# Lies & Deception Uncovered In the Triathlon World.

An episode of [The Triathlon Hour](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1595443343), 14 Dec 2025, 1 h 55 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2640942/episodes/19698005-lies-deception-uncovered-in-the-triathlon-world.mp3

We start this weeks episode by going over everything from the T100 Grand Final on the weekend. We then move onto the T100’s 2026 plans and their big announcement of a merger with World Triathlon in 2027. To say there are some strong opinions thrown around in these discussions would be an understatement. Then it’s time to talk about the uncovering that a triathlete has been deceiving and lying to everyone since at least 2024. And we finish off the show, as always, by reading and responding to your Spotify comments. Nord VPN:Take advantage of a great deal with Nord VPN use the code triathlonhour or visit nordvpn.com/triathlonhour to get a huge discount in the 2 year plans PLUS 4 extra months! It is risk free with Nord's 30 days money back guarantee! Lever: Use the code TTH for 20% off your Lever system Lever Precision: Use the code TTH25 to get 15% off your first order with Precision at Precision Fuel & Hydration or subscribe to the Patreon and access the link that will save you 20% on every order, not just your first Patreon

## Transcript

[0:27] SPEAKER_05: Yes, hello, and welcome to another episode of the Trithlon Hour.
[0:31] SPEAKER_05: You may have guessed this, but sure enough, today's a big one, and we definitely do not say that every week either, so don't even try to claim that we do.
[0:39] SPEAKER_05: We're going to try our best to cover everything from the T-100 grand final in Qatar over the weekend.
[0:44] SPEAKER_05: We'll chat about T100 2026 plans and, of course, their newly announced 2027 plans to merge with World Trithlon.
[0:51] SPEAKER_05: We're then going to take you inside the world of lies and deception and talk about a case of one of our own, a fellow triathlete, Iron Ryan, and him falsifying marathon finishing times, which took over a small subsect of the Endurance Sports Instagram world recently before finishing off the show.
[1:08] SPEAKER_05: The only way we know how on this podcast by reading and responding to your Spotify comments.
[1:13] SPEAKER_05: And to do so, I'm joined by the most opinionated man in Triton, the man who doesn't know the difference between Spanish and English, and Alistair Brownlee's biggest fanboy, Greg Harper.
[1:23] SPEAKER_04: Thanks for having me, Jack.
[1:24] SPEAKER_04: And uh I don't know if you saw Alistair on the podium back like he never left.
[1:28] SPEAKER_04: Uh miss you, Alistair.
[1:30] SPEAKER_04: Respond to my DMs.
[1:32] SPEAKER_05: Responding to my DMs.
[1:33] SPEAKER_05: Creepy now.
[1:36] SPEAKER_05: And of course, you just heard her voice, the shining light of this podcast, the lady with the highest IQ in triathlon, an Olympic bronze medalist, a world champion, the most successful British triathlete of all time, according to us, and our resident expert on basically everything, Vicky Holland.
[1:54] SPEAKER_01: Oh, Jack, I think at least two of those things are very far from the truth, but I'm taking it.
[1:59] SPEAKER_01: So thank you.
[2:00] SPEAKER_01: Pleasure to be back.
[2:01] SPEAKER_05: And guys, I um I was wondering if you might have any updates, but I messaged Apo on the group chat about coming on the podcast, and he goes, He literally just didn't he didn't reply.
[2:14] SPEAKER_05: He literally didn't reply.
[2:16] SPEAKER_01: Well, I actually had this exact conversation with my husband this morning, and I went, Oh well, you know, maybe he's just messaged Jack back privately to be like, you know, I need a minute away from Tratlan.
[2:27] SPEAKER_01: He beared his soul to us on the podcast last week, and you know, I think he was definitely feeling a bit low, wasn't he?
[2:34] SPEAKER_01: So I just thought maybe he'd contacted you privately, but it turns out he's actually just ghosted us.
[2:40] SPEAKER_05: He messaged me the day after the podcast last week, and he said, mate, was I a mess on the podcast last night?
[2:46] SPEAKER_05: I'm so sorry if I was, because he'd had like 10 beers during the recording.
[2:51] SPEAKER_05: And I was like, No, actually, it was probably your best podcast you've ever had.
[2:54] SPEAKER_01: People loved it.
[2:55] SPEAKER_01: Have you seen the comments?
[2:56] SPEAKER_01: People were like, we want three, four beers deep apple every week.
[3:00] SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
[3:01] SPEAKER_05: But I don't know where he's gone.
[3:02] SPEAKER_05: I guess he's on holiday somewhere in Australia, maybe on a beach sipping, uh sipping a cold beer or something like that, because we haven't heard from him.
[3:09] SPEAKER_05: So why he's not here, we don't know.
[3:11] SPEAKER_05: Maybe uh if you if you want to know yourself, message him on Instagram and ask him where he was this week.
[3:16] SPEAKER_05: All right, um, Vicky, the the T100 grand final happened over the weekend, and as you told us on last week's podcast, you are the resident T100 expert.
[3:25] SPEAKER_05: Do you want to start us off?
[3:27] SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've got a lot to live up to there, haven't I?
[3:29] SPEAKER_01: But yes, I did watch nearly every minute of the T100 this week.
[3:33] SPEAKER_01: It fell at a good time for me.
[3:35] SPEAKER_01: My daughter was back in nursery after vomiting most of the week, so it was all, you know, all good in my world.
[3:41] SPEAKER_01: So I will start by recapping the men's race.
[3:45] SPEAKER_01: Um, to be honest, because not as much happened, I don't think.
[3:49] SPEAKER_01: So we started off with a pretty standard swim.
[3:52] SPEAKER_01: Vince Louis led it, Morgan Pearson in second, and quite quickly out on the bike, they became a pack of five.
[3:59] SPEAKER_01: Hayden Wilde joining them pretty early on on the bike.
[4:02] SPEAKER_01: They got a little gap on him out of the swim, but it was never gonna be enough.
[4:05] SPEAKER_01: Joined up to those leaders pretty early, and then that pack of fives became established.
[4:10] SPEAKER_01: So that was Mika, Martin, Hayden, Matisse, and Rico.
[4:16] SPEAKER_01: Uh there was a little bit of a slide out from Rico early doors.
[4:20] SPEAKER_01: He had a small crash on a corner while he was at the front of the group, but he pretty much just bounced back up again.
[4:25] SPEAKER_01: It was quite impressive, actually, straight onto his.
[4:27] SPEAKER_03: He was ripping around that corner.
[4:30] SPEAKER_01: He went hard around that corner, didn't he?
[4:31] SPEAKER_03: Like he he took it hard.
[4:33] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[4:34] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[4:34] SPEAKER_01: Uh didn't do that again, I don't think.
[4:36] SPEAKER_01: Uh maybe, maybe, maybe let him learn his lesson a little bit there.
[4:40] SPEAKER_01: But yeah, he went really hard around that corner.
[4:42] SPEAKER_01: But he sort of bounced back up and he was on his bike sort of just after the last person in the group came through.
[4:47] SPEAKER_01: So it didn't really cost him much in terms of you know time, position, or anything.
[4:52] SPEAKER_01: Um, and then those five got about two minutes on everybody else going into T2.
[4:57] SPEAKER_01: The next on the road were Sam Dickinson, uh, Jonas Schomberg and Morgan Pearson.
[5:04] SPEAKER_01: And that was critical for Morgan.
[5:05] SPEAKER_01: That for him, well, for me, best ever bike, I think, by a long shot for Morgan and put him in contention going on to the run.
[5:12] SPEAKER_01: And once they hit the run, I mean, Hayden just looked sensational, like he wasn't even trying.
[5:20] SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm not entirely sure if he is trying yet.
[5:22] SPEAKER_01: And I would love to know we can discuss this in more detail whether we think how much more we think he's got left in the tank.
[5:29] SPEAKER_01: Uh Morgan was charging from behind, absolutely flying at the start of the run.
[5:33] SPEAKER_01: I think I think he sort of slowed down a little bit towards the end, but that was enough to pop him up into second.
[5:39] SPEAKER_01: And then probably the most exciting battle of the day was those other four guys from the front group who ran pretty much the whole 18k together.
[5:47] SPEAKER_01: So Matisse, Mika, Rico, and Martin uh ran a lot of it together.
[5:51] SPEAKER_01: Rico just off the front of them to begin with, and then it was Matisse tried to go with Morgan when Morgan overtook them.
[5:59] SPEAKER_01: No, neither of those things lasted very long.
[6:01] SPEAKER_01: And eventually it was Martin who put the hammer down in the final couple of kilometres and came away with third.
[6:07] SPEAKER_01: So that's how it shook out in the men's race.
[6:09] SPEAKER_01: Hayden, of course, then making that six wins and becoming the world champion of the T100 tour.
[6:16] SPEAKER_01: Mika coming second in the series, and then that put Yella, Yella Games, of course.
[6:23] SPEAKER_01: Yella didn't have the day he would have hoped for coming in, I think, sixth on the day.
[6:27] SPEAKER_01: I think he sort of admitted he felt pretty flat in the build-up and the come down from 70.3 worlds was pretty real, but he did back it up with coming third overall in the series.
[6:37] SPEAKER_01: So that's how the men's race shook out.
[6:40] SPEAKER_01: Any talking points you want to hit on before we uh look at the women's race?
[6:43] SPEAKER_05: Yeah, so do you guys remember about a year and a half ago when everyone would call Ash Gentle the queen of the T100 and the Queen of the PTO because of how dominant she'd been over that distance?
[6:55] SPEAKER_05: Now, she'd won three races when everyone was calling her the queen of the PTO.
[7:00] SPEAKER_05: Hayden Wilde just won six in a year.
[7:03] SPEAKER_05: The only one he didn't win, he would have won.
[7:05] SPEAKER_05: He would have gone seven from seven.
[7:07] SPEAKER_05: He wins the grand final.
[7:08] SPEAKER_05: He literally, I don't think he was tested once.
[7:11] SPEAKER_05: I don't think there was a single race where we saw Hayden Wilde go to even 9.5 out of 10.
[7:17] SPEAKER_05: Like, I think we saw at best maybe a nine out of ten Hayden Wilde.
[7:21] SPEAKER_05: Yet again on the weekend, he just he put his gun back in the holster almost instantly in the run.
[7:26] SPEAKER_05: Like he got a gap and he was like, oh, okay, let me just jog this in.
[7:29] SPEAKER_05: Like he's just made a career this year of jogging in victories in T-100 races.
[7:34] SPEAKER_05: He did what he always did.
[7:36] SPEAKER_05: He somehow manages to get this gap from the end of the swim till about 10k into the bike.
[7:42] SPEAKER_05: He just closes whatever that gap is, whether it's a minute or 30 seconds, it just disappears in the blink of an eye, and you're like, oh yep, Hayden's at the front of the bike, and then things just go exactly the same every race from there.
[7:53] SPEAKER_05: I mean, it was it was a completely dominant day from Hayden, a completely dominant year from Hayden.
[7:59] SPEAKER_05: And my main point, Vicky, and and we talked about it on the Spotify comments where someone said that they'd be disappointed if Hayden won Contender of the Year.
[8:06] SPEAKER_05: I don't see how he doesn't win contender of the year.
[8:09] SPEAKER_05: He just won six T100 races in a year.
[8:12] SPEAKER_05: The hardest long distance, middle distance races to win are clearly T100 races.
[8:17] SPEAKER_05: And he didn't just win six of them, he won six of them in dominant fashion.
[8:20] SPEAKER_05: So for me, Draco Malfoy, clear contender of the year winner.
[8:24] SPEAKER_05: I I'm just gonna, you know, uh give you I'm gonna vote for that in in a couple of weeks' time.
[8:29] SPEAKER_05: But I was just so impressed.
[8:30] SPEAKER_04: He just did every race unfolded the exact same way, and uh it was uh yeah, pretty pretty crazy to see.
