Are objects in USAT’s rear view mirror closer than they appear?

Competition is the ants in the pants of commerce. Nothing lubricates the imagination and industry of a CEO like a contemporary nipping at his heels. Though competition is not always healthy in the short term, the market works itself out in the fullness of time.

Monopolies aren’t illegal per se, only when monopolists wield their power unfairly. For better than a century, however, the United States has professed an aversion to all monopolies, even the legal ones. It considers them anti-competitive and equates this with anti-business.

That established, there are certain organizations that are not only allowed to operate as monopolies, they are granted monopoly status by our federal legislature. One example is Major League Baseball. Another is the ordaining of one national governing body for every Olympic sport. USA Triathlon is that body for the sport of triathlon.

Such companies are granted extraordinary powers. Not only are national governing bodies the only entities empowered to transact business on the Olympic level, their powers arc over an entire sport, including those elements that have no intersection with Olympic competition.

Consider USA Triathlon’s age-group national championship. There is nothing remotely Olympic about it. The rules of competition are different than those used in its Olympic counterpart, and there is almost nothing about USAT’s nationals remotedly construable as Olympic development. Yet, were a rogue event organizer to attempt to call his race a triathlon national championship—even at a distance or for a sub-group for which there is no USAT championship—he’d open his mailbox to a cease-and-desist letter from USAT’s attorney.

But every now and then an organization comes along that has enough power to challenge the NGB monopoly in a sport and, for all the power Congress grants it, USAT finds itself in just such a tussle. World Triathlon Corporation, owners of the Hawaiian Ironman Triathlon and related properties worldwide, have formed the Global Triathlon Group (GTG). This organization has its own set of rules and protocols, and will employ them at its 20 Ironman events staged across all habitable continents.

In the case of its five Ironman events in the United States, this means the GTG affiliation will occur in place of a USA Triathlon sanction. That’s just the beginning. WTC is also hosting its worldwide 16-race 70.3 series, starting this month in England and continuing over 12 months. Counting all three dozen such events, WTC is taking on the governing bodies of at least 16 countries.

What will be the status of these races? All the Ironman distance events—along with most and perhaps all of the 70.3 events, according ot WTC’s Blaire LaHaye—will be held under the GTG’s rules. They’ll also be expected to pay to GTG a sanctioning fee to help defray the insurance cost. Sanctioning with both USAT and GTG would not only be redundant, but mutually exclusive. A USAT sanction means obeying USAT’s rules of competition, and a GTG race can’t honor that requirement.

Accordingly, whether either GTG or USAT sees it this way, there are now two sheriffs in triathlon town. For the first time in USAT’s history, it has competition. But both organizations are playing down any rivalry, and while the GTG may not couch itself a rival governing body, it is one.

Why did WTC go its own way, forming the GTG? Its decision to self-sanction is born out of three specific needs that USAT couldn’t or wouldn’t meet:

* All rules, pro and age-group, in every Ironman race in every country, must be the same.
* All five Ironman Triathlons in the United States must include drug testing for the pros.
* There were an assortment of USAT rules and implementation policies, mostly relating to the bike leg, that WTC felt must be changed.

This meant a new set of officials for each race, interpreting and enforcing a new set of rules. It meant a new insurance policy. Race directors must go about doing things in a new way. Would GTG have its own sanction requirements? Or, is safety an issue at all with GTG? Are there differences in the insurance policies? Who pays for the officials? Are there prize money distribution rules? What about drug testing for the larger races? Who tests the athletes?

These questions, and more, are the subject of this multi-part series. We’ll consider how each organization might approach the issues of safety and fairness, and whether the GTG will make USAT a weaker or stronger organization, that is, whether in this case competition is a good thing in the short term for triathlon.

COURSE & COMPETITOR SAFETY

As sports go, triathlon might appear at first blush to be on the dangerous side. A rough but educated guess is that between 10 and 20 people per year die in the U.S. while training for or racing in a triathlon. That equates to a death rate something in the area of 7 per 100,000.

