.979)
Does the schedule that's about to be announced in the next couple of weeks as you announced the cities, can we expect that to be kind of a staggered approach where it's going to go male, female, male, female, or there like be back to back male races or back to back female races?

Sam (24:06.425)
I'd love it to be from the simplicity of male, female, male, female, but the structure and look, it's just from like simplicity cells. And one of our jobs, we really do feel that it's like we're selling triathlon to the world. And so making the product simple, easy to understand, et cetera, et cetera, is why T100 as a name and a brand we think works. It's really obvious what it is. The reality though, the counter to that. And originally we thought we would do that Josh, right? It was like, okay, male, female, male, female, finish at the end. But then of course you've got races all around the world.

Josh (24:09.368)
Hahaha.

Sam (24:33.481)
in different climates, topographies and all the rest. And so you might end up with a situation that say the women are all traveling US, Asia, and it's unfair, and then all the men are in Europe. And so what it will end up is basically we will take topography. like, what's the kind of, how hard are the races? Not hard, that's not the right way saying it. Like, is it hilly, is it flat? Temperature, and then distance to travel, and then factor those in and try and make it as equal as possible between male and female racing, and then they all come together at the end.

Hopefully that doesn't mean we have female, female, female, then a big gap, but the calendar is, we're working through it at the moment. There's a reason we haven't announced it yet.

Another Triathlon Pod (25:13.019)
That's fantastic. And obviously, like we've mentioned Ironman a couple of times in here and races like Challenge Roth, is there any kind of consideration around that race schedule as well? They have some of the same situation where there's male and female races or you just completely independently. This is what works best for T100. So we'll do that. And then the athletes kind of make their decision either way.

Sam (25:33.469)
Lesser and maybe I'm not quite understanding your question. So like we made the decision on the sort of four hour race product because we think we really very passionately believe that like this is the best product that the sport can have to grow. Factoring in calendar if that's more what you mean, we absolutely think that 100 % like you should see the

Excel files we have of all the different races and all the different locations and where are we slotting in? People give maybe criticism to the organizers in the sport that they don't care about that and they just do it whenever they work. I can tell you, I won't be unfair enough to them to give you this specific example, but I was on a call recently with World Triathlon working through a calendar consideration when there's a weekend that will work very, very well commercially for lots of parties and they put their hands up saying, no, it's just not going to work for the athletes. There's too much travel between here and there. Guys go back to the drawing board.

So we absolutely do factor that in. And what I'm working towards, I don't know whether we'll ever get it, is you allow sort of windows of opportunity to say, you can do the T100, and then here's your block where you could go and do an Ironman to qualify for Kona, and then do Kona, or et cetera, et cetera. So we absolutely factor that into how we're structuring the calendar.

Josh (26:40.802)
Does the, and you mentioned the word commercial, does the commercial piece of this play into your decisions on a pretty high level? I think one of the things we hear with the split of the males and the females with Kona was the brands and the commercial partnerships and how much that was impacted by that and the amount of brands that went to Kona when it was just female and when it was together, let's bring them together. Has that been part of the discussions in splitting?

the male and the female races as well.

Sam (27:12.861)
Well, I suppose if anything, it's the opposite, right? So we're essentially doing what will make it commercially worse based on the logic of it being bad for Ironman. But we believe that the overall product will be better. And so we might hurt ourselves commercially with sponsors in the short term. And it's more endemic sponsors, to be fair. things like Expo, things like that, we would totally understand. They may not want to fly to lots of different races.

but our focus is more on creating really great media and really great storytelling because that's what we'll bring non-endemic sponsors in. to us, the whole success of the sport will be based on, and I should explain, when I mean endemic, I mean bike sponsors, nutrition, all the rest, right? Yeah, exactly, triathlon brands and sort of adjacent triathlon brands versus financial services, airlines, auto. So you go and see an NFL broadcast or go on the NFL's website. Like it's not all people who make the pigskin.

Josh (27:48.942)
triathlon brands.

Sam (28:01.969)
like footballs, It's, it's, Geico insurance and all those kinds of groups. And that's what the PTO, not just the PTO, that's what triathlon needs to attract. It's very, very little at the moment in the space. but there is an awful lot of potential for it. So I'll give you a number. $2.2 billion is spent in non-endemic sponsorship, just in golf.