[8:36] SPEAKER_04: It I wouldn't say it made it boring per se, but just a little bit like you kind of knew it was gonna happen.
[8:42] SPEAKER_04: Now, who did he end up running the fastest or did Morgan end up running the fastest?
[8:46] SPEAKER_05: Morgan did run faster than Hayden.
[8:48] SPEAKER_05: I think it was a minute 27 seconds faster.
[8:50] SPEAKER_05: But and look, maybe Morgan would have outre uh outrun Hayden if they came into T2 together.
[8:55] SPEAKER_05: Who knows?
[8:56] SPEAKER_05: But what I saw, what I witnessed, was Hayden Wilde almost like fast tempo yet another run.
[9:02] SPEAKER_05: I don't I don't know.
[9:03] SPEAKER_05: What do you think, Vicky?
[9:04] SPEAKER_05: I didn't feel like he was running that uh as if he was Alex Yee running to the finish line of Valencia Marathon.
[9:10] SPEAKER_05: I thought I thought he kind of tempoed or threshold that whole run.
[9:13] SPEAKER_01: Jackie had his mouth closed.
[9:16] SPEAKER_01: He was running at points with his mouth closed.
[9:19] SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's one thing like faking it to be a bit like this is easier than you.
[9:24] SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm I'm I'm working really easy, but actually in he's inside he's working hard.
[9:29] SPEAKER_01: But you can't fake it with your mouth closed.
[9:31] SPEAKER_01: Like you're not working very hard if you can nosebreathe your way to the world title.
[9:36] SPEAKER_01: And I just think we haven't even got close to fifth gear for him yet.
[9:41] SPEAKER_01: I I think there's so much more to come, and I don't really know who's gonna challenge him yet, but someone needs to come and throw down a challenge to him because I want to see the fireworks, I want to see what happens when he is put under pressure and how much faster he can possibly go as well.
[9:56] SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I I don't think we're even close to seeing his um his ceiling yet.
[10:00] SPEAKER_01: And and I would say on that, the other thing to note is that I think he was pretty much the only feet, the only athlete, male or female, across the board who did not seem tired, totally jaded, running on fumes by the time they got to that race.
[10:21] SPEAKER_01: And we've seen it in the comments, the the aftermath of social media where people have put out their their race reports, and I don't think there's a single one of them other than pretty much Hayden, and maybe Ellie Salthouse, who started her season late because of injury, who who haven't said, I'm knackered, it's been a long year, I need a break, my I'm fried, you know, there's so many of them, and we saw it manifest in so many different ways.
[10:45] SPEAKER_01: I mean, Paula was cooked, she didn't make it to the finish.
[10:48] SPEAKER_01: Um, Indy Lee spoke about how she just blows blew up halfway through the run, her body was done, her mind was done.
[10:54] SPEAKER_01: Like Taylor Spivey, same.
[10:56] SPEAKER_01: Like there's so many of them, male and female, who mentioned this.
[11:00] SPEAKER_01: And Hayden's just like walking on air, he's just like, yeah, this is fine, I'm happy, like, not even trying that hard.
[11:07] SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, Hayden is the only one who I think is still in really, really great form at this point in the year.
[11:14] SPEAKER_01: And Ellie Salthouse is the one who's probably coming into good form, and I guess she'd probably put Georgia Taylor Brown in that bracket as well.
[11:20] SPEAKER_01: But I I honestly don't think there was anyone else out there who was loving life.
[11:24] SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I would say Morgan Pearson's finish to the year was pretty strong with that win at Dubai, which you know, whether he would have come second or third, who really cares?
[11:31] SPEAKER_05: And then kind of validating and backing that up with a second place finish to Hayden at the grand final showed that he was he was finishing the year a bit stronger than everyone else, which could speak to how you have to maybe sustain a higher level of fitness and form all year round as a short course athlete, as opposed to a longer distance athlete where you kind of focus on maybe two or three big races a year.
[11:52] SPEAKER_05: And I feel like Hayden and Georgia Taylor Brown and and and Morgan Pearson kind of showed us that that short course year-long tour fitness really does stand up in T100 racing.
[12:03] SPEAKER_05: Hayden Wilde, he gets$25,000 for the win,$200,000 for the the series win.
[12:09] SPEAKER_05: I think an interesting one is that Yellow Geans only lost uh the the second place in the series standings to Mick Anute by one point.
[12:16] SPEAKER_05: So that's$170,000 for for Mick Anute and$150,000 for Yellow Gaines, all coming down to one point at the end of the day.
[12:23] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think what's going to be really interesting, this is a point that I sort of wanted to go into later, but you know, we can touch upon it now, is so many of those athletes talking about how hard they found it to pace themselves across a year and to still finish strong because it has always been about needing to be good in Qatar.
[12:41] SPEAKER_01: We saw how it flipped around standings, there were so many more points available in the final, there was so much money on the line, they needed to be good in Qatar, and so many of them struggle to do that.
[12:52] SPEAKER_01: Next year, the season is gonna be as long, if not longer.
[12:55] SPEAKER_01: So the women's tour is gonna start in March.
[12:59] SPEAKER_01: They then got to go through to December.
[13:01] SPEAKER_01: This year it started in April, so they're going even longer than they did this year.
[13:05] SPEAKER_01: That's gonna be really challenging for them to sort of balance that across the year.
[13:09] SPEAKER_01: And I think the one thing that might save them is there's less races, but then they're gonna have to be so good at really being strict with themselves and building in downtime, rest periods, back it off for a couple of weeks, build up again.
[13:22] SPEAKER_01: They can't just try and be on top form from March to December because as we saw this year, it was nigh on impossible.
[13:28] SPEAKER_05: And we saw Martin Van Riel take that final uh spot on the podium in third place.
[13:32] SPEAKER_05: I again, I think Martin Van Riel's had a really good race and you know, an up and down year, but he's he's his good performances are still really good.
[13:41] SPEAKER_05: I just kind of think Hayden has taken the level of T100 racing and elevated it past the point of what we saw from Martin Van Riel in 2024 when he did win the world title.
[13:51] SPEAKER_05: Like I think I think Hayden Wilde would have would have beaten him in very similar ways last year than what he is um this year.
[13:58] SPEAKER_05: So I don't really look at Martin Van Riel's last few results and and year and think, oh, it's it's super disappointing.
[14:04] SPEAKER_05: I think he'll be disappointed in it, even though he's just you know finished third and and won a heap of cash at the final of the of the T100.
[14:12] SPEAKER_05: But I I still I just I just think the level has just risen um because of Hayden Wilde, and and that is kind of just what Martin's performances were last year.
[14:22] SPEAKER_05: They just don't look as great as they did last year because of the level Hayden's bringing and and even the level that we're seeing Morgan Pearson start to bring.
[14:30] SPEAKER_01: So let's quickly touch on Yellagins as well.
[14:32] SPEAKER_01: We spoke about him before the race.
[14:33] SPEAKER_01: I think pretty much all of us had him on our podium for the for the day.
[14:38] SPEAKER_01: That did not transpire.
[14:40] SPEAKER_01: He sort of stuck with the the guys on the bike for a little while, but then really started to get distanced, and he just wasn't his usual self on the run.
[14:49] SPEAKER_01: And afterwards he did seem quite disappointed and spoke about how he was a bit flat after that 70.3.
[14:56] SPEAKER_01: And and do we think that's all it was, guys?
[14:58] SPEAKER_01: Just a bit flat and that come down after such a big high in Marbella?
[15:02] SPEAKER_05: Well, I talked about it last week, right?
[15:04] SPEAKER_05: How I still picked him to come second because I have so much faith in his ability to bike and run and get himself in the right position and the swim.
[15:12] SPEAKER_05: But I did say that there's no way he can compete with Hayden or be as motivated and driven as Hayden because of what he's been through recently.
[15:20] SPEAKER_05: So he lives in Australia.
[15:21] SPEAKER_05: So he flew from Australia to Europe, did a camp in Andorra, then went to Belgium, then went to Spain, won the Iron Man 70.3 World Championships in an effort that would have taken everything out of him, literally every bit of his soul.
[15:34] SPEAKER_05: Like he had he had to go in a head-to-head battle with Christian Blumenfeld for an entire half marathon and win it in a sprint finish.
[15:41] SPEAKER_05: So you know he's gone to the absolute depths of what he's capable of mentally and physically on that day, and that's his big goal for the year.
[15:49] SPEAKER_05: He becomes a two-time 70.3 world champion.
[15:52] SPEAKER_05: That that's kind of where historically he would have just called it uh the season and and be done with it.
[15:57] SPEAKER_05: But then he had to travel back from Europe to Australia.
[16:00] SPEAKER_05: He lives uh on the Gold Coast, so it's super hot and humid there.
[16:04] SPEAKER_05: So he's had to do uh a training block in the heat and humidity off the back of that 70.3 world title and the and the travel, and then he's had to travel all the way back to the Middle East, which is another 12 hours from Australia, and try and compete with the best middle distance athlete in the world.
[16:20] SPEAKER_05: It just was never gonna happen, was it?
[16:22] SPEAKER_05: And we were kind of silly for thinking that he could make that happen, but I guess it it shows the high regard we have for Yaller Geans.
[16:27] SPEAKER_05: But to me, he just looked flat and um almost like he didn't want to be there all day, which I assume he probably didn't, and I I think he probably only went there because of the contract and and all of the money that he he had to make there um by going and and completing the race.
[16:43] SPEAKER_05: And seventh is still a good performance considering that, but um, but yeah, he didn't look like the Yellow Geans at Marbella, did he?
[16:50] SPEAKER_04: Well, and Vicky would know this that that high after winning a world champs is you know, it's hard to it's not hard to come back from, but hard to get yourself, especially when you had to dig so deep, like like Jack said.
[17:01] SPEAKER_04: So I can't speak to it, but I'm sure you can relate Vicky and knowing that maybe that next race could could be the hardest one.
[17:07] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's there's a definitely a a factor there.
[17:09] SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was always lucky that that that sort of was the end of our season, end of the grand final in short course tended to be the end of the season.
[17:16] SPEAKER_01: Anything that came after that kind of didn't really matter.
[17:18] SPEAKER_01: Um, but when I did win the world title, I did go and do some super try racing afterwards, and I was kind of crap.
[17:24] SPEAKER_01: Um, but I also kind of didn't care.
[17:26] SPEAKER_01: So I was I was there for the good time, not for the the race results, so it didn't really matter to me that much.
[17:33] SPEAKER_01: But it is it's definitely a thing like you put your heart and soul into something that you know you've got your peak for the season, you've got your thing that means the most to you.
[17:41] SPEAKER_01: And for Yeller, that was definitely 70.3 worlds.
[17:44] SPEAKER_01: He was clear all year long that while he wanted to do well in the T100, that wasn't his prime focus.
[17:49] SPEAKER_01: And by the time we got that far through the year, it was obvious he wasn't going to win the T100, right?
[17:54] SPEAKER_01: Because Hayden was so far ahead of him.
[17:57] SPEAKER_01: Whereas the the world 70.3 champs was up for grabs and he really wanted to retain that title and he invested, he delivered, and then the come down was real.
[18:07] SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and he still walks away with$150,000 for third place in the overall standings.
[18:12] SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and well over$200,000 for his T100 years.
[18:16] SPEAKER_05: So for considering it wasn't his main goal the year, his main goal was the 70.3 World Championships, which probably made him, God, who knows,$250,000 to$500,000 when all said and done, to go and collect over$200,000 in your in your kind of second goal uh race series for the year.
[18:32] SPEAKER_05: It's been a pretty good year for Yala Geans, hasn't it?
[18:34] SPEAKER_05: And um speaking of Mick and Mr.
[18:36] SPEAKER_05: Consistency, you know, you you just know he's gonna finish around about you know fifth to second in every race he does at the moment, don't you?
[18:43] SPEAKER_05: I kind of feel like he's forgotten about in the T-100 because he keeps finishing super high up in these races.