To place this in perspective, your chance of dieing from multisport in any given year is about half that of dieing in a car wreck. You’re half again as likely to commit suicide as die while pursuing the sport of triathlon, and your chances of being murdered are also slightly higher than plying your avocation of triathlete.

That’s training and racing both. What about just racing? Let’s say you were born at the starting line, fully developed, and you raced every single day of your life, from birth. Assuming you didn’t age, and nothing outside of a triathlon killed you, you’d live to about the age of 600 before you died of “triathlon.” And that takes into account every death that occurs during a triathlon. Something over half of every event-related death in triathlon is due to some form of pre-existing heart condition. If one considers only deaths to otherwise perfectly healthy people, that skews the numbers further in triathlon’s favor. Were you to start racing at the age of 18, and you raced 8 times per year, every year, you’d live to the age of about twenty-thousand before triathlon got you, if nothing killed you first.

It might appear, then, that triathlon is not quite so dangerous after all. Notwithstanding the relatively low risk to participating in this sport, safety is an issue. People do perish, and are seriously injured. The question is, what does a sanctioning body do to minimize this risk?

There are, as we all know, three events to be considered. In the swim you might drown, or you might contract illness from tainted water (this is discussed in a related article). You might strike a foreign object in the water, or be struck by watercraft. A wave or current may do you in.

During the bike leg you might be struck by a car, or by another cyclist, or fall victim to imperfections in the road. You might even crash because of your own bike’s bad state of repair. During the run you could be victimized by a lack of aid on the course.

In all three of these events, your demise might be due to a lack of primary medical care on or proximate to the course.

Finally, were you to become a victim, what would be your redress?

How do USAT and GTG stack up, one against the other, when it comes to mandating safety from a sanctioning race director? Let’s look at USAT first.

Our sport’s national governing body has a fairly thick sanction package each RD must complete. Every question discussed above is addressed. However, not always to the degree necessary. For example, the minimum number of lifeguards mandated in a triathlon is 1 for every 50 competitors in the water, or perhaps 35 to 1, depending on the body of water. This is based on data supplied by the Red Cross compiled some decades ago. Certainly USAT oversees more rough water swims than any organization of any type in the world, so why doesn’t USAT do its own study of numerical lifeguard requirements, as well as lifeguard deployment theories? If not USAT to study and set, or at least advise on, lifeguard deployment, then whom? (Interestingly, USAT's former risk manager was working on just such a project prior to being let go for budget reasons, according to a source on USAT's staff.)

USAT has enjoyed good loss ratios over the past several years, and its number of deaths and serious injuries has been relatively light. But USAT shouldn’t rest on that, and its sanction should mean a safer race than what would have been the case without a sanction. Certainly the sanctioning package it sends out causes RDs to rethink their plans. However, USAT does have processes in place that might need to be reconsidered.

One example is its approach to risk management. Currently, USAT’s insurance broker is also its risk manager (as noted above, this was a budgetary decision, according to a USAT staffer). In certain cases the broker acting as risk manager is a sound practice, in other cases such an arrangement is a potential conflict. One must ask what is the insurance agent’s primary responsibility? The answer is certainly to protect the organization, and its insurance carrier, from a financial loss. When might USAT’s goal of safer races come into conflict with this?

Let’s consider water quality. Risk management counsel to USAT has been, according to several sources interviewed at USAT, that the organization should not set minimum water quality standards, as it is not in the business of testing water. USAT’s sanctioning office does not employ scientists or experts in water quality. True enough. But as has been written about on Slowtwitch, safe water standards are a known quantity, and ubiquitous throughout the U.S. Certainly this fear of potential legal peril is outweighed by the need to impress upon member race directors the requirements, with demonstrative precision, for clean water.

Simply stated, the avoidance of legal peril cannot trump the avoidance of peril on the race course. USAT needs to make sure “risk management” isn’t simply an exercise in avoiding financial risk.

What about the GTG? Is a member race director going to be putting on a race that is any safer than a USAT race? Or even as safe? Will it be safer than an unsanctioned race?