And golf has a very, very similar, obviously demographic to what we have as a sport. It's just a lot more mature from a commercial product, right? There's the PGA has been going for 40 years and really, really powerful commercially. And so they're attracting a bunch of sponsorship, but to us, that's more of our focus. It's not to say that endemics aren't really important because they're sort of your community and that they're generally quite additive. So I'll be a little bit negative now, but I'm talking on a triathlon podcast. I'm not too worried about the negativity here is arguably an insurance brand or a banking brand.

auto, probably less so, they don't necessarily add to the event, right? Because they're just a brand on the door, whereas a triathlon manufacturer, a bike brand, nutrition recovery, those are all additive to the experience. And so it's just a very different lens to look through. They're all important, but for different reasons.

Another Triathlon Pod (29:11.291)
Yeah, and one other aspect that's been talked a lot about with the T100 race as well is the number of participants for professional athletes. So having that 20 starter list. Is there any thoughts about expanding that in the future? What's been the decision behind that to cap it at 20 athletes?

Sam (29:28.465)
Yeah, so that's something I would personally like to see grow over time. It's really around balancing a few different things. So the quality of the field with the core structures that we have. So again, another place that we're different that people may not realize unless they've come to an event and seen it is that, let me try and use an example of an event we're doing recently.

I think in Wollongong we did this. think if you were to find out, Wollongong wasn't a good example, or in London. As a spectator, you would see the pros 15 to 17 times in the three hours of racing. So you could stand in one spot or move slightly depending on the course structure, and you would see again and again and again. In contrast to your average professional challenge or Ironman race, that's probably three times, right? So it's out of the swim, they go off on the bike, maybe four times if we're fair, right? Out on the bike, back on the bike, and see them once or twice on the run.

We have criterion lap style courses because we think it's important to get a great spectator experience. That equally makes having bigger fields a lot harder and so considerations around that, around lapped athletes and all of those kind of things, time on the roads. So those, at the moment 20 is the number we're going with, but I could definitely see it growing with time. We're just sort of gonna test it as we go.

Josh (30:42.198)
And when you talk about growing that, is there, I think you are growing it. So that's already good to see, even if the start list doesn't change by opening this up to the males and females, you are without the contract structure. You're now essentially opening up who can participate in the start list are still going to be strong. I think it's going to help you attract some of the athletes that you didn't get this year.

Sam (30:53.321)
Mm-hmm.

Sam (31:07.251)
Yep.

Josh (31:07.298)
because of contract reasons or not, whether they were eligible for wild card or not. Right. so I think that's a, that's a good change that you guys are making. Are there anything that you still consider concerning for you going into these next couple of seasons with this change? Something that like you wish had gotten pushed through, but you, you, you didn't went out necessarily in the battlegrounds in the boardroom.

Sam (31:30.281)
that's a great question. I don't think so. Look, I think I'd probably go back to like, we need to see whether this will work. Like we have very strong conviction that this is the right product, but it may not be. And then we will learn and we'll adapt accordingly. the basics, I rushed through those reasons pretty quickly, but like having a better TV broadcast obviously is gonna make the sport better.

having better placement, I glossed over that quite fast, but what I meant by that is if we're asking for less time of our broadcast partners, we're gonna get better windows of when they will promote the sport. So if we come to, and we have this at the moment, where this year we had a bunch of scenarios where the broadcast partners that are committed to us were like, look, your broadcast is seven and a half hours long, because you're doing men and women back to back with a bit of a stagger, they're like, we're just not gonna give you the exposure.

And so suddenly that means you lose the entire exposure within a country like New Zealand or Australia because of that particular broadcaster. Whereas we're now going back saying, we want four hours. It's just a much, much easier number to sell. So that was the second reason. Spectator experience, we talked about it. And then road closures. So we think it's the right answer. But I guess let's see. And you can trust that we will learn and adapt as we have done for the last few years when we've taken on feedback and then applied it.

Another Triathlon Pod (32:44.377)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's talk a little bit more about the age group or side or whatever that we'll end up giving them when you guys go becoming cooler and more fun. But it's so personally, I was an ambassador for the Vancouver race this year, and it's always very cool to go out there and actually see these races go down. With the amateur athletes, I think a lot of

Sam (32:48.221)
Yeah.

Another Triathlon Pod (33:05.499)
There's been a lot of uncertainty at times with some of the race locations and if they're going to move forward. So it's really great to hear that you're going to have that to your calendar. That's so, people can actually set their travel, get ready to race. If there's one thing you could say really sets you apart and why T100 is such a good experience for those amateur athletes, what would you say the big draw is?