[18:48] SPEAKER_05: Whereas I feel like if he went to North America or Australia or even Europe and did like Iron Man 70.3 racing, he probably could have won like eight 70.3s or something like that this year and probably finished close to the podium, if not on the podium, um, every time he raced one of those races.
[19:05] SPEAKER_05: But he's kind of doing it the hard way and and maybe as a consequence staying slightly under the radar in the T100.
[19:12] SPEAKER_04: Yeah, he seems to be really dedicated to the T100.
[19:15] SPEAKER_04: I think he likes this type of racing, and you know he's too simple and he seems to be really driven to like want to win.
[19:20] SPEAKER_04: Like he wants, they're always asking him, how can you beat Hayden?
[19:23] SPEAKER_04: He's like, Well, maybe if he messes up a little bit, then we can beat him.
[19:27] SPEAKER_04: Um so that's kinda uh he seems driven to kind of do that.
[19:30] SPEAKER_04: So uh it'll be interesting to see where his uh priorities lie next year.
[19:34] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, again, why why does Mika get forgotten?
[19:36] SPEAKER_01: He's he's so good and so consistent, but maybe he's um he's a little bit mechanical, you know, a little bit a little bit like a robot.
[19:44] SPEAKER_01: It's like you program him and off he goes and he just does it.
[19:46] SPEAKER_01: He's brilliant.
[19:47] SPEAKER_05: Yeah, he's a hundred percent like a robot, isn't he?
[19:50] SPEAKER_05: Both in the way he performs on a race field, but also in his personality.
[19:54] SPEAKER_05: Like he's um, I think also the English second language thing.
[19:57] SPEAKER_05: His English is really good, but it's probably not at the level of say Yarn for a Dino where he can fully express himself.
[20:04] SPEAKER_05: So he does come across as a little bit robotic, a robot who likes to eat a lot and has amazing hair.
[20:10] SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and a see-through tri-suit.
[20:16] SPEAKER_01: All right, let's move on to the women because we've done a long time on the men's race there.
[20:20] SPEAKER_01: So uh the women's race, I think first thing to note is that Greg was actually right, I have to admit it, when he said that races with Lucy in them are just different, the way she impacts on them and the dynamics to the point where even if she doesn't win, she will make sure that there are a few others who absolutely can't win.
[20:39] SPEAKER_01: And so therefore she sort of narrows the field of potential winners.
[20:42] SPEAKER_01: So my hat's off to you, Greg.
[20:44] SPEAKER_01: You were absolutely right, and I think that's exactly what happened this weekend.
[20:47] SPEAKER_01: She didn't win the race, and we actually saw her fade uh towards the end of the run.
[20:52] SPEAKER_01: But what she did do was take the possible victory away from Julie Daron.
[20:56] SPEAKER_01: And I thought that that would probably the gap that they would get in the swim would probably only be about 40 seconds, but it ended up being a minute 15.
[21:05] SPEAKER_01: So Lucy led the whole swim.
[21:07] SPEAKER_01: She took a group of about seven, I think, with her.
[21:10] SPEAKER_01: Julie critically wasn't in that group, so she came out one minute 15 down at the swim, then slid to about two minutes 15 early on the bike, and then it sort of stayed there, hovered around that two to two fifteen, maybe dipping up to more like 220 at points until about 65 kilometers on the bike.
[21:27] SPEAKER_01: Um, and then in that final part of the bike, they managed to bring that gap down to being about a minute 40 and they went into the run.
[21:35] SPEAKER_01: So those extra seconds that she lost in the swim, I think were critical because she just never got back in touch with the front after that.
[21:43] SPEAKER_01: As I said, Lucy was Lucy Charles Barclay was critical in making that happen.
[21:48] SPEAKER_01: She led the swim, she was right at the front all day long on the bike, and the only others to go with her were Jess Leamont and Kate Wolf.
[21:55] SPEAKER_01: As they then went out onto the run, the three of them, Kate transitioned the fastest, and they just never.
[22:00] SPEAKER_01: Saw her again, and she looked pretty in control for virtually all of the run, just in the final couple of kilometers started to falter.
[22:08] SPEAKER_01: And at one point, I actually thought she was sort of bending over in like disbelief and celebration, but as it turned out, she was actually starting to really heave.
[22:16] SPEAKER_01: Her stomach was playing up all sorts on them, and she barely made it across the finish line before she emptied the contents of her stomach.
[22:25] SPEAKER_01: And I think that shows how deep she had to go just to hold it together and put one foot in front of the other to cross the finish line.
[22:33] SPEAKER_01: And it was actually Georgia Taylor Brown who had the best race I think she's had all year.
[22:38] SPEAKER_01: Yes, she won in Bahrain last weekend, and we didn't touch upon Bahrain last week, but she did win in Bahrain in a world record time.
[22:46] SPEAKER_01: Make of that what you will, given we know all courses are different and we know that Bahrain has a slightly short run.
[22:52] SPEAKER_01: But she backed that up this weekend with, as I said, I think her best race of the year, and she was coming for Kate Wolf at the end of that race.
[23:00] SPEAKER_01: It was only 20 seconds at the end, and she walked across the finish line.
[23:03] SPEAKER_01: She sort of gave a bit of celebration across the finish line.
[23:06] SPEAKER_01: Julie Deron was then third a minute back.
[23:09] SPEAKER_01: So that was your podium on the day.
[23:11] SPEAKER_01: That meant that Kate Wolf, of course, became world champion, put Julie Deron into second, and Lucy Charles Barclay, who finished in fifth place on the day, I think.
[23:21] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
[23:22] SPEAKER_01: Fifth place on the day, then rounded out the overall podium in third.
[23:26] SPEAKER_01: Um, lots of other things to unpack there.
[23:29] SPEAKER_01: I mean, you've got Ellie Salthouse having an absolute blinder of a day, finishing in fourth.
[23:34] SPEAKER_01: You've got Lucy Byram on her return race after the awful tragic death of her partner just a few days after the French Riviera T100 back in September.
[23:45] SPEAKER_01: She returned to the circuit and had the fastest bike split by over a minute.
[23:50] SPEAKER_01: Um I don't know if you guys have seen that part of the race, but when she came past the bike pack that had Julie Darren in, she made them look stupid.
[23:57] SPEAKER_01: She rode so fast to the front of that pack.
[23:59] SPEAKER_01: It was like she had a turbo attached to her.
[24:02] SPEAKER_01: And she was really responsible for keeping those other girls close to the front because they were losing time at that point, and she dragged them back to within a minute 45 of the front.
[24:11] SPEAKER_01: So she had a really great return to racing.
[24:14] SPEAKER_01: Then there's other stories on the day, of course.
[24:15] SPEAKER_01: We've got Paula Finlay not finishing, we've got Ashley Gentle being so bravely public about the miscarriage she went through just a week before the race and still turning up and laying down an epic run split.
[24:28] SPEAKER_01: There's a lot going on on the race.
[24:30] SPEAKER_01: Um, but I'm gonna hand it over to you guys.
[24:32] SPEAKER_01: Stop talking for a minute and see if which which part of it you want to unpack first.
[24:36] SPEAKER_05: I think I want to start with a compliment to Greg as well, Vicky.
[24:39] SPEAKER_05: Uh we've talked about it all year that when Lucy Charles Barclay and Kate Wolf and Jessica Liemont and Taylor Nibb are in these T100 races, the winner comes from those four because you know they affect the dynamics in a way that it means Julie Duron and Ash Gentle can't win.
[24:54] SPEAKER_05: And then we all went crazy and forgot that we've been saying that all year.
[24:58] SPEAKER_05: And Greg's the only one who's like, guys, like we know this, but what are you talking about?
[25:02] SPEAKER_05: And and you said, Vicky, you're the resident T100 expert, but Greg stepped up and reminded you that he knows his shit as well, and and he just picked that perfectly.
[25:11] SPEAKER_05: And even picking Kate Wolf to win, not Lucy Charles Barclay.
[25:14] SPEAKER_05: So, I mean, shout out to Greg.
[25:16] SPEAKER_05: I thought that was um that was really good, and we probably should have paid it more attention at the time.
[25:21] SPEAKER_05: And you you were spot on.
[25:22] SPEAKER_05: It it did turn out that um Lucy Charles Barclay was sick though.
[25:26] SPEAKER_05: No, I don't know if that's come out or been talked about.
[25:28] SPEAKER_05: I don't know if Lucy's talked about that.
[25:29] SPEAKER_01: I don't think so.
[25:30] SPEAKER_01: I don't think that's public.
[25:31] SPEAKER_05: No, but she was sick all week.
[25:33] SPEAKER_05: Um, so she went into that race sick.
[25:35] SPEAKER_05: So if you're wondering why she um had a bit of a shitty run, I think she only had like the 10th fastest run, and we know how she's been running all year.
[25:42] SPEAKER_05: Uh, that's why.
[25:43] SPEAKER_05: So she was sick, and and it kind of was the perfect storm for Kate Waffe where Lucy Charles Barclay, even sick, can still lead the entire swim, get rid of Julie Duron and Ash Gentle.
[25:53] SPEAKER_05: And and then it was kind of Kate Waff's race to win at that point.
[25:56] SPEAKER_05: And I mean, Georgia Taylor Brown only finishing 20 seconds behind her.
[26:01] SPEAKER_05: I wouldn't have picked that um if if we went if we if we rewound to Singapore at the start of the year, or even really from anything we've seen all year, even though it has looked like Georgia Taylor Brown has been becoming the uh Olympic silver medalist version of her that we've seen, you know.
[26:16] SPEAKER_05: Um, yeah, I just thought I thought it was a great race from Kate, great race from Georgia, Lucy Charles Barclay impacting races, Imogen Simmons return.
[26:24] SPEAKER_05: You didn't mention that, Vicky, after her year-long battle with a with a doping band.
[26:28] SPEAKER_05: She finished 17th.
[26:30] SPEAKER_05: She was a long way off what we expect from Imogen, you know, 11th fastest swim and bike and 22nd fastest run.
[26:37] SPEAKER_05: So um seeing an 11th fastest bike split next to Imogen Simmons' name after a race is is weird because it's we're very used to seeing a first, second, or third fastest bike split next to her name.
[26:48] SPEAKER_05: Um, but I guess that's just going to happen.
[26:50] SPEAKER_05: Like how how like her training probably hasn't been that flash all year, and and she was kind of just coming back um to to kick start things and and clearly needs a big preseason to get back into things in 2026.
[27:01] SPEAKER_05: Um apart from that, I thought, you know, Ash Gentle's um run 105.20 after coming back from a miscarriage, you know.
[27:09] SPEAKER_05: I I don't really understand it, Vicky.
[27:11] SPEAKER_05: I'm sure you could probably relate to it more than us, but I kind of found that crazy, you know.
[27:16] SPEAKER_05: She ran 105.20, she was the fastest run by about a minute.
[27:20] SPEAKER_05: Uh yeah, I was I was impressed by that.
[27:22] SPEAKER_05: I don't know how impressed I should be, but but my stupid male brain was pretty impressed.
[27:27] SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm I'm incredibly impressed.
[27:29] SPEAKER_01: And I think not just from the the physical ordeal that she's been through in going through a miscarriage, but hugely well, much more so the the emotional side of things.
[27:40] SPEAKER_01: It's a a really, really difficult thing to go through.
[27:44] SPEAKER_01: I think just to even get on a plane to go to Qatar would have been really difficult, knowing that she had to do that without Josh by her side as well, as he was off doing his retirement race at the time.
[27:56] SPEAKER_01: And to then go through a race where again she spoke about how she didn't she had a really terrible swim, didn't feel good, kept plugging away, and then laid down that run split to round out her year with a very respectable finish.
[28:10] SPEAKER_01: I just think that takes a level of mental strength that not many people can understand.
[28:15] SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I just have to take my hat off to her and not only send her a huge amount of um love and respect for what she's been so public about talking about because it is so common, and people don't understand or realize how often this does happen, and she spoke about it so bravely and then turned up at the race and actually delivered a really respectable performance.