GTG does send out a sanction package, according to WTC’s Blaire LaHaye. She admits it appears quite like USAT’s. One assumes it is largely the same as that USAT has developed, and why not? USAT has been sanctioning the Ironman for as long as there’s been a USAT. The organizations have grown up together.

At the same time, it must be noted that so many of GTG's rules and sanctioning requirements mirror USAT's that it's apparent USAT has done the heavy lifting, and has demonstrated the ability to generate and update rules and issues of risk management.

Is there the same support structure, leafing through these sanctioning packages, making sure the T’s are crossed, tieing up loose ends? The answer is certainly “no.” At least not yet. The GTG is new, and to be sure it will “endorse” (its word for “sanction”) only three dozen or so events in the U.S. this year, as opposed to the 1500 or so USAT will oversee. Currently, the 70.3 Series head Steve Meckfessel, along with a bit of office help inside WTC’s doors, is overseeing the “endorsing” process. Smart money says the oversight is not there to the degree it is at USAT.

But the GTG has some time to buy. Virtually all the thirty to forty GTG races are put on by seasoned RD’s, less in need of policing and hand-holding than the median RD that USAT sees. The GTG does expect to start accepting requests to endorse races other than half and full Ironmans, but not until 2007. Now, and throughout 2006, WTC promises to beef up and flesh out its GTG administrative office and staff.

ANTI-DOPING AND DRUG TESTING

Were one to pose the question to the folks at WTC, they'd tell you that drug testing was as much a reason for their leaving USAT as any other. WTC president Ben Fertic asked for — perhaps demanded is a fair word — drug testing at all five of his North American events. USA Triathlon declined, telling the WTC that it had already given its selection of preferred test races to the USOC. To test at additional events meant reappropriating funds from its own budget.

A test costs about $350. Testing the top-5 men and women at an event would cost about $3500, then, not counting the travel, housing and food for those comprising the “chain of custody.” Were USAT to immediately comply with WTC’s demand, made this past August, testing all five of the events would cost USAT about $17,500, and this assumes WTC paid all travel expenses for USADA personnel.

It might seem onerous to drop this demand on USAT in April, four to six months after USAT’s budget had been set. Offsetting this is the trend, according to those inside USAT, to test mainly, or only, at ITU-style Olympic-distance events. To the degree revenues flow to USAT from WTC (such as one-day license fees at Ironman events, and pro license fees from the athletes who compete at Ironman races), is it the reasonable expectation of USAT that, say, the Hawaiian Ironman and one other domestic Ironman might be the target of drug tests? Were this the case, USAT would only have to come up with about $10,000 to test at all Ironman events.

This — that sum that keeps USADA from testing at all five Ironman events in America — might be representative of the size of the financial gap between the two organizations.

By seceding from USAT, WTC is now taking upon itself the entire bill for drug testing. In a case such as this, it’s possible for race organizers to privately contract with a drug testing organization. In fact, those organizations involved with Olympic testing are available for hire. It is difficult to miss the irony. USADA is the agency that will be testing at all 5 American Ironman races… but at a higher cost to everyone. WTC must pay the entire bill itself. USAT loses out on WTC as a customer.

Interestingly, both organizations agree as to their collective postures toward the other’s test. What would happen if an athlete tested positive in a sanctioned event around the world? Would WTC honor a ban placed on the athlete? Not only would that be the case, WTC has also announced it will place a ban on any athlete testing positive from the moment it becomes aware of the existence of a positive sample. This much was expected, as WTC announced this policy prior to its withdrawal from the family of federations.

Would USAT honor a positive test on an Ironman athlete? Surprisingly, the answer is yes, according to USAT’s Skip Gilbert. “But what about the lack of administrative remedies available to such an athlete,” Gilbert was asked. “The right of the athlete to hearings and appeals, all the way to the Court for Arbitration in Sport?”

“That’s the risk the athlete takes by competing in an Ironman race,” he replied. “As long as the test is done according to proper protocol, by an accredited lab, we can’t ignore such a test.”