Sam (33:26.185)
Oh, was one. That's so hard to answer. I'll give you a few. And look, just to unpack slightly, I think it's very regional, the feedback about the changes. So we had a really tough time in France.

And so we do not have a good reputation in France with the French age group community because we changed the date significantly. then, so that was the first thing. We announced the date. We then had to change it for some reasons, which I won't get into. And then even worse, and this is the like genuinely gives us pain, right? Like you've got a team here that work incredibly hard.

Another Triathlon Pod (33:48.313)
you

Sam (33:57.937)
long hours, very passionate about making the sport better. And so when things don't go our way, we very much take it on our shoulder or on the chin, whatever phrase you want to use. We had to change the course at short notice for the age group community, sorry, for the French age group race. And that just took away trust with that community. And we get it, right? Like we respond exactly the same way as consumers. Our choice was, do we cancel it outright? And then you've kind of scorched earth it, or do you try and come up with something? so in, Marcus, in answer to your question, in isolated markets,

I think we have damaged the relationship with the age group community. In others, I think it's really, really strong. So if you take Vancouver as an example, so we use something called an MPS score. So Net Promoter without sounding too like marketing focused. It's a very standardized marketing method of like basically will someone say whether they want to promote something and recommend to their friends. And our MPS score in Vancouver was 77, which is really, really high. So anyone who's listening has sort of heard something. If you can get sort of an average 40 to 50, you're doing really well as a business.

So for us to get 77 in fact without making my COO embarrassed in his 40 years of delivering events I think this is the highest he's ever had and so to us it showed that it really did resonate in Vancouver and that's a combination of I think good calendar good timing great course Really good backdrop as you would have seen we benefited from great weather

And we had a very supportive city relationship that allowed us to do the things we wanted to in terms of road closures and permitting and things like that, all rounded off with, and this is my number one, but I'm doing it last, exciting and compelling pro racing. And so to us, that's sort of the overall driver is like, you're choosing a T100 race versus anything else, you should know that you're coming to something that is championship level. And so if I use a different sport comparison, it is a different experience to go to Wimbledon to watch tennis than it is to a regional tennis tournament.

both tennis, but Wimbledon is just right up here, right like that. So it's weird if people can hear on audio, right? It's at the top. And that's what we aspire all of the T100 events to be compared to say a normal average triathlon that might be one of.

Sam (36:05.193)
100 Ironmans or something like that. And look, to Ironman's credit, I'm not criticizing them there. They're doing the same thing with their pro series, right? So they're doing basically the T100 strategy. They're saying, think pros are additive to the experience. Therefore, we are elevating it in 17 locations because it'll drive more age group participation and make something better. it all sort of comes in. There isn't one single answer. It's a lot of these different parts that come together to hopefully make an incredible experience.

for amateurs or age groupers. In fact, if I can put it out in it, you guys do polls like we would love to hear people's feedback on what's the right name for this. You know, and it's it's it's our Samwell triathlon. We talked to them about it. I think they agree to that that age group maybe doesn't sell the sport the way it could. So that would be a great outcome of this podcast that we can come up with a with a better better name.

Another Triathlon Pod (36:29.519)
Mm-hmm.

Another Triathlon Pod (36:35.077)
Okay, we'll get some suggestions.

Another Triathlon Pod (36:46.383)
Mm-hmm.

Another Triathlon Pod (36:50.785)
Yeah. And honestly, like being on site in Vancouver, was an incredible setup and just the energy that was over there. was really something special having the backdrop and just having an elevated race. I know sometimes there's comparisons you want to race or want to have these races feel like a world championship event. And T100 has definitely put the pieces in place to make it feel like that. If I could offer one suggestion now that I've got a direct line for the moment is it would be awesome to have the

Sam (37:14.152)
Yeah, please.

Another Triathlon Pod (37:18.551)
amateur race first and then the pro race so that we can watch the pro race going on. That, my one thing was I couldn't watch much of the pro race because I was doing all the packet pickup and running around and pre-race day stuff. That would be a lot of fun to put the feet up with a beer and watch the pro race go down the next day.

Sam (37:28.457)
okay, yes.

Yeah. But so that's interesting you say that because it's sort of a trade off. do you, so would you rather as an athlete, would you rather do your race first as in like, so between the Saturday, Sunday as an example, would you prefer that we had all of the age group racing on a Saturday, you've got it done, you can then chill out and be relaxed on Sunday? Or would it the other way around and say that

We do the pro racing first because that sort of gets done. You're resting, watching, and then you race the next day and you're inspired by the performances the previous day. It's very personal, like, which one do you think?

