Earn the Money
Earlier this summer we published on Slowtwitch an article called Where is the Money, about the recent pay practices of certain race organizations. We received huzzahs from many pro athletes as well as their fans. “Pro's need to speak out,” said one reader. “Perhaps Slowtwitch can start a running feature on the races with poor ethics and we can choose to not support them.” Indeed.
It seemed to us from the beginning that there should be a companion piece to that article. You’re reading it here.
A pro athlete contacted me, in a quandary, this past summer. This athlete was sponsored by a company providing product across a suite of categories. One of the products was not up to snuff. It was a technical product. This athlete felt the product was not top-of-category, and using it might result in a performance cost.
“Before I can counsel you,” I said, “I need to ask you a series of questions.
“Are you happy with the contract, and have they made a good faith effort to perform according to it? Do they understand your concerns and try to remedy any problems? Do they provide enough product, and on a timely basis? Do the other products they make work well? Do they seem able and interested in remaining or becoming top-of-category?”
Finally, I asked, “Are they honest? Are they well funded? Do you like them?”
This athlete wrote me back the following day. “The answer is yes to all of your questions.” The athlete seemed wise enough to understand that my questions weren’t a preface to my counsel. They were my counsel.
“This company has been great to me,” was the answer. “They’ve been as loyal as I could ever hope for. They deserve my loyalty in return, and they’re going to get it.”
Loyalty is just one of the characteristics of athletes that give value in consideration for the money they receive, both prize and sponsor money.
Sponsors and RDs should be held accountable for the money owed athletes. Money these athletes have earned. But athletes need to earn the money.
At a recent Ironman race, that paid $50,000 in prize money, only 10 of 16 athletes who earned money appeared at the awards ceremony to collect it. These athletes certainly raced with courage, talent and expertise. But, there are at most 5 triathletes in the world for whom the finish alone earns the money made in bonuses and prize money. For all other athletes who think that racing and training in a product is fair consideration in return, that’s an obsolete paradigm. That reality is gone. That ship has long sailed.
The entire performance package associated with earning that paycheck includes showing respect to the race organizer putting up the money. You earn that money starting days, maybe weeks, maybe months out, and you finish earning that money days, maybe weeks after crossing the finish line.
When Jordan Rapp finished Ironman Canada, he was only about two-thirds of the way finished earning—from the RD and from his sponsors—his paycheck from that race. What occurred in the next several days—the awards ceremony speech, the “ask my anything” thread on the Slowtwitch forum—is where Jordan finished earning his prize money and his sponsor bonuses.
Terry Davis and Jan Caille, who built the Wildflower and Chicago Triathlons respectively, spoke to me in strikingly similar phrases. “I don’t know which pros are doing my race until the morning of, when I look at who’s on the start line.”
Athletes routinely show up at the last minute, or enter—usually without paying an entry fee—and then fail to appear with no notice given. For those who grouse about prize purses that fail to keep pace with the increase in the sport, and in the entry fees, my question is: Has their been an increase over the past generation in the level of professionalism of those who carry pro cards?
In some ways, absolutely. I’m heartened by the list of pros who blog and tweet. Blogs like those by Simon Whitfield and Chrissie Wellington are widely read and grant their sponsors exposure to those who never see these athletes race in person.
You don’t have to be a top finisher to give value. Mac Brown’s introspective and transparent blog entry would make any sponsor proud. He earned his money that day for the Timex Team.
On the other side are athletes who’ve signed deals and then I have to wonder what they were thinking. Of all the athletes who signed with Toyota, which among them will race most or all the Toyota Cup events last year and this, and which among them rarely if ever showed during the season for a Toyota Cup race? Of all the athletes bearing a Rev3 logo on their kits, how many are pointing their seasons toward the Rev3 series, and how many are cashing Rev3's checks but pointing their seasons toward Ironman? Some of these deals appear to me to be incongruous, and leave me wondering whether the athletes disclosed in advance of the contract signing what their schedules were going to look like.
I’ve also been disturbed by the rash of top athletes switching product mid-season, or announcing a new, subsequent year’s sponsorship before the end of the current season, or showing up to a race on a non-conforming product. There is almost never any righteous excuse for this.
To be sure, if a sponsor fails in a material way to honor the contract, the athlete is free to move. But I know of only two cases in the past two years when that has happened, and it doesn’t come close to explaining all the in-season movement.
Whenever I see a mid-season change, I must confess this: I assume the athlete is breaking his existing contract, and I assume the “new” sponsor is aiding and abetting this behavior, choosing to absorb the short-term brand benefit and ignoring the perpetuation of this behavior.
There are several high-profile examples of this during the past few months, the most notable involving athletes coming off of bike sponsorships mid-season, as well as several more mid-season wetsuit brand defections. I did not hear any explanation given in any of these cases. Maybe there was a good reason in each case. But I don’t know that good reason, and it reflects badly on both the athlete, and for all that athlete’s sponsors from that moment forward, bike- and wetsuit-related, and otherwise.
I don't mean to lay all this on the athlete. Perhaps these athletes have blind spots, and don't realize the bad taste it leaves in my mouth when I see a change occur in June or August, rather than in December or January. Memo to athletes, and their agents: appearances matter; behave accordingly.
Pro athletes and their new sponsors who’ve benefited from these mid-season changes may well just not care what I think, and, that’s fine.
But I’m just long enough in the tooth to see what became of many of the pros who made a habit of taking the expedient route rather than the honorable one. Some are 45, 50, 55 years old now. These athletes never were mentored in business. Why would they be? Many had been professional athletes since their teenage years.
But never having been mentored, they never learned the value of loyalty, even if loyalty meant self-sacrifice (indeed, loyalty is easy until it means sacrifice). The phrase, “My word is my bond,” was Greek to them when they raced, and it still is today.
A pro triathlete now reading this may recognize him or herself. Yes that's inconvenient and, in this case, perhaps a Mac Brown Moment is in order. Indeed, such a moment may yield yet more fruit for you than it will for Mac. It seems to me Mac Brown has his head on straight, and whether he remains a pro triathlete for ten more years or not, he’s well prepared for the next 50 years after his move to the next phase. I fear for the pro athlete who races faster than Mac Brown does now, but is ill-prepared for the several decades that come after pro triathlon retirement.
If you’re a pro that's heartened by what you’re reading here, and you think it's about time somebody brought this up, then your word is your bond, even when keeping that word comes with some sacrifice attached to it. You’ve learned that the value you provide must equal or exceed the money you’re paid.
You’re the sort of person who, upon retirement from racing, will succeed.
Let me leave you with tales of two men.
I sponsored an athlete once for bikes, but not wetsuits (my company made both products). He was sponsored by another wetsuit company. I attended a championship race, and noted a decal, bearing the name of his wetsuit company, overlaid on my bike’s down tube decal.
“I thought it would be confusing,” he said, “if people saw me riding a bike that said Quintana Roo. They might reasonably think I also swam in a QR wetsuit, which I don’t.”
The strategically placed sticker seemed to make perfect sense to him. He thought he was still giving me value.
The other tale is that of Magic Johnson. Within two years of joining the Lakers, he signed a 25-year contract. It was an unheard of span of time. That contract paid $1 million a year at the time, much less than the average NBA salary today. Yet Magic Johnson is worth about $700 million today. It was not his NBA salary that made him this money. It was his loyalty, the value he gave, and the business ethics he learned, that provided him the tools and the goodwill to earn his fortune.
[Author's note: Pictured here are four athletes among many whose professionalism I admire: Terenzo Bozzone and Matty Reed at top; Jordan Rapp and Angela Naeth at bottom.]