Will other national governing bodies honor WTC’s positive test? Any organization not honoring a ban would be under immediate and intense pressure. On the other hand, an athlete would also not feel his rights were protected if his governing body honored a ban without affording the athlete due process. Such hearings cleared last year’s fifth place Hawaiian Ironman finisher Rutger Beke. He would likely still be suffering under a ban if his positive EPO positive would’ve been detected through a test at an Ironman event.

Let us suppose WTC wishes to avail itself of those appeals. Would any federation be a party to such a hearing? Likely not. Would CAS hear an appeal? Again, there is no reason to think a court invested in the Olympic movement would hear a case brought from outside the federation framework (unless a positive test emanates from a race in a country in which the WTC's licensee sought and was granted a sanction; the U.S. is not one of those countries).

But none of that would stop the WTC from simply enforcing its ban at its races, which is arguably the extent of its interest. And, what future would an ultra distance athlete have if he couldn’t race at any Ironman events worldwide?

RULES FOR COMPETITION

There is no long list of those waiting for a chance to praise the officiating at triathlons. This truism is evident at races sanctioned by USA Triathlon as well as those races endorsed by the GTG. Good officiating is not often appreciated, or there’s just not enough of it to generate much overt comment. One or the other. It’s hard to say which.

That established, there are plenty of commendable ideas championed by both sets of rules, and plenty of notable differences between each "sanctioning" body. We’ll examine these differences.

PROACTIVITY & INTENT: While we’ll delve into the minutiae of the rules themselves, one finds equally illustrative how the rules are applied. USA Triathlon has historically considered “proactivity” a dirty word, and the judging of “intent” an exercise in futility. Seasoned USAT racers are used to officials rolling up on the backs of motorcycles, stoic, speechless, hovering, and then riding on. Never does an athlete hear at a USAT race, “You’re riding too close, I see penalties in your future, you have 10 seconds to break it up.”

The elegance to USAT’s approach is that riders can't just wait for the warnings. They know that penalties can come at any time, and there is no tolerance. The knock on this approach is that an athlete never knows where he stands in the race. This lack of feedback from the officials, coupled with USAT’s adherence to the notion of “due process” (discussed later) means an athlete has no real-time information on his race status.

USAT has subtly moved, over the past decade, from its “snapshot” approach to a “contextual” apprising of a potential infraction. It was common in years past for a less savvy official to call an infraction based on what appeared, at a glance, to be an illegal incident. Nowadays officials are urged not to call a penalty on something they view for only a short period of time. Rather, they are told to consider the context of a situation. An obvious example is the attempt to pass within 15 seconds. There is no provision in the rules for falling back out of the zone in a failed attempt to pass. What happens if the rider in front speeds up? Seasoned USAT officials recognize this eventuality. Implicit in this is a consideration of intent, and a consequential softening of USAT’s stand. While USAT is still not comfortable incorporating the word “intent” into its lexicon, its posture suggests significant movement in this direction.

WTC’s view is that this softening has been grudging and too long in coming, and bespeaks a lack of understanding of the big picture. As much as anything, it’s been this “majoring in the minors” that got the hair up on WTC’s back and caused it to form the GTG. It was the penalizing, for outside influence, a woman finishing in or around the 15-hour mark in last year’s Hawaiian Ironman, after being “paced” by her husband during the final mile of the event, that steamed the WTC brass. This leads us to one of the substantive differences between USAT and GTG as regards the rules themselves, the handling of non-impactful infractions.

NON-IMPACTFUL INFRACTIONS: GTG honors the difference between the breaking of a rule that does not give one a competitive advantage, versus a stunt that moves one up in the standings. Certainly drafting, or cutting the course, yields one a better finish time. Stopping one’s bike a foot or two past the dismount line, the failure to properly rack a bike, or to keep the helmet’s chinstrap buckled as one walks or runs the bike to the race once inside the transition area, are certainly infractions that the GTG takes note of. But they do not, under GTG rules, warrant a time penalty. These rules are for pro and age-group alike and this is the case throughout the rulebook — GTG recognizes no distinction among the ranks.