Another Triathlon Pod (38:04.859)
Definitely. I much prefer racing on the Saturday because it was, I'm a super fan of the sport. Obviously I've got a podcast about it, but I couldn't follow, but I couldn't follow much of the pro race because I was at the expo doing the packet pickup, doing all the check my bike and everything during the same time that the pro race was going on. So was like, it was good to have more people in bodies around there, I think during that time, but it made it harder as a fan of the sport to actually watch the pro race go down. Cause it kind of all the times overlap. So that's my preference. don't know about you, Josh, what do you.

Josh (38:11.35)
He's chasing PRs.

Sam (38:25.511)
Yes.

Sam (38:30.44)
Yes.

Another Triathlon Pod (38:34.437)
think would be the preferred way.

Josh (38:36.278)
No, I think it's certainly one of those ones in Sam alluded to. I think it's a personal thing. you're going to have some age groupers that are going be like, no, let's let's let them race. And then I'll go do my thing the next day and have that inspiration to go do it. Then you got the elite level athlete, which I think would tend to take genocide and be like, I want my feet up. I want to be in my hotel room. I don't want to be putting any extra time in when I'm trying to qualify for Qatar or.

There's those aspirations. And I think there's a good split, obviously, with the athletes that we're attracting. There's so many first timers. There's so many elite athletes that are doing this as a first time. So I do get what Jenna's saying. I do get the other side as well. So it is a tough balance to follow. think maybe almost something where you do it one way in one city and the other in another. I don't know. It's a good question for sure. I think I wanted to know who brought, who held off the Orcas until the end of the...

Sam (39:33.673)
I know, yeah, my goodness. It was incredible. And actually we laughed about that because the city, we were with some city officials just a few days beforehand and they told us that every so often this happens and it's really, really rare. And then three days later we're like, my goodness, it's come in the middle of the broadcast. So yeah, Vancouver was an incredible host and we're very happy to be returning.

Josh (39:35.81)
Yeah.

Josh (39:54.671)
That was really nice to hear that you guys are returning there. Um, I would say going forward, what are, um, some of the challenges you're hearing from like the pros and not just the travel is how much is their scheduling really impacting what you guys are doing going forward and how much of their feedback did, did weigh into this decision to split it up and change it. Cause I think a lot of the scheduling for the pros too, and especially in the T 100 we've seen

there's been a lot of males and females traveling together, whether they're a couple, whether they're married. It does seem like that's going to be impactful for you. mean, has that been a discussion that you've had internally?

Sam (40:36.137)
So I think that's sort of an easy, easy, that's not what I'm putting it, like that's quite a high profile, like there's a few people that won't be able to do it, but actually once you look at the numbers, it isn't too many. I think the important bit where we think we probably surprise people in the way we've listened is the consistent feedback has been.

Why can't you just do four big races? Like do four big races and bring everyone together. And our answer, as you've heard, is well, because you need more to be able to grow the sport. However, what we've now done is say, okay, here you go. Here's four big races. It just happens to be that there's four big races for men and four big races for women and then a final. So we hope and we really believe that this is the best of both worlds. And I guess time will tell.

Josh (41:13.1)
And it really comes down to the broadcast, right? Like those, those, those broadcast rights that broadcast time.

Sam (41:18.555)
It's broadcast, but I don't want to overplay that too much. It's the product, right? So, and the broadcast is just one way to consume it. Like we want it to be a great spectator experience. I'll use an example, which I won't say what the lady's called, but we had a, she, in fact, she will hear this probably and know that I'm talking about her, but this is a decision-maker within a city that we've just extended a long-term partnership with. not a triathlete. She came to one of our races and brought her daughter along. And her daughter had never seen triathlon before. You could see.

that two or three hours in super excited like this is great like four hours still quite excited once it got to five or six I could see in the VIP that the daughter was really getting quite bored and you can see the agitation wants to leave and to me that's the perfect personification of why you need to change it right so that needs to be an engaging experience if it isn't

then it's not going to grow, right? It's not, or it just stays as the level of the sport where it was beforehand, but we believe obviously in the potential to take it far further along. But a four hour window, therefore, with a spectator experience, like if your experience at London or Vancouver or any other event is four hours long, you've seen the pros 16, 17, 18 times during that period. There's a bunch of festival expo-y things that make it engaging altogether. Like that's a great afternoon out for families.

for friends, families, whatever. So it's not all about the broadcast. I would sort of take it back and say it's all about the product. And that's what we're very focused on is making a great product for the sport because that's how we'll grow it.