[28:39] SPEAKER_01: And I think we should just applaud her.
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[29:54] SPEAKER_04: We can revisit our race predictions a little bit, and thanks for the praise, guys.
[29:58] SPEAKER_04: But uh I'm happy to maybe get some points on the board for for some of the races this year for our pre set prediction uh tallies.
[30:05] SPEAKER_04: So I'm feeling pretty good about myself.
[30:07] SPEAKER_05: Yeah, Greg, we don't ever just let our predictions stay in the past.
[30:10] SPEAKER_05: A lot of people they make predictions and then they don't bring them up again.
[30:13] SPEAKER_05: Whereas we like to point out if someone did well in their predictions, but we we actually more just prefer to point out if someone did awfully in their predictions.
[30:20] SPEAKER_01: So Apo Apo's not doing well in this game, is he?
[30:25] SPEAKER_05: Not really.
[30:26] SPEAKER_05: So leading into this, we started this, you know, halfway through the year, and the leaderboard stood at me on four points, Vicky on one point, and Apo and Greg tied in last on zero points.
[30:37] SPEAKER_05: Uh, and in this week's race predictions, we had Apo coming last on one point.
[30:42] SPEAKER_05: Um, Vicky, the self-proclaimed T100 expert, she was in second last on four points.
[30:47] SPEAKER_05: Uh, and then we had a tie for the win with me and Greg both on six points.
[30:51] SPEAKER_05: And just to revisit um how we come up with those points, we use the Vicky Holland scoring method to evaluate our prediction results.
[30:58] SPEAKER_05: That means that you get two points if you predict the athlete in the correct spot, and one point if you pick them on the podium but in the wrong spot.
[31:05] SPEAKER_05: And a tie is broken by whoever picks the winner correctly, as ruled by Vicky following Kona 2025.
[31:12] SPEAKER_05: And you get one point if you're the winner of the overall prediction.
[31:15] SPEAKER_05: So that's why I'm on four, Vicky's on one, and Appon Greg are on zero.
[31:19] SPEAKER_05: Vicky, you are our rules governor, uh, the master of rules.
[31:24] SPEAKER_05: We both finish on six points, and we both predicted one of the winners.
[31:28] SPEAKER_05: So do we just go a tie?
[31:29] SPEAKER_05: Do we both just get 0.5 of our points for this one, me and Greg?
[31:33] SPEAKER_01: Oof.
[31:33] SPEAKER_01: I hadn't even thought about that.
[31:35] SPEAKER_01: So you either have to make an agreement that you're going for the tie, or you have to go for your next best prediction where you got second place in the right order as well.
[31:44] SPEAKER_04: I gotta say, imagine that I took the men's prediction seriously.
[31:48] SPEAKER_04: I mean, I picked Morgan Pearson to win the race.
[31:50] SPEAKER_04: Like, what are we talking about here?
[31:52] SPEAKER_01: You you left Hayden off, didn't you?
[31:54] SPEAKER_04: Yeah, just despite him.
[31:56] SPEAKER_04: Because my own bias and hatred.
[31:58] SPEAKER_04: No, I'm just kidding.
[31:59] SPEAKER_04: Uh yeah.
[32:01] SPEAKER_04: Wait, did I don't know how to do it.
[32:03] SPEAKER_04: Vicky, you're the you're the rules expert, but um, maybe, you know, maybe you just want to throw me the bone here.
[32:08] SPEAKER_05: Um, well, I think if anything, you probably do deserve it, Greg, because you picked the entire podiums except for Hayden Wilde.
[32:14] SPEAKER_05: But Vicky, the biggest factor I think, is that I had both of the winners in my podiums, whereas Greg had one of the winners off the podium altogether.
[32:24] SPEAKER_05: So even though he picked five.
[32:26] SPEAKER_02: He was joking.
[32:28] SPEAKER_02: No.
[32:29] SPEAKER_05: He definitely wasn't joking.
[32:33] SPEAKER_01: Oh, I don't.
[32:34] SPEAKER_01: I honestly don't know here.
[32:36] SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
[32:36] SPEAKER_05: I had both the winners, but Greg had five out of six.
[32:39] SPEAKER_01: Who picked uh second place correctly?
[32:42] SPEAKER_01: Did either of you pick in the men or women's, did you pick pick second place correctly?
[32:48] SPEAKER_04: I think I did with Georgia, didn't I?
[32:49] SPEAKER_05: Oh yeah, maybe no.
[32:51] SPEAKER_05: Didn't you have Georgia in third?
[32:52] SPEAKER_05: I think we just give it a tie, Vicky.
[32:54] SPEAKER_05: I think it's gotta be.
[32:55] SPEAKER_01: This is too complicated, especially because I can't remember what everybody predicted.
[32:59] SPEAKER_01: So with that in mind, right now I think we should go for a tie and maybe we throw it out to the listeners to decide if somebody should take it down.
[33:08] SPEAKER_01: If somebody deserves the point more than someone else, then let us know in the comments.
[33:12] SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, it's gonna go down as a very boring tie.
[33:15] SPEAKER_05: I I just think if you if it has to come down to picking the winner, and which we both did.
[33:20] SPEAKER_05: So therefore, who picked both of the winners on their podiums, which was me, and Greg just left one of them off.
[33:26] SPEAKER_05: I just don't want you to win again, so I think we have to we have to take a stand.
[33:31] SPEAKER_05: Greg's hatred for Hayden Wilde, it has to, it has to have some repercussions at some point.
[33:36] SPEAKER_05: And I feel like this is the perfect like learning lesson for Greg.
[33:40] SPEAKER_05: Like, hey, if you're gonna have that much bias against someone who was obviously gonna win and you leave them off out of spite, which was Greg's words, you've got to pay for that at some point.
[33:49] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he's getting his comeuppance now, aren't you, Greg?
[33:51] SPEAKER_04: I'm just happy to tie with Jack Kelly, the legend.
[33:54] SPEAKER_04: I mean, he the leader of the of the whole competition.
[33:57] SPEAKER_04: So uh I'll just pat myself on the back for for a good day in the office.
[34:01] SPEAKER_01: You realize if you do that though, then you go back down in the uh in the rankings, you go behind me again.
[34:07] SPEAKER_05: That's okay.
[34:08] SPEAKER_05: And even even if he got the one point, he would just be equal with you.
[34:11] SPEAKER_05: So the standings at the end of the year are me on five 4.5 points, Vicky in second on one point, Greg in third on 0.5 points, and um in last place, Apo on zero points.
[34:24] SPEAKER_04: Just imagine being a commentator for this series though and not winning.
[34:27] SPEAKER_04: That's actually crazy, huh, Vicky?
[34:30] unknown: No comment.
[34:31] SPEAKER_05: Well, it turned out me and Vicky were both supposed to commentate every race this year, and then neither of us really commentated any race this year.
[34:38] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we've been the biggest letdowns of the T100 series for the year, haven't we, Jack?
[34:43] SPEAKER_04: Imagine you guys don't get hired and then you're just watching the first race, and it's just me and Apo announcing there, and you're guys like, what the hell?
[34:49] SPEAKER_04: Like, just take your jobs.
[34:51] SPEAKER_05: It is pretty funny watching the race, and it's just Jan and um and the British guy who's Matt, who uh it's just Jan and Matt, and Jan every single time sends a message and just being like, Thanks for leaving me stranded here.
[35:03] SPEAKER_05: Like they never tried to replace Vicky, really.
[35:05] SPEAKER_05: They just they just go, Oh, we'll just go with two, Matt Jan.
[35:11] SPEAKER_01: That's definitely true.
[35:12] SPEAKER_01: No, I I they have gone with two commentators a lot of the year, and obviously Jan only ever signed for four this year, which he has honored, unlike myself and uh Jack, who've not done everything that we were supposed to do this year.
[35:25] SPEAKER_01: Well then Jan, ever the professional.
[35:27] SPEAKER_05: I still think the dream team, myself, Vicky, and Jan, that needs to that needs to make a return at some point.
[35:32] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but you sucked us off, Jack.
[35:33] SPEAKER_00: You don't want it anymore.
[35:35] SPEAKER_00: We can't have that.
[35:36] SPEAKER_00: Don't tease us.
[35:38] SPEAKER_05: Uh I probably do owe the T100 an apology at some point.
[35:41] SPEAKER_05: I uh I did kind of fuck them over.
[35:43] SPEAKER_05: But anyway, um, moving on, I I think we want to touch on a few of the the overall points from the year.
[35:49] SPEAKER_05: So why don't we start with each giving our famous A plus through to F uh grading of the T100 year as a whole?
[35:59] SPEAKER_05: Did you want to start us off, Greg?
[36:00] SPEAKER_04: Yeah, sure.
[36:01] SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, we've been critical on the T100 this year at times.
[36:06] SPEAKER_04: I feel like when we do it, we always want to give our perspectives though, and and say how maybe they can improve and not just I feel like it's become cool almost to like shit on the T100 this year.
[36:17] SPEAKER_04: Like you look at all the comments and stuff, and I don't know.
[36:19] SPEAKER_04: I just it's kind of annoying to me.
[36:21] SPEAKER_04: And you know, T-100 made some mistakes, and I think they took some strides in moving forward, and they're always trying to innovate.
[36:27] SPEAKER_04: So I'm gonna give them like a B minus.
[36:30] SPEAKER_04: You know, I think you could go lower, but I think they're putting in effort.
[36:35] SPEAKER_04: They're from my perspective as an athlete who's still racing, they treat athletes well, they pay athletes well, and you know, the broadcasts are entertaining.
[36:45] SPEAKER_04: Now, is it the best venues at all times?
[36:47] SPEAKER_04: Maybe not, like the whole Middle East, like you know, lacks some crowds of whatnot, and they've made mistakes and sometimes they're a little bit too silent, but I think overall, like they are trying, and yes, that's not good enough.
[37:00] SPEAKER_04: We demand more, but I I still am a fan, and I think it's best from the athletes, and I think from an athlete perspective, I I still applaud them and and what they're doing, and and you know, treating the athletes super well and and and paying them super well.
[37:14] SPEAKER_04: I mean, look how much money they put into the sport, and you know, look how much money some of these people made.
[37:19] SPEAKER_04: So that it can be it can be life-changing for some of these athletes.
[37:23] SPEAKER_04: Um so uh kudos to them for that, and hopefully they can, you know, keep pushing the needle forward and and and admitting their mistakes, be a little more forward-facing, like we've said, and uh, you know, keep pushing into a few more years to come.
[37:36] SPEAKER_01: I totally agree on on everything.
[37:38] SPEAKER_01: I think B B minus is is fair because they weren't perfect.
[37:42] SPEAKER_01: They absolutely weren't perfect.
[37:43] SPEAKER_01: There were mistakes, as you said, they were a bit slow to come out and make apologies at times.
[37:48] SPEAKER_01: There were uh last minute changes, um well, there were a lot of changes, whether they were last minute or not at races and venues and local and dates.
[37:58] SPEAKER_01: So those kind of things you you've kind of got to knock them down a few points because of that.
[38:03] SPEAKER_01: But on the whole, I still firmly believe they are doing good for our sport.
[38:07] SPEAKER_01: I think the series actually was pretty entertaining.
[38:10] SPEAKER_01: I would have loved to see some of those venues that we spoke about a few podcasts ago where we were talking about where could they combine their racing in these places where we've got great spectators, great communities that will support it.
[38:24] SPEAKER_01: So some of some more of that I think would have been really good.
[38:27] SPEAKER_01: But I also understand there's there's a money element to it, and they've got to go where they're gonna get the money to to host the races.
[38:33] SPEAKER_01: So yeah, for me, I I just I just agree with pretty much everything Greg said.
[38:38] SPEAKER_01: So it'd be boring.
[38:39] SPEAKER_05: I I think it's a uh I I I think it's a C plus to a B.
[38:43] SPEAKER_05: I I think in the end I probably land on a C plus.
[38:48] SPEAKER_05: I think the positives are the money.