Under GTG rules all penalties, drafting included, will start with a mandatory stand down. If the penalty occurs during the bike leg, riders will be instructed to follow the motorcycle off the course, at which point anything but a drafting penalty will warrant a “P” written on the bike, race, and helmet numbers. All other penalties, including any position penalty, such as blocking, will warrant only a stand down, that is, they are considered non-impactful.

A drafting penalty warrants a slash through these numbers, and two drafting calls will be signified by a slash in each direction resulting in an “X.” Each drafting penalty will carry with it a 4-minute penalty box visit, to be served after the bike leg.

One convenience of this method is that radio communication with the transition area is not required. If you're interested in a "real time" finish, you'd have to radio each infraction back to home base, so that the competitor could sit in the "sin bin" or run the penalty lap.

USAT does not differentiate, at least at this point, between a helmet chinstrap violation and a drafting penalty. They are all subject to a variable time penalty, that is, depending on the distance of the race a 2-, 3-, or 4-minute penalty is assessed for a first offense. However, its enforcement of these penalties have undergone a substantial change. For example, USAT’s officials were not manning dismount lines this year. Since a no-riding transition area is a regional issue, not a national rule, USAT’s officials have left it up to each race organizer to report any egregious violations of this rule. Failing such an apprising, no athlete is penalized. As a result, there have been perhaps 10 such penalties given out nationwide for failure-to-dismount this season.

In that same vein, violations for improperly racking one’s bike, either before the race or after the bike ride, are much less likely to be called than was once the case. USAT now instructs the RDs at those 350 races it officiates to have volunteers in the transition area pre-race, to help athletes rack their bikes properly and avoid any penalty.

STAND-DOWNS: USAT’s biggest problem with GTG’s rules involve stand-downs on the bike course. USAT says stand-downs are both unfair and unsafe. They are unfair, says USAT, because they do not allow for what USAT considers due process. As of now, USAT officials write what amounts to an incident report for each infraction. At the end of the event, the officials huddle and go over each of the incidents. At his discretion, the head official may throw out infractions he cannot defend. While such due process is not available at the athlete’s discretion (position fouls are not protestable), the head referee acts in the athlete’s stead and adjudicates each call before it is considered an offense.

USAT also considers stand-downs unsafe. Athletes following striped shirts on the backs of motorcycles off the course, reentering the race after the stand-down is executed, creates a safety hazard, contends USAT. Perhaps this is so. It must be noted, however, that a week prior to the Hawaiian Ironman, USAT sanctioned and hosted triathlon’s Age Group World Championship. This race was held under international rules and included, ironically, stand-downs. In other words, what USAT could not in good conscience allow its largest customer to do, it accepted on its own soil without any apparent comment.

At the same time, there were silent grumblings among USAT officials about the ITU’s rules. The way one USAT official put it, “Having stand-downs at ITU races is probably safe, since the ITU has no intention of standing anybody down.” Certainly the ITU did not put on a “fair” race in Honolulu, if adherence to a draft zone is any measure of fairness. Few if any athletes questioned considered the Worlds, as actually contested on the course, in any way a draft-illegal race.

One critique of the stand-down method is that an official ought to spend his time with the packs, not on the side of the road with a lone rider. And, it appears that the GTG has no stomach for pulling over a group of riders, letting them go one at a time. In truth, the usual post-Hawaii banter over drafting appears to us as loud this year as in any other.

DRAFT ZONE: The Hawaiian Ironman, a week after Age Group Worlds, did not appear to be entirely successful if a draft-free environment is the measure. While there were few penalties one might call silly, draconian, or arbitrary, there were few apparent penalties, if goal of stand-downs was to break up packs. The biggest complaint among those at the race was the 7-meter rule, that is, 7 meters from front wheel to front wheel. This means the difference between the bikes was 5 meters and change.

Wrote perennial World Champion Simon Lessing about this year’s Kona race: “Without a doubt it was a huge advantage to be in the pack, especially with the new 7-meter rule. On the way out to Hawi there was a lot of sitting up and soft pedaling — including me. I still managed to average 42-43 kilometers-per-hour to Hawi.”