Josh (42:43.79)
No, and I think that's a great way to spin it. And really, I think that's a huge way for the sport to grow is that it is a product, a consumable product. I had a similar experience when I was in Chicago getting ready for my race the night before I was having my big pasta car dinner. And I was with a family of friends and I'm tracking Jenna in Kona. And at the same time, we had the blow up on the Queen K.

And I'm with two younger girls and my friend and their, and her kids, and we're in the car ride on the way back to my hotel as this is going on and I'm cheering and hooting and hollering. And I had picked Solvig to win the whole thing. So I was getting pretty, pretty, pretty excited. And, the girls in the back all of a sudden went from listening to their dad, listening to the Cubs game and in a baseball playoff game or the big game to really intently following my

Sam (43:27.525)
I know, well done.

Josh (43:42.017)
Android phone and the screen that I had on the live stream. And that little half hour window ended up becoming an hour and they wanted to watch the entire rest of the race, but it was a small window. And I think with that generation too, we're going to need smaller and smaller, exciting, impactful pieces of this sport. And I think condensing it is probably a really smart way to go.

Sam (43:49.609)
See you.

Sam (44:02.759)
And it's, look, the one, let's go off on a tangent, don't wanna be too long for you, but like just to unpack the comment around about kids, like there's a lot of thing about like short-term attention span, but it's not really about the length, it's about just making sure it's engaging, right? So if you look at, and I know this is obvious, right? But people just naturally go to, and this is a problem that sports industry has done, is they think that attention spans are shorter, therefore the product should be shorter, but actually that's not the answer at all, the product just needs to be engaging.

If it's good, I mean, look at the amount of people who watch Netflix and they'll watch nine episodes in a row. That just shows that it's not about the length. It's about, it a good show? And they get pulled in. And for us, we didn't think that the structure we had before was a good enough engaging show. Whereas with we...

condense it down to four hours, but do all the other things I mentioned. So have a great spectator experience if you're on site. Have the festivalization, it's a really strange word, but you know what I mean? Like you're turning up to something, it's not just watching the pros, it's the expo, there's entertainment, all those kind of things. Or if it's on the broadcast, it's having...

the exciting racing supported by data, supported by interesting things that you can understand contextually what the athletes would do. And this is probably, we haven't touched on broadcast too much, but one of the things whenever I'm talking to anyone who's not from the sport, from a media perspective, and I describe where triathlon was, where triathlon is and where we're going, I always compare it to say a sport like NASCAR, considering North American audience or Formula One, and say like watch NASCAR or Formula One without any data or results or splits.

And that is way worse than watching a boring triathlon. Those cars, right? You know, I did what's going on. It's just three hours, right? But if you know what's happening, then it's some of the most engaging content in sports and triathlon without real time splits and data is like watching paint dry. And that's not a criticism of triathlon. Like all sports are like that. If you don't know what's going on, but

Another Triathlon Pod (45:32.794)
I'm going to it around.

Josh (45:35.062)
Yeah, what does that mean?

Sam (45:50.631)
If you can get the technology, can get the storytelling. Storytelling comes from the technology because you know how people are doing. Then there's so much more potential because one of the great strengths of triathlon is that if you do switch the TV on and you see triathletes racing, whether it's on the Queen K or anywhere else,

we can all relate to it because it's swimming, cycling, running, right? It's easy to relate to. Whereas you switch on cricket or NFL or F1, sure, everyone drives a car, but it's not as relatable. And so that's one of the great advantages we see, but the product needs to be engaging without sounding too repetitive. Like that's what we got to go do.

Another Triathlon Pod (46:22.587)
Yeah, absolutely. And like you mentioned, the data is a big part of that. And we've had several conversations with like the race ranger team and development they're doing. And it sounds like there's going to be more focus and continuing to focus on some of the data and giving us those updated splits on screen, giving us those speeds. One thing I really liked for a while, you had those segments sourcing who's going fastest over that segment. So we compare athletes all the way across the field instead of just seeing one person upfront.

Is there anything new you're planning to bring in from the data on screen side of things or just continuing to improve it? What's kind of the plan moving forward there?