[38:51] SPEAKER_05: It's great to see athletes making a lot of money.
[38:53] SPEAKER_05: It's great to see the opportunity given to so many athletes.
[38:56] SPEAKER_05: Like, think about how much money Hayden Wilde made this year as an example.
[39:00] SPEAKER_05: That's brilliant.
[39:01] SPEAKER_05: We love that.
[39:02] SPEAKER_05: I think I agree with Greg in that they treat the athletes really well.
[39:05] SPEAKER_05: When you go to their races, you get looked after as an athlete extremely well, whether it be the on-site mechanic that they have at all of their races who will do literally anything for you day and night, who just works for like seven days straight.
[39:17] SPEAKER_05: The hotels they always stay at bougie, nice as fuck hotels.
[39:21] SPEAKER_05: You always get looked after in a hotel at the T-100, whether it's at the buffet or in your room, or whether it's you need to get a lift to go and train at a pool or um in the Middle East to get your lift out to where you can ride your bike safely.
[39:36] SPEAKER_05: Any help you need at a T-100 um race, an athlete will get it by a staff member at the T100.
[39:41] SPEAKER_05: So, in terms of what they do for the athletes who get to race their races, I think you almost have to give them an A to an A plus.
[39:49] SPEAKER_05: You cannot question that side of the T100.
[39:53] SPEAKER_05: Where they let themselves down is a lot of the other stuff.
[39:56] SPEAKER_05: So all of the issues they've had, the Dubai issues, which were obviously uh an absolute shit show.
[40:03] SPEAKER_05: The changing of race locations from Vegas to Australia last minute, the Spain last minute change, things like that.
[40:10] SPEAKER_05: That's stuff that you kind of have to knock them back for.
[40:14] SPEAKER_05: I also think the Middle East is not good.
[40:17] SPEAKER_05: Like we're gonna obviously talk about this with the 2026 schedule and going forward, but the Middle East is killing it.
[40:23] SPEAKER_05: Like the momentum at the end of the year where it should be peaking is is not at all peaking.
[40:29] SPEAKER_05: It's kind of like I don't know, like the excitement for the grand final in Dubai were quite low.
[40:34] SPEAKER_05: And I think if it wasn't for the shit showing Dubai, the excitement and the talk about the races would have been pretty low.
[40:40] SPEAKER_05: And if you look at their viewing figures on YouTube, so they had 72,000 views for the grand final in Qatar and 75,000 in Dubai.
[40:49] SPEAKER_05: And if you compare that to the men's and women's Iron Man World Championships, Nice had 809,000 viewers and Kona had 705,000.
[40:58] SPEAKER_05: So more than 10 times bigger than either of the two marquee races in the Middle East for the T100.
[41:05] SPEAKER_05: And you can't be like, yeah, well, maybe they're not getting that many views, but look at the crowd they have, because then you look at the crowds and there's no one there for the grand final, and and it's kind of depressing.
[41:16] SPEAKER_05: It's like, is this really the the direction?
[41:18] SPEAKER_05: Like, is the financial benefit of being in the Middle East for the T100 really worth what it's what it the downside of it?
[41:26] SPEAKER_05: The the lack of heart, the lack of soul, the lack of a triathlon community at the races, no crowds for the professionals to compete in, how that looks on TV, how that kind of portrays the strength or or I guess um the lack of strength of the T100 World Series.
[41:43] SPEAKER_05: So I think things like that really have to make you knock the T100's overall season down a little bit.
[41:49] SPEAKER_05: That's why I'm kind of in the C plus to B range.
[41:51] SPEAKER_05: So there is positives and negatives, but I think they have quite a few things they need to fix.
[41:56] SPEAKER_05: Um, like they they clearly aren't with the with the Middle East, they're actually doubling down on that and and chucking one more Middle East race into it.
[42:04] SPEAKER_05: But um, but yeah, I think mixed mixed year for the T100, a lot of good, but also a lot of bad.
[42:09] SPEAKER_01: Do you know what I would love to see?
[42:11] SPEAKER_01: And I sh uh I know they've probably got contractual obligations which stop this, but what I think would be a really good middle ground here is starting the year in the Middle East.
[42:22] SPEAKER_01: There's multiple reasons for that.
[42:23] SPEAKER_01: Firstly, you can kind of have it as your marquee, everyone has to be there at the first event.
[42:29] SPEAKER_01: So have two Middle East events at the beginning of the year, one male, one female, if that's the route they're going down.
[42:34] SPEAKER_01: Um, so it kicks it off as like everyone's got to be there, marquee event, make a big deal out of it.
[42:39] SPEAKER_01: But then on top of that, it means that the weather is better.
[42:44] SPEAKER_01: So you get um a slightly more mild sort of uh climate in the Middle East in sort of March time.
[42:50] SPEAKER_01: That's much, much better than it is racing at this time of year.
[42:54] SPEAKER_01: And then on top of that, again, you can end the season sort of September, October time, somewhere either in Europe or in America, where you're gonna be able to get a better course and better crowds and make one of those races, whether again it's somewhere like the French Riviera, that what people loved that race, make one of those races your final.
[43:13] SPEAKER_01: And it means that the athletes then are racing over less time for the year, too.
[43:17] SPEAKER_01: They've only got maybe four or five races they're doing, so you can do that between March and September.
[43:22] SPEAKER_01: And it also means it doesn't encroach upon the 70.3 and the world champs, the Iron Man World Champs, which inevitably affects the races that people that are going to turn up to those to those races.
[43:35] SPEAKER_01: It sort of means people have to choose.
[43:37] SPEAKER_01: And if they could find a way to make that calendar work, I think it kind of ticks all the boxes.
[43:41] SPEAKER_01: You get your Middle East money, you get a better overall crowd at the big, big races like the final, you get uh people who can do seventy point three rolls and can do Iron Man and can do T one hundred if that's what they want to do.
[43:53] SPEAKER_01: And it means the athletes aren't totally knacker by the time they come to the grand final.
[43:57] SPEAKER_05: I couldn't agree more, Vicky.
[43:58] SPEAKER_05: Brilliant take.
[43:59] SPEAKER_05: Um They clearly the Middle Eastern countries and their tourism boards or whoever it is that's relating with the T100 on this like the kind of race to Qatar element of it though.
[44:09] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's what I mean with the contractual obligation.
[44:12] SPEAKER_01: That's where we're gonna struggle.
[44:13] SPEAKER_01: But if you could kind of sell it to them that no, we're gonna start in Qatar, and you know, then it's gonna be because they're not gonna call it the race Qatar going from 2027 onwards anyway, because we know they're rebranding.
[44:26] SPEAKER_05: Exactly.
[44:26] SPEAKER_05: It's a great call by you.
[44:27] SPEAKER_05: And it does take me to a it kind of reminds me of a few other things.
[44:31] SPEAKER_05: Like I think another real strength of the T100 this year is still their broadcasting.
[44:36] SPEAKER_05: I don't think it's as good.
[44:38] SPEAKER_05: I think I think it's kind of a little planer, and that that might be good.
[44:42] SPEAKER_05: I feel like they're going for plain a little bit.
[44:43] SPEAKER_05: I think Yarn's a real strength.
[44:45] SPEAKER_05: Um, whether you love Yarn, hate Yarn, are indifferent to Yarn, I don't think you can deny that he's a real strength of that broadcast.
[44:52] SPEAKER_05: And it's just a great thing that they have a broadcast for every race.
[44:55] SPEAKER_05: Like, I I I don't know about you guys, but I used to hate that I could only watch like two or three races a year, and when they were on, they were shit.
[45:03] SPEAKER_05: And and and now we have you know nine guaranteed broadcast professional middle distance races.
[45:09] SPEAKER_05: I feel like we can't complain about that, and that's been a real strength of the PTO in continuing to do that.
[45:14] SPEAKER_05: However, a weakness of it is it's spread out over a too long period of time.
[45:19] SPEAKER_05: This March to December calendar doesn't work.
[45:22] SPEAKER_05: It's it's too long, it's it's it's too long for the fans and the athletes, and we've harped on this more than anyone, I think.
[45:28] SPEAKER_05: But they should they should try and kind of um condense it into five or six months worth of racing.
[45:34] SPEAKER_05: Do it before the the world championship Iron Man races.
[45:37] SPEAKER_05: That way you're gonna have all of the athletes tired leading into that, prioritizing your races at the start of the year when they're keen to race.
[45:43] SPEAKER_05: And um, I think you keep audience engagement way higher.
[45:46] SPEAKER_05: So a couple more positive and negatives from the year for the T100.
[45:50] SPEAKER_04: You know, even Iron Man, I mean, experience Oman, like Oman world champs in what, 2028 or nine?
[45:56] SPEAKER_04: I mean, they're going that route too.
[45:58] SPEAKER_04: So, you know, being critical in the Middle East, I think is is yeah, that's fair.
[46:03] SPEAKER_04: But you know, Iron Man's going that route too.
[46:05] SPEAKER_04: So we'll see if they, you know, they'll probably take some criticism for that.
[46:08] SPEAKER_04: But it seems like the Middle East is here to stay.
[46:10] SPEAKER_04: Now, how can we work it in that makes sense for everyone, keeps the fan engaged?
[46:15] SPEAKER_04: There's so much money there, they can't pay the people to come out and watch it, huh?
[46:18] SPEAKER_04: They're like, nah, man, that pay me a hundred bucks.
[46:20] SPEAKER_04: Like, I make I make millions.
[46:22] SPEAKER_04: So uh yeah, maybe they gotta get some more money to create some fake fans over there.
[46:26] SPEAKER_05: Nah, you can't, I don't think you can accept that the Middle East is the place, Greg.
[46:31] SPEAKER_05: I I I like it's just not.
[46:32] SPEAKER_05: Germany is the place, America is the place, London is the place, Australia is the place.
[46:37] SPEAKER_05: That's a fact.
[46:38] SPEAKER_05: But the Middle East is here to stay with the T100 and with Iron Man.
[46:42] SPEAKER_05: So I guess we just accept it.
[46:44] SPEAKER_05: My question to both of you, and it's it's wild speculation and guessing, how much money is the Middle East injecting into Iron Man and T-100 to make this happen?
[46:55] SPEAKER_05: Because the T-100, for example, are not dumb.
[46:58] SPEAKER_05: They're not dumb people running the place.
[47:00] SPEAKER_05: They know that this is a lifeless, soulless, triathlon environment.
[47:04] SPEAKER_05: And if they could have a race in Germany in the grand final, it would fucking kick off.
[47:08] SPEAKER_05: Or if they had one on the sunny coast in Australia or even say at Cona or in London for the grand final, it would be way more visited by spectators, age groupers, everyone.
[47:20] SPEAKER_05: People would love it way more.
[47:21] SPEAKER_05: So, how much money do you think that they're being paid to forgo all of those benefits to have it in the lifeless, soulless Middle East?
[47:30] SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's such an open question because I don't have a clue, but um uh tens and tens of millions.
[47:39] SPEAKER_01: I uh maybe even hundred.
[47:42] SPEAKER_01: I think it's a lot.
[47:43] unknown: Wow.
[47:44] SPEAKER_04: It has to be, right?
[47:45] SPEAKER_04: I mean, that's how much they're paying their athletes and just to cover cover all of that, and like Jed, the the boozy, the bougie hotels.
[47:52] SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I can speak correctly.
[47:54] SPEAKER_04: Um that you know, that Jack was talking about.
[47:57] SPEAKER_04: So yeah, I mean they they they spend, and you know, I I actually applaud the T100 for spending and and and trying to make everything enjoyable and not taking the cheap way out, too.
[48:08] SPEAKER_04: But yeah, they're gonna need those injections of cash and it has to be.
[48:12] SPEAKER_04: I mean it has to be tens of millions at at a minimum, essentially.
[48:15] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a hundred.