In defending its decision to honor a draft zone of this size, WTC has relied on wind tunnel data that indicates that the aerodynamic benefit granted a rider just outside this draft zone is almost nonexistent. As a veteran of quite a bit of bicycle wind tunnel testing, I have questions. Who did this test, that is, which aerodynamicists? Where was it conducted? Did the test employ smaller-scale modeling, or actual cyclists in the tunnel? Were servo motors spinning the wheels of these test bikes at race speeds? Was it simply one rider 5 meters in front of another, or the benefit a rider might get behind a half-dozen riders, each 5 meters apart? What was the protocol? Where was this study published? Absent the answers to these questions, and with all due respect to WTC, if you're going to use science you are bound by the scientific method in its entirety (which requires a review by one's peers, and publication of the testing protocol).

But let's grant the WTC the benefit of the doubt. Certainly this data would change based on the speed the riders were traveling. An ingenious solution to this was presented by Murphy Reinschrieber. "Why not establish two draft zones," he suggests. The age-group racers would race under a 7-meter rule, while the pros race under a 15-meter rule (or 12 meters, or 10, or 20). This allows for the greater draft that comes with greater speeds. At the same time it makes sense for a 2000-person field, by giving it a draft zone the venue and size of field can accommodate.

In this scheme, the zones are in determined by the last competitive pro in the field. There is a motorcycle clearly delineating this with a big sign pointing backward with the alert, "PRO RULES." In case a strong age-group rider penetrates the pro field, he's now riding under the pro rules, that is, his draft zone is now (let us say) 12 meters long.

GLOBAL RULES

As one wonders where things are heading certain trends are apparent. First, the ITU will not take the lead in the institution of well-crafted set of no-draft competition rules the whole world can salute and live under. It doesn’t understand, appreciate, or care about long distance racing, or draft-illegal racing. Its posture makes this clear. Though it may argue this point, its actions speaks otherwise. No, this is not a criticism, just an observation. It’s clear that the ITU is spending its time on Olympic-style racing; it has had success with this format; and it prefers it. But, this renders the ITU without meaningful input into this process, and its best bet is to let USAT, WTC and others who care about this issue hammer out a solution that the ITU will, one hopes, simply adopt as a global set of rules.

It’s also apparent that USAT has no more of a stomach for needless, silly, or unfairly harsh penalties than does WTC. USAT will host a Global Rules Summit in January. In such case a global set of rules is adopted, it is certain to incorporate certain rules the GTG prefers. It has already quietly worked to get rid of non-impactful penalties. It appears that the WTC and USAT, though currently not friendly toward one another, are each heading toward the same result. As such, there is a confluence of direction.

As much as anything, the paralleling of interests exhibited by USAT and GTG is no more apparent than in the streamlining and ubiquity of rules. Both organizations are feeling the pressure and tension extent in the status quo. Should you race in America, Italy and Denmark you'll race under three distinct sets of rules. Then race Worlds Long Course in any country, and you'll race under yet another set of rules.

USA Triathlon feels the need to have its athletes race under one, global set of rules regardless of which federation oversees the event. The ITU annual Congress takes place in Colorado Springs this upcoming January. USAT intends to marry to this Congress a Global Rules Summit, in order to pursue the mission of one set of rules agreed upon worldwide.

While USAT must work through the federation system to achieve this, GTG simply went out and did it. All GTG endorsed events operate under the same set of global rules. The irony is this. If one looked at the rules of competition most often used in other countries' federation sanctioned events, the rules used look more like GTG's rules than USAT's rules. One assumes that USAT is going to have to give on a lot of its treasured rules if global rules is what it seeks, because it's going to be a lot easier to conform to those rules used by 40 or 50 other federations than to make those countries rewrite their rulebooks to parallel what we do in America.

In other words, those rules that USAT just could not in good conscience allow WTC to employ may end up being the very set of rules USAT ends up with itself, should USAT achieve its stated goal of global rules.