Sam (46:56.701)
Yeah, there's a lot there actually. So we are now a investor in a small company called DataWorks that we're working on that is like literally creating this from scratch. again, take a step back to where we were a few years ago, none of this really existed, right? was just...

Another Triathlon Pod (46:58.883)
Excellent.

Sam (47:14.063)
not to, I've been very nice about all the other triathlon organizers because we are very nice about them. We believe they're all doing an amazing job for us, but the broadcasts were terrible right there. And I would argue that most of them still are terrible because if you just don't know what's going on for, if you're watching swimmers for 45 minutes to an hour in a long distance race, I'll be polite with my wording. And you don't know how that, where they're going. Like that's just not engaging content. Right. And so it's gotta be either a way to get stroke rates or heart rate or something to make engaging the splits.

Another Triathlon Pod (47:31.867)
good.

Sam (47:43.957)
between them or have like we do, we, frankly, we cheat on this, right? So we use Aussie exits, which means you get out of the water and go back in. And we use them a lot because it just makes it more interesting. Otherwise the, the section of a race is just too hard to consume.

Another Triathlon Pod (47:56.335)
Yeah.

Another Triathlon Pod (47:59.972)
No, absolutely. That's fantastic to hear.

Josh (48:03.008)
And with the, the, one of the things you hear is the struggle with like the GPS tracking and things like that. I think having that, and you talk about this in formula one and others, you know that what you're looking at on the screen is the actual order of one through 10 or one through 20. And you can see the movement of 20 up to 15. And, and those, those things happen in triathlons. Like, are they really in fifth? Are they really in third? And.

Sam (48:30.887)
Mm-hmm.

Josh (48:32.746)
It just, how close are we to making that viable?

Sam (48:36.819)
So think I would answer you from sort of what we're doing versus the sport in general. The sport in general, it's exactly what you said, right? Because everyone knows that the time on the board is gonna change when they get across the next timing split and...

Look, I'll be a little unfair to our partners World Triathlon here because I'd use this as good example. I actually took Sir Michael Moritz to, well, I was given tickets by World Triathlon, I should say, to the triathlon in Paris and was able to take Sir Michael, who's obviously our biggest investor and supporter, along with a few other people to watch it. And it was an incredible race to watch. It was an amazing experience. Weather wasn't quite as good as it could have been, but it's still incredible racing. we saw the time splits up on the screen. And of course, they're using old fashioned RFID technology because that's

the way the sport runs, not a criticism of them, it's just how things are. And I remember him saying to me, well, look, so who's in front? I'm like, well, I'm not sure yet. The results are up there, but it'll update in about 10 minutes. And it's just crazy, right? In this day and age that that's how those things are done. We are using a bunch of different things, GPS being one of them, increased level of timing, Matt, some different technology that's come out to get it far better. So it's almost getting to the point now, I'm happy to say that the results, the splits are coming in almost quicker than our commentators can update against them. And therefore,

It is real time, right, that it's there. But there's still a ton of stuff that we want to do. I think that it's important for the sport to remember that certainly for us, we're three or four years into this. You've compared a Formula One, you've got 65 years of broadcast history and innovation in a sport that makes hundreds of millions of dollars in TV. And so we get hold to a very high standard and we're very happy that that's the case. We think that it should be that. Genuinely, our competitor in the market is not.

Ironman, it's not super dry. Our competitor is the NFL and Formula One because this is all about what you spend your disposable time on. And if we want someone to engage with triathlon, it's competing with all the other things they could do with their time. So the bar should be really high, but it's one of the reasons why it's hard to catch up when, sorry, there's a long way to go when you're still a relatively young sport for doing this, but the progress has been good and I think it's exciting to see where it'll go.

Another Triathlon Pod (50:40.411)
Yeah. And one other thing I have to give team 100 and PTO credit for is a lot of the social media engagement and some of these behind the scenes videos of race week. It's definitely one of those avenues that can really be used to reach a younger audience and reach people who haven't heard about Trath on before. So it's been so good to see the investment in time and money, just kind of putting some of those things together. Do you see that being any more challenging or any shift in that as you move away from contracts where athletes are kind of contracted to put in that time, or are you finding that

the athletes are happy to do things like that. The behind the scenes are pre-race information because it helps elevate their brand at the same time too.