[48:17] SPEAKER_01: Like that would that that wouldn't surprise me given given what we know their costs are likely to be, not just in terms of what they inject, as you said, Greg, into the athletes and into the hotels and all of the rest of it, but what it costs to host races, which is a huge cost, and shutting down roads and all of the other infrastructure you need around it, they've got to c they've got to cover their costs for that.
[48:41] SPEAKER_01: And then to give those rights to Qatar and places in the Middle East, for example, Qatar, of course, to host the the grand final and it be named race to Qatar and be branded as often as it is across the series.
[48:53] SPEAKER_01: They're giving up a lot to Qatar, so I expect they're getting a lot in return.
[48:57] SPEAKER_04: And feeding Mick and Newt.
[48:58] SPEAKER_04: I mean, that's a another.
[49:00] SPEAKER_04: Yeah, the biological Greg, I'm not even joking.
[49:05] SPEAKER_05: At Singapore, I once witnessed Mick and Newt eat eight plates of dinner.
[49:09] SPEAKER_05: Eight.
[49:11] SPEAKER_05: Eight plates.
[49:12] SPEAKER_05: Um okay, I just wanted to pause the podcast here, then Vicky and Greg, to make an announcement that we here at the Trithlon Hour love the Middle East.
[49:20] SPEAKER_05: We do not think that the Middle East is lifeless or soulless and wrecking triathlon.
[49:25] SPEAKER_05: We advocate for triathlon being in the Middle East.
[49:28] SPEAKER_05: Um, this has nothing to do with the revelation they might be spending a hundred million dollars on the T100 and would like a little piece of that cash.
[49:34] SPEAKER_05: This comes from our hearts and what we truly believe.
[49:37] SPEAKER_05: We love the Middle East.
[49:39] SPEAKER_01: And I personally love them.
[49:42] SPEAKER_01: Um and I would like a new car, please.
[49:46] SPEAKER_04: You know who seems to be like have some connections there is Hayden Wilde.
[49:50] SPEAKER_04: I feel like he, you know, he finished the race and you know, he jogged around.
[49:54] SPEAKER_04: I feel like he was like networking as soon as he finished.
[49:56] SPEAKER_04: He's like, he's like, oh, look at these guys.
[49:57] SPEAKER_04: I'm like, who are those guys and why is Hayden talking to them right after he finishes the race?
[50:02] SPEAKER_04: Like, this guy's freaking dialed.
[50:03] SPEAKER_04: He's plugged in, man.
[50:04] SPEAKER_05: He left the uh Middle East with$200,000 plus another big bag of cash in the back of his bently.
[50:11] SPEAKER_04: Kia world ride.
[50:12] SPEAKER_04: Kia worldwide.
[50:13] SPEAKER_05: Should we move on to the 2027 announcement of T100 and World Triton's merger?
[50:18] SPEAKER_05: Vicky, I mean, you're both the resident T100 expert and short course expert.
[50:23] SPEAKER_05: So this is both of your worlds colliding.
[50:26] SPEAKER_05: Can you explain to me what the fuck is going on?
[50:30] SPEAKER_01: Not really, no, but I'm gonna try.
[50:32] SPEAKER_01: Um, so this announcement came out just yesterday, and so far there's essentially been one press release, and we're left kind of dangling, waiting for further information, which we're told is gonna come early next year.
[50:46] SPEAKER_01: So they've said that they're gonna make a big announcement, a big sort of unveiling of what their plans are at some point in the first quarter of 2026.
[50:55] SPEAKER_01: But what we know at this point is World Trafford and the T-100 are coming together in an even more formal partnership, and they're gonna rebrand as the Trathlon World Tour.
[51:06] SPEAKER_01: That's gonna start in 2027, as I said, it's gonna be the existing T100 Tour and the World Trahlon Championship series.
[51:14] SPEAKER_01: That's the short course racing and the World Cups, which go along with that.
[51:17] SPEAKER_01: They're the tier below the World Trahl Series, and they're all gonna come together under this brand of the Trathlon World Tour.
[51:24] SPEAKER_01: And they're talking about it's gonna be over like a hundred races that are all gonna be covered in this.
[51:29] SPEAKER_01: And on the premise of that, I look at it and I think, well, that sounds quite exciting.
[51:34] SPEAKER_01: They're unifying, they're gonna make it more standardizing, make it easier for people to access Trathlon to watch it.
[51:41] SPEAKER_01: They're talking about publicity and that they're going to um broadcast every single race, which I mean that would be incredible if they can do that.
[51:50] SPEAKER_01: I mean, the finances of that slightly blow my mind, and maybe they're gonna need more money from the Middle East, but we don't know how it's gonna shake out just yet.
[51:59] SPEAKER_01: We know that they're gonna call it looks like I should say they're going to call the short course racing the T 50.
[52:08] SPEAKER_01: We don't know exactly what that means.
[52:10] SPEAKER_01: Are they therefore gonna shorten the short course racing slightly to make it 50 kilometers in total?
[52:15] SPEAKER_01: At the moment, it's 51.5.
[52:18] SPEAKER_01: So are they gonna bring that down slightly?
[52:20] SPEAKER_01: If so, what are they gonna do?
[52:21] SPEAKER_01: I mean, the most logical thing I think would be to take that off the bike leg, but we don't know at this point.
[52:27] SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot still to happen.
[52:30] SPEAKER_01: Uh, we know that the T100 has aspirations of going into the Olympics, and at the moment, the only way of doing that is by completely combining with World Triathlon and making a product that the Olympics would buy into.
[52:45] SPEAKER_01: And of course, the biggest issue for the Olympics, as it's always been, is number of athletes.
[52:50] SPEAKER_01: It's not number of medals, a number of events.
[52:52] SPEAKER_01: They would put more events in, but they will not increase the number of athletes at this point.
[52:57] SPEAKER_01: And so, therefore, if they're gonna go down that route and if T-100 does make it into the Olympics, it's gonna have to be the same athletes doing the short course and the T-100, which is that I think that's another really interesting point to add.
[53:11] SPEAKER_01: I've got all sorts of questions about how this impacts federations and what they're gonna do.
[53:15] SPEAKER_01: And is there gonna be a higher federation aspect in controlling who goes into the races?
[53:20] SPEAKER_01: Are there gonna be limits on number of athletes per nation that we're seeing at these races?
[53:26] SPEAKER_01: Like we don't know what's gonna happen yet, but yeah, some something big is coming.
[53:31] SPEAKER_04: I'm kind of fired up about it, actually.
[53:33] SPEAKER_04: I I think it could be really cool, and I feel like it's easy to criticize, like, oh, there's so many questions.
[53:39] SPEAKER_04: There are a lot of questions, like you said, but you know, I think from an athlete perspective, there was some there's some rumblings of like kind of a contender series as well.
[53:48] SPEAKER_04: Maybe that's just more of the World Cup vibe, but maybe they'll have some contender T100 type racing, like middle distance too, and you know, maybe it's more racing opportunities for not just short course athletes, but you know, maybe some people, and this is like selfishly, like people like me potentially.
[54:03] SPEAKER_04: You know, they had that contender series this year, but it kind of didn't there's they're just pay some money to some people who get wild cards, essentially, right?
[54:11] SPEAKER_04: So I I'm curious to see how that's gonna play out.
[54:14] SPEAKER_04: I will say though, now I feel like I've said good things about T100.
[54:19] SPEAKER_04: If they shorten the short course swim to one kilometer, I will never, ever, ever watch a race again.
[54:26] SPEAKER_04: That would be a that would just I god damn, that would piss me off.
[54:31] SPEAKER_04: But so I really hope they don't do that.
[54:33] SPEAKER_04: Um, like Vicky said, I hope they uh you know shorten the bike or something.
[54:37] SPEAKER_04: The these brands are funny.
[54:38] SPEAKER_04: I mean, T50, T100, it's like it's not like it's that cool, right?
[54:43] SPEAKER_04: So I don't know why they thought they had to brand it all as T50 or something.
[54:47] SPEAKER_04: It seems like they're really obsessed with F1 and like all they want to do is like copy the everything that F1 does, like with these brands and Qatar, Grand Prix, and whatnot.
[54:55] SPEAKER_04: So yeah, uh, but I'm I'm excited about it.
[54:58] SPEAKER_04: Just like I said, T100 is doing something, they're trying to innovate.
[55:02] SPEAKER_04: They're you know, they are changing.
[55:03] SPEAKER_04: We've been critical of this year, like, yeah, it wasn't the best season.
[55:06] SPEAKER_04: Guess what?
[55:07] SPEAKER_04: They're they're making big moves.
[55:09] SPEAKER_04: So um hopefully it can turn out well.
[55:11] SPEAKER_05: So there'd been rumblings of this all year, Vicky and Greg, and to the point where I'd had it said to me multiple times from right at the start of the year that the T100 were we're gonna buy World Triathlon or take over World Triton.
[55:25] SPEAKER_05: And it's ended up being true.
[55:27] SPEAKER_05: Whether whether they're doing that by you know financially paying out World Trithlon and fully taking it over, whether it's a merger where people stay in from both sides of both companies, whether it's a merger and they're the one company, but they're kind of both running the exact same things as they are now, who knows?
[55:43] SPEAKER_05: That's all still to play, and it's still over a year away from this starting.
[55:47] SPEAKER_05: So clearly the big takeaway from this is that the T100 and World Triathon are coming together.
[55:53] SPEAKER_05: And I think it's kind of been fashionable to have this PTO versus Iron Man debate and argument and comparison for the last two, three years.
[56:02] SPEAKER_05: But I do think this merger kind of makes it pretty clear that the PTO are going in a completely different different direction from Iron Man and combining basically everything else in the sport that is an Iron Man.
[56:14] SPEAKER_05: So now it's gonna be this series, the T100, T50 series, the World Triton Tour, whatever that ends up being, and Iron Man.
[56:23] SPEAKER_05: And obviously, challenge are kind of like the person way out in the background waving, wanting to be invited to the party, but maybe not being invited to the party.
[56:31] SPEAKER_05: And and so I don't know.
[56:33] SPEAKER_05: I wonder whether this is gonna make it more T100 versus Iron Man or less.
[56:37] SPEAKER_05: To me, it kind of seems like less, you know, like T100 are going away and doing their own thing and and they're leaving Iron Man to kind of run long distance racing and and they're not gonna try and compete with this.
[56:48] SPEAKER_05: Instead, they're they're almost becoming the governing body of a big part of the sport.
[56:53] SPEAKER_05: They're gonna try and infiltrate the Olympics, whether that's how they having the T-100 or the T50 at the Olympics, who knows?
[57:00] SPEAKER_05: What does this mean for the mixed relay?
[57:02] SPEAKER_05: Probably suggests that it's gone and it's gonna be T-100 and T50 at the Olympics, not the standard Olympic distance and mixed relay.
[57:11] SPEAKER_05: I think those two um races will get replaced.
[57:13] SPEAKER_05: And Greg, I completely disagree with your point about the swim.
[57:16] SPEAKER_05: If they are going to go to the T50, which it looks like they are, I think the only way to go about that is to reduce the swim and make it a 1k swim, 40k bike, and 9k run.
[57:27] SPEAKER_05: I just think they're the distances that will increase participation the most and make it more enjoyable for people to watch.
[57:34] SPEAKER_05: Triathlet core fans, lovers of the sport will push back against that.
[57:39] SPEAKER_05: But probably the number one deterrent for people wanting to participate in triathlon is the length of the swims, is the open water swims, is how hard the swim is.
[57:47] SPEAKER_05: And they look at the bike and run as something they can do, usually because they already do ride their bike or they already run.
[57:53] SPEAKER_05: And if you can sell them as the T100, look, we have this entry level or entry distance race where you only have to swim 1K.
[58:01] SPEAKER_05: I think it gets a lot more age group participation in the T100 brand of the sport.
[58:06] SPEAKER_05: And then from the T50, they can kind of kind of try and push them on to doing the T100, which is the Iron Man model of hey, start at a 70.3 and push up to an Iron Man.
[58:15] SPEAKER_05: So, all in all, I think it's pretty smart by the T100.