Sam (51:16.873)
Yeah, you summed it up so well. think every professional athlete knows that they are a content creator. are there, you know, unfortunately, unfortunately, like I'm not necessarily a

fan that athletes feel they have to make the content themselves because like my view is like maybe quite traditional like I want them to be the best athletes they can be and then the sport should allow them to create content and the rest but there's no question with the way social media has changed that everyone is a content creator and so encouraging and helping that and doing behind the scenes yeah I don't really see it being an issue with the the switch in structure if anything it'll allow us to do more we'll have a bit more flexibility in how we're doing things and hopefully continue to tell the incredible stories because

That's the other bit that gets us excited about the sport is when people realize right quite the level of athleticism and what people go through from a training perspective and the sacrifices and all the rest like there are multiple Hollywood films here that are ready to be written and made and I'm not kidding right like this is all part of the long-term vision like we actually had a meeting recently with a producer that was pitching us on let's make the Hollywood film of triathlon and we're like we're not quite there yet but like it's coming at some point you look at what the f1 movie just did and we talked about Formula one a bunch but

Josh (52:13.581)
Yeah.

Sam (52:26.013)
Like was, think Brad Pitt's most watched film ever, right? And it's incredible sporting stories. That would be, I suppose, a long-term big, hairy, audacious goal to use that phrase would be, can we see a Hollywood film about triathlon and inspire tons of people? And that's how the sport goes mainstream. Back to Josh's like almost opening question.

Josh (52:42.964)
I was going to say, get that. That's where you get the T 100 in the Olympics. think a lot of this is driven by the Olympics. You mentioned going to Paris and it's such, it transcends everything. And I say that all the time on the podcast. I think what Alex Yee is doing right now is proving that. Like, is this kid going to finish in the top five, top 10 of a world major marathon? Possibly. I mean, the way he's inspired to do that, but yet he's going to

flip a switch next year and go right back to LA 2028 being his focus is what I feel he's going to do. How much of the, you guys are doing is driven off of the Olympic cycle and is there any of those discussions, especially with the partnership with world triathlon and now with LA 2028, how much is the North America viewership something you feel like you have to grab onto and how do you.

Sam (53:34.185)
So I think I'd sort of separate, I'll answer your question in two ways. There's sort of the T100 element is very much aspirational vision, ambition. Let's go and see if we can achieve it because if we can, it will transform long distance triathlon forever. I don't think anyone would question that on the benefit that could be because the Olympics will always be the biggest shot window in sports and it brings so much more. Let's sort of, I don't need to unpack that. And that's long term. On the more shorter term, yeah, there's gonna be an incredible opportunity here for the sport in that.

It's the opening medal of LA 28. And obviously America is a powerhouse within sports. America is where triathlon came from. Triathlon was founded what 70 miles away from Venice Beach. Like there's incredible opportunity there, which needs to be harnessed by the sport. And we will only will be one player in the mix of doing that. But I think the sport itself is an amazing opportunity, which I have zero doubt will be capitalized on. And I think it will be an exciting time to see what happens off the back of some great racing in Venice.

video.

Another Triathlon Pod (54:34.585)
No, absolutely. We're very excited to see triathlon back in the U.S. for the Olympics. And it's incredible to think about long distance triathlon being in the Olympics and being another sport within it. What, I guess, what hurdles have to be overcome before that is something that is really viable?

Sam (54:51.155)
Well, and anyone who just hears it would say, there's zero chance that's going to happen, right? Like, it's crazy. Everyone's going short to all this kind of stuff. But I would sort of answer in a different way, which is to take a step back five years and say, could you ever imagine that professional long distance triathlon that there would be?

10 races that are live on TV all around the world that are getting millions and millions of people tuning in, not on just on YouTube, but actually on Eurosport and Sky and all the rest, millions of dollars of prize money. Like five years ago, people would have thought you were smoking something if you heard that. And that's what's happened. And that's just us, obviously, then Iman Pro Series as well. It's like the sport can change and develop fast, or things can develop fast, I should say. So there's certainly a lot to happen for it to see long distance triathlon into the Olympics, but...

I think it's really important, just like our athletes, to set very, very high goals. And you go and shoot for them, and you see where it can take you. And that's one of the many things that we're working on.

Josh (55:45.379)
I think my last question probably, I wasn't sure how to word it, but like, how do you see the multiple, multitude of organizations, you and World Triathlon are now working together. How do you end up working with Ironman? Does a, in a perfect world, does everyone come together and produce this amazing triathlon world of, of racing from all distances and, and, and really promote the pro sport, but also the, the age group and whatever term we end up calling it that Sam comes up with.

Sam (56:15.286)
It won't be me. I can guarantee it won't be making me up with it.