[58:19] SPEAKER_05: I think it's pretty positive by um for the T100.
[58:22] SPEAKER_05: I think it's a good business move by the T100.
[58:24] SPEAKER_05: I think without this, they were completely dead in the water and weren't going to exist anymore, and we're just gonna completely bleed money if the Middle East ever decided to go away from triathlon.
[58:34] SPEAKER_05: So, yeah, I don't think you can criticize much of it.
[58:37] SPEAKER_05: I think it's um pretty savvy.
[58:38] SPEAKER_04: I will push back on your point about the swim though, because I think you're right from an A-trip perspective, but from a racing perspective, like the short course scene, we're just gonna see like 50-man bike packs and women bike packs at every race if there's only one case swims, which I think is boring for fans.
[58:53] SPEAKER_04: So I think the level of racing for like a for a viewer, if they want to create this product on television, would be uh yeah, diminished in in that way.
[59:02] SPEAKER_05: And you both know that I'm a purist of this sport.
[59:05] SPEAKER_05: I agree with you wholeheartedly about how it will impact the dynamics of professional racing, reducing the swim distance.
[59:11] SPEAKER_05: I I wish the swim was longer across all distances.
[59:14] SPEAKER_05: I wish the Iron Man swim was 4K, for example.
[59:16] SPEAKER_05: I'm a big advocate for that for professionals because I do think it's just drastically too short in almost every triathlon distance, except for probably T100 distance.
[59:25] SPEAKER_05: But I just think you've got to look look by beyond your kind of blinkered, blind triathlon, diehard fan uh mind and and realize that the swim is a big deterrent and that going a little bit shorter for our shortest distance in the swim is probably a good thing.
[59:41] SPEAKER_05: And we've talked about it so many times on this on this podcast.
[59:44] SPEAKER_05: Too many people die in the water in Iron Man races.
[59:48] SPEAKER_05: It's a big problem that we have in the sport.
[59:50] SPEAKER_05: It gets brushed under the carpet.
[59:51] SPEAKER_05: We try to talk about it when it's relevant, it it happens all the time.
[59:55] SPEAKER_05: And I feel like having a swim distance that's manageable, okay, most people can do that.
[1:00:01] SPEAKER_05: The T100 swims are usually pretty manageable, they're not in quite as rough conditions as you get in some Iron Man races.
[1:00:07] SPEAKER_05: I think it's a really good entry point for a lot of people wanting to get involved in triathlon.
[1:00:12] SPEAKER_05: Whereas right now they see the entry point as 70.3 racing or Iron Man racing, which is where a lot of these swim deaths happen.
[1:00:19] SPEAKER_05: So I just think it's a good thing if we have one option that is like big and branded and not just your local triathlon race that not many people know about.
[1:00:27] SPEAKER_05: Like obviously, these shorter swims, these sprints and super sprints exist, but they're really hard to find and they're not what you're going to see on Instagram like you are with the T100 and Iron Man.
[1:00:35] SPEAKER_05: So that's all I'm saying on that side of things.
[1:00:38] SPEAKER_05: And then the other side of things that you touched on, Vicky, I'll take it a step further.
[1:00:42] SPEAKER_05: World triathlon are a fucking mess.
[1:00:45] SPEAKER_05: They are an absolute mess.
[1:00:47] SPEAKER_05: No one watches their races, no one subscribes and pays for them.
[1:00:50] SPEAKER_01: Me and Greg do.
[1:00:51] SPEAKER_05: Well, Greg doesn't even watch them all, he just pretends to love short course and doesn't actually watch all the short course races.
[1:00:57] SPEAKER_04: I've been subscribed for 10 years.
[1:01:00] SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
[1:01:00] SPEAKER_05: Okay, how many short course races did you watch this year live?
[1:01:03] SPEAKER_04: Well, they're always they are at tough times.
[1:01:06] SPEAKER_04: Don't lie.
[1:01:07] SPEAKER_04: I would say three or four men's races and maybe two women's races.
[1:01:12] SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
[1:01:12] SPEAKER_05: And you're a diehard 10-year subscriber.
[1:01:14] SPEAKER_05: No one really consumes world triathlon races anymore compared to what they did in, say, the Brownley era or the Gwen Jorgensen era, where World Trithlon was pretty good.
[1:01:22] SPEAKER_05: We know there's been these accusations and and the these court cases at the Court of Arbitration for Sport with corruption at World Triathlon at a leadership level.
[1:01:31] SPEAKER_05: So World Triton's a fucking mess.
[1:01:33] SPEAKER_05: And T-100 getting involved with World Triton in 2025 has been a big reason for so many of T-100's problems.
[1:01:41] SPEAKER_05: Like World Triton have got involved with T100, and the T-100's become messier as a result.
[1:01:46] SPEAKER_05: So I think the T-100 kind of taking over World Triathlon, which is hopefully what happens in this merger, will actually bring a bit of life back into short course racing.
[1:01:55] SPEAKER_05: Because short course racing is amazing and it is great to watch when done well, but World Triton have killed it to a degree and made it super unpopular relative to long course racing because of a lot of inaction and a lot of people protecting their jobs at the top, but not actually doing a very good job at the same time.
[1:02:10] SPEAKER_05: So I think on that, on that kind of side of things, it's a brilliant thing for the sport of triathon, the T100 and the leadership at T100, who we've been super critical of at points, but are still much, much better than World Triathon leadership and will come into short course racing and at least try to innovate with it, at least try to give you a broadcast product that you can watch that's not strictly behind a paywall and make it sh make it so that all short course races are actually a broad broadcast product and you can watch them all.
[1:02:40] SPEAKER_04: Did Jack just say he likes short course racing and it's purest for?
[1:02:44] SPEAKER_00: I I nearly jumped in.
[1:02:46] SPEAKER_00: That's I nearly jumped in, me too! He said it is amazing.
[1:02:52] SPEAKER_00: That's what he said.
[1:02:53] SPEAKER_05: Clip that.
[1:02:54] SPEAKER_05: Clip that.
[1:02:55] SPEAKER_05: I don't know why I said that.
[1:02:56] SPEAKER_05: That was stupid.
[1:02:57] SPEAKER_05: I was just I was just lying because everyone says we hate the T 100.
[1:03:00] SPEAKER_05: So I was just I was just completely lying and being fake.
[1:03:03] SPEAKER_05: I hate short course racing, I hate the T100.
[1:03:05] SPEAKER_02: Boo.
[1:03:06] SPEAKER_05: How disappointing was it that Sam Renof didn't get out of the VIP area, didn't take the suit off.
[1:03:12] SPEAKER_05: He left the suit on, he was sat in the VIP area by all reports all day, whining and dining, schmoozing.
[1:03:18] SPEAKER_05: I think the reports were he was drinking an Italian red wine in the Middle East, and he didn't get out on the racetrack and make sure that the athletes knew how many laps they'd done.
[1:03:27] SPEAKER_05: That was probably for me the biggest disappointment of the T100 year in 2025.
[1:03:31] SPEAKER_01: Did you see the board though that they had?
[1:03:34] unknown: Yeah.
[1:03:35] SPEAKER_04: I mean it's crazy that it wasn't there the whole year, actually.
[1:03:38] SPEAKER_01: I know.
[1:03:39] SPEAKER_01: It was legit that board, right?
[1:03:41] SPEAKER_01: It was like a full, it was like being in an airport with all the with all the details of each athlete on it, what laps they were on, how far they had to go, their race number.
[1:03:51] SPEAKER_01: Like there was so much detail on that board.
[1:03:54] SPEAKER_01: And there was a bell, which we got to see on the broadcast.
[1:03:58] SPEAKER_01: I think they were quite specific about showing the ringing of the bell so that we all knew that they had it covered.
[1:04:03] SPEAKER_01: Um so they went, they did go above and beyond, but I am also a little bit sad that it was not Sam ringing that bell.
[1:04:10] SPEAKER_01: That would have been that would have been a good move.
[1:04:12] SPEAKER_05: You got to give him credit, though.
[1:04:13] SPEAKER_05: They fixed all the problems, they did it well.
[1:04:15] SPEAKER_05: It it appeared a pretty problematic problem-free grand final.
[1:04:19] SPEAKER_05: All like all in all, considering how chaotic and problematic the year's been for him, it seemed like the end of the year, and then with this announcement, things are kind of looking up for the T100.
[1:04:28] SPEAKER_05: Am I crazy in saying that?
[1:04:30] SPEAKER_04: No, definitely not.
[1:04:31] SPEAKER_04: And I just want to see the behind the scenes.
[1:04:33] SPEAKER_04: They're like, cut to the bell now, cut to the bell now, go, go, go! Like, this is our main priority of the day.
[1:04:38] SPEAKER_04: Uh and like on their Instagram feed, like, look at them ringing the bell.
[1:04:42] SPEAKER_04: Uh yeah, I I think you're totally right, Jack.
[1:04:45] SPEAKER_04: And um, yeah, I I'm I'm excited.
[1:04:48] SPEAKER_04: I mean, the sport has grown and T100 listens and and improves, so I I think you're I think you're spot on with that.
[1:04:54] SPEAKER_04: Like it there's there's a lot more opportunity and and things coming.
[1:04:58] SPEAKER_04: We don't know quite what they said early 2026.
[1:05:02] SPEAKER_04: Now we know T100 and we can be critical of this.
[1:05:04] SPEAKER_04: It's probably gonna be mid-2026 before we hear about 2027.
[1:05:08] SPEAKER_04: But uh yeah, maybe maybe they'll actually announce something on time this this this year.
[1:05:12] SPEAKER_05: It could even be end of 2026.
[1:05:14] SPEAKER_05: Me and Vicky actually have experience with what goes on behind the scenes on when they're showing things on the screen, and it would have been it would have been Martin, surely Vicky.
[1:05:22] SPEAKER_05: Oh I don't know, maybe maybe I'm out of the loop.
[1:05:24] SPEAKER_05: But there's stories about Martin who runs, he was the ex-head of F1's broadcast, Greg, and then Sam Renoof and him went on a coffee date and and Sam asked him to come and take over the broadcast of the T100.
[1:05:35] SPEAKER_05: And so he's the man behind it all.
[1:05:37] SPEAKER_05: He's um he's a he's a very nice man these days, Vicky, but uh you definitely if you get on his wrong side, he'll tell you to fuck off and in a very st in a very stern way.
[1:05:48] SPEAKER_05: And so you I reckon if people had to miss that bell, he would have probably sprayed at least five or six people, and at least maybe one or two would have lost their jobs.
[1:05:58] SPEAKER_01: It's interesting, you know.
[1:05:59] SPEAKER_01: I Don't know whether he was on this race, so he's actually not covered all the races this year, he's still done quite a lot of them.
[1:06:06] SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's now often uh a lady called Helen, who I don't know if you ever met, Jack.
[1:06:12] SPEAKER_01: Um, Helen actually listens to the podcast.
[1:06:14] SPEAKER_01: She sent me a message the other day and said she's been enjoying listening to us on the podcast.
[1:06:19] SPEAKER_01: And I think what really shows and is really helpful is that Helen is a transhlete herself, so she produces, but she's also a translate, is invested in the transform world.
[1:06:28] SPEAKER_01: So she kind of gets the sport, which I think we don't often see in people who do produce triathlon broadcasts.
[1:06:34] SPEAKER_01: So I think uh she would also have been saying if it was her, get to that bell, someone show that we are doing everything right, someone show the board, show the bell.
[1:06:46] SPEAKER_05: Is Helen scary compared to Martin, Vicky?
[1:06:48] SPEAKER_05: Because like Martin is a little bit scary.
[1:06:50] SPEAKER_01: Martin, yeah, Martin is a teddy bear by all accounts compared to what he maybe was like back in his Sky Sports days.
[1:06:56] SPEAKER_01: Um, there are some stories about him, but we won't go into them.
[1:07:01] SPEAKER_01: Whereas I don't think Helen's got quite the same reputation on that front, no.