Josh (56:15.31)
do we all work together?

Sam (56:21.225)
I think we need to, is the simple answer. Triathlon is still a relatively niche sport. It's growing, but it's still a niche sport. And so it's not only niche, it's fragmented, it's confusing. There's all these different distances, there's all these different brands, these different groups, and it is confusing for a fan to come in. I was told that recently by a pretty senior buyer of broadcast. They were like, well, we're confused. There's you guys, Ironman, Super Tri, all these different distances. Then there's World Triathlon Championship Series. Is that better than a World Cup?

and whether the continental cups fit into it. It's a bit of a mess at the moment. And to World Triathlon's credit, they came out with a great report this summer from Deloitte that really articulated that.

And I think they're working towards some pretty exciting things to go and change it. So I think that overall would be the answer. then finding a way that the groups, whether they all come together, I don't think everyone's going to come together in a single company, but in a way that you can work symbiotically, without sounding too fancy. I think I'd love to see a scenario as an example. If we've got four races, sorry, three plus one, right, with the T100, could you win the Ironman Pro Series and the T100 next year? If Ironman, I think, is five to count, you guys would know

than me. Is it five races in the pro series that count? So here's an example, like so if that became four to match ours then I think you could probably do eight races in a year and competitively a very large base of the triathlon pro community could do that. I think doing five plus r4 is probably a bit of a stretch right and so it will be interesting to see whether Ironman would look at it the same way but I guess I haven't talked them about it yet but this is an easy way.

Another Triathlon Pod (57:26.245)
Thank you.

Josh (57:27.15)
2 plus 3.

Josh (57:48.078)
Talk to Hayden and see what he thinks about that. He thinks he can race every week.

Another Triathlon Pod (57:48.379)
until at the end.

Sam (57:53.991)
Yes, then that was sort of thinking more about the long side. you go shorter, it becomes easier, right? Because of recovery times and all these kind of things. But for sure.

Josh (57:56.408)
Yeah.

Another Triathlon Pod (57:58.608)
Yeah. I was gonna say let's call it the Kat Matthews double series. Well, we've taken up so much of your time here. I just want to ask if there's anything that you want to kind of leave in the minds of the listeners here about T100 or why they should sign up for it. there's anything you want to let them know before we close out here.

Josh (58:02.486)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sam (58:04.253)
Yeah, exactly.

Sam (58:18.601)
Yeah, look, I mean, think hopefully the last hour has shown that we think there's a lot of positive change in the sport. We're very...

I'm appreciative for the role we've been able to play in that. not the only one making the change, but we enjoy doing it. We think there's so much potential to take triathlon mainstream. It's like the theme of our podcast for the last hour. But it's all based on the community and the community support. So we very much recognize in some parts of the world, we had some challenging things this year. We hope we've overcome them and we'll win the trust back of the age groupers in those communities. In the ones where it's gone really well, like Vancouver, it's more of just please come back and vote with your fees and come and do a T100 race and come to a race, tune in.

spectate, support the sport, and then it will grow to great heights. But if people don't do that, then it won't, right? Like, you know, this will have been a interesting exercise in trying to transform a sport, but if the community doesn't get behind it, then it's nowhere. So I feel very bullish about both the opportunity and the community, because we see it both in our registration numbers, we see it in our TV numbers, we see it all of the metrics are really strong. You don't go and raise the amount of money that we just have from investors if you don't have really strong momentum in the metrics.

So yeah, guess it's not so much a call to arms other than a thank you for the support so far and let's continue doing it and let's see how we can all as a community take triathlon into the future.

Josh (59:35.95)
Well, really appreciate it. Will we have a race in America, I guess is the last question. USA next year, will we replace Vegas?

Another Triathlon Pod (59:35.973)
Perfect.

Sam (59:40.291)
Hi.

Another Triathlon Pod (59:40.558)
Vancouver? Come on.

Sam (59:47.569)
It would be a real shame if the T100 wasn't in the largest triathlon market in the world. So maybe I'll leave it there.

Another Triathlon Pod (59:53.275)
Fair enough. Well, thank you again for giving us so much of your time. was really great to be able to dive in a little bit more and answer a lot of the questions that have been coming our way as well. But we look forward to the next race and we will definitely be watching and know a lot of our audience will be as well. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Josh (59:54.542)
Here we go.

Sam (01:00:09.929)
You're welcome. Thanks everybody.

Josh (01:00:11.086)
Thanks Sam.