[1:07:06] SPEAKER_05: One of the great Martin stories is um a very big name in the F1 world said said fuck on an F1 broadcast.
[1:07:13] SPEAKER_05: And uh I won't tell the story, but what Martin then went on to do is one of the funniest stories I've ever heard.
[1:07:19] SPEAKER_05: So he he he doesn't like swearing, Martin, and he he told me that if I ever swore on air, he'd fucking kill me.
[1:07:26] SPEAKER_01: It's very British in that way, you know, we don't swear on air.
[1:07:30] SPEAKER_01: It feels weird to me if I swear on this podcast, because you know, that that's just absolutely, you know, I I do swear in real life, but I absolutely would never swear on a TV broadcast.
[1:07:42] SPEAKER_01: And to swear on a podcast feels like, oh, like you shouldn't do that.
[1:07:46] SPEAKER_01: Like it's just not what we do.
[1:07:48] SPEAKER_01: And so Martin is very much from that ilk of people, and you know, we we have to issue apologies if people say things on air.
[1:07:56] SPEAKER_05: Oh, the amount of times I I Craig Alexander said um said bloody once, and I had to apologize on air for it.
[1:08:03] SPEAKER_05: And me and Crowy didn't know what for.
[1:08:04] SPEAKER_05: We were looking at each other like Martin just came in my ear and he said like to apologize, and I was like, Well, I didn't know what for, but I I was like, Oh, apologies for for some of the language used.
[1:08:12] SPEAKER_05: And I was like to Crow, what what did you say?
[1:08:15] SPEAKER_05: And then we went back to Martin afterwards, like, we didn't swear, like we we definitely didn't swear.
[1:08:19] SPEAKER_05: And he said that we said bloody, and we're like, oh geez, that's classic Martin.
[1:08:23] SPEAKER_05: But yeah, shout out Martin if you're listening.
[1:08:25] SPEAKER_05: I know he used to listen to the podcast, and shout out Helen, thank you for tuning into the Trifle Now.
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[1:09:59] SPEAKER_05: Shall we move on to our second topic of the day, which is the lies and deceit of one of our own triathletes, Iron Ryan.
[1:10:07] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, this is quite the story.
[1:10:09] SPEAKER_01: And I I think are we just gonna let you tell it, Jack, and then we'll go into the details of what we know afterwards, shall we?
[1:10:15] SPEAKER_05: Yep, I'm happy to.
[1:10:16] SPEAKER_05: Happy to talk about it.
[1:10:17] SPEAKER_05: So this has been, like I said in the intro, this has been a big deal in a small endurance subsect on Instagram over the last fortnight.
[1:10:26] SPEAKER_05: And we wanted to bring you this case because Iron Ryan has listened to the podcast.
[1:10:32] SPEAKER_05: He follows the Triflon Hour on Instagram, he follows Sam Apperdon on Instagram, Greg and Vicky, he follows Kim Morehouse on Instagram.
[1:10:43] SPEAKER_01: No love for me and Greg, though.
[1:10:45] SPEAKER_01: Is that right?
[1:10:46] SPEAKER_05: He does not follow Vicky or Greg, which I mean fairly.
[1:10:49] SPEAKER_01: Good.
[1:10:50] SPEAKER_01: I feel safer that way, I think.
[1:10:54] SPEAKER_05: Okay, so a lot of people are gonna have no idea what we're talking about.
[1:10:57] SPEAKER_05: But Ion Ryan, he's an Australian guy, he's been a bodybuilder.
[1:11:02] SPEAKER_05: I mean, a real, real serious-looking bodybuilder type fella.
[1:11:06] SPEAKER_05: At one point, he looked like he'd been on the Colin Chartier gear.
[1:11:09] SPEAKER_05: If it was just from diet and exercise, it's an impressive, impressive body that Iron Ryan had put together for himself.
[1:11:15] SPEAKER_05: So shout out to him on that front.
[1:11:17] SPEAKER_05: Um, but then he got into triathlon, and clearly, judging by his name, Iron Ryan, I guess a play on words that he used to pump iron and do Iron Man.
[1:11:25] SPEAKER_05: So he um he got pretty involved in the triathlon space um for a bit, and I think he still is.
[1:11:30] SPEAKER_05: I think he's both participated in in triathlons himself and coached a lot of people to their first triathlon or some some you know more experienced athletes to their triathlon racing.
[1:11:40] SPEAKER_05: But he came under immense fire about two weeks ago when an Instagram account called Official Unofficial Time, uh, and what that Instagram account is, is it's a new uh Instagram account, and they're kind of the official marathon time integrity unit for for marathons worldwide.
[1:12:00] SPEAKER_05: And iron Ryan had claimed on his Instagram multiple times in his Instagram bio on Strava to have finished a marathon in sub three hours on two occasions, and then on Instagram, official unofficial time comes out with a case file, number 25A, the subject being at underscore iron underscore Ryan underscore and for his race at Melbourne Marathon in 2024, where it turns out he didn't actually break three hours for the marathon, and they've put this whole kind of case together where they've given his bib number, the date of the marathon, um, and this is this is kind of the evidence summary of the case.
[1:12:43] SPEAKER_05: So the official time was actually a DNF, time posted to Instagram 259.41.
[1:12:51] SPEAKER_05: So it turns out he's claimed to have ran 259.41 for the marathon, which is bloody fast, it's about 415, 416 per K.
[1:12:59] SPEAKER_05: And he didn't even finish, he actually DNF'd, and the suspect was sighted walking around the finish line at three hours 17 minutes and 15 seconds after the marathon began.
[1:13:12] SPEAKER_05: So what happened, right, was he ran 42.2 kilometres on his Garmin or Koros or whatever he had on his wrist and he hit stop.
[1:13:23] SPEAKER_05: This didn't get into the finish line of the marathon, however.
[1:13:26] SPEAKER_05: This had him passed out on the side of the road, and then what he did is 17 minutes later, he made his way to the finish line, and instead of crossing through the finish line, he kind of walked around the outside of it and you know met his people there and pretended that he finished the marathon with a sub three-hour time because he posted it on Strava on Instagram based off his watch time, but he never even actually finished the marathon, and so they've called him out on this and they've put all these photos of it.
[1:13:55] SPEAKER_05: So they like put a photo post of him like celebrating with the medal and a big smile on his face, um, like and a caption Malbourne Marathon 2024.
[1:14:04] SPEAKER_05: Uh, I called this one run fast or die, and it was exactly that 259 sub-3, and he didn't even actually finish.
[1:14:13] SPEAKER_05: And they've got like photos of him walking into the MCG, taking a selfie with someone, which is where the finish of the race is, well after that three-hour finishing time.
[1:14:23] SPEAKER_05: They've got a photo of him like crossing the line outside of the finish line.
[1:14:28] SPEAKER_05: It's like a full, full investigation.
[1:14:30] SPEAKER_05: They've got his Strava file showing that it finished way outside of the finish area.
[1:14:34] SPEAKER_05: Like they've just put across this case that basically um black and white shows that he's never broken sub three for the marathon, and he's claimed it two times as well at this point, and they've they've kind of concluded that both of them were fake and lies.
[1:14:48] SPEAKER_05: Uh and so I don't know where to take this.
[1:14:52] SPEAKER_05: Is this something we should joke about?
[1:14:54] SPEAKER_05: Is this funny?
[1:14:54] SPEAKER_05: Is the fact that one of our own a triathlon uh triathletes has gone into the marathon world and deceived the audience that he has on Instagram and Strava when he's coaching them and using his athletic endeavours to get coaching clients, something that we should actually be taking seriously and not wanting in our small sport of triathlon?
[1:15:14] SPEAKER_01: I have multiple thoughts on this, but the first thing to say is on this post there are well over 200 comments, right?
[1:15:23] SPEAKER_01: So people have gone wild for this.
[1:15:25] SPEAKER_01: And Iron Ryan has a very strong and passionate group of followers who are very supportive of him, and so I that's what I was joking about at the start when I said I feel slightly safer knowing that he doesn't follow me because anything we say here could come back at me with a lot of online hate.
[1:15:46] SPEAKER_01: I think for me, the real issue is because honestly, I don't give a crap what time you ran in your marathon.
[1:15:51] SPEAKER_01: It's not about a time, right?
[1:15:52] SPEAKER_01: It's about what you did to get there, the training you put in, how hard you had to dig on a daily basis, what you had to give up, what you went through in the race.
[1:16:02] SPEAKER_01: That the personal endeavor is what matters in completing uh any race of any distance, but a marathon especially, it's so iconic to complete a marathon that it kind of doesn't matter about the time.
[1:16:14] SPEAKER_01: But what bothers me is this idea that you can modify the time at your will because that's what suits you, and that's the time you're gonna put out there.
[1:16:24] SPEAKER_01: It's it's the dishonesty that goes with it.
[1:16:26] SPEAKER_01: And from both himself, and I've seen other athletes that he coached have also done similar, have edited their times, and and they're now coming under fire from the uh official Man of the Time integrity unit, which is a brilliant account, and everyone should go follow them.
[1:16:43] SPEAKER_01: Um, is that people are saying it's their right to choose whether they um upload moving time rather than the chip time.
[1:16:51] SPEAKER_01: So, for example, someone said, Oh, well, I took three toilet stops, so I stopped my watch and I've chosen to upload my moving time.
[1:16:58] SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, that is not that is just so bonkers to me.
[1:17:03] SPEAKER_01: I mean, okay, fine.
[1:17:05] SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna go into that coffee shop for an hour, I'm gonna have a latte, I'm gonna have a slice of cake, I'm gonna let it settle, I'm gonna read a newspaper, ring my mum for chat, and then I'm gonna go finish the marathon.
[1:17:15] SPEAKER_01: But because I stopped my watch, I've still ran a 259 marathon.
[1:17:20] SPEAKER_01: Like, no, that's not how it works, guys.
[1:17:22] SPEAKER_01: I'm really sorry, but the the standard that you are held to when you run a marathon is how long it takes you from the second you cross that start line to the second you cross that finish line, and that is it.
[1:17:34] SPEAKER_01: And you can't publicize anything other than that, it's not the done thing, it's it's not it's a it's it's a lie.
[1:17:41] SPEAKER_01: It's sorry, it's it's a lie.
[1:17:43] SPEAKER_01: And so that for me is that is the big issue here, and I just think that if you if you think anything different, you're bonkers.
[1:17:52] SPEAKER_04: Oh, 100%.
[1:17:53] SPEAKER_04: And I don't know, I feel like the time does matter.
[1:17:55] SPEAKER_04: And Jack said 259, it it's slow.
[1:17:59] SPEAKER_04: I don't know what we're talking about here.
[1:18:00] SPEAKER_04: Someone runs two hours, okay?
[1:18:02] SPEAKER_04: So a three-hour marathon is not that fast, and then you're just cheating to run like a mediocre marathon time, it's all a great achievement.
[1:18:10] SPEAKER_04: I get it.
[1:18:10] SPEAKER_04: Like it's not like it's an easy thing to do, but it it just like it's so it's it's like the Instagram culture, I guess we live in.
[1:18:18] SPEAKER_04: I'm this Instagram account is awesome because there's so many people doing this with their like with their followings and all of this, and I feel like we're in a kind of a running boom, and even 70.3 boom, where all these like influencers are hyping it up.
[1:18:32] SPEAKER_04: So I I love that this counts uh uh doing this, but we've talked about it before.
[1:18:38] SPEAKER_04: If he posted a 305 marathon or 259, like most people don't care, right?
[1:18:44] SPEAKER_04: I mean they're both very similar.
[1:18:46] SPEAKER_04: You know, you don't have to dece your audience or deceive your audience.
[1:18:51] SPEAKER_04: It's just a weird thing to kind of lie about and obviously go through great lengths to try to try to do it.
[1:18:56] SPEAKER_04: I mean, especially in some of the stories on this on this account are wild.
[1:19:00] SPEAKER_04: People are are they're trying harder to shave five minutes.
[1:19:04] SPEAKER_04: I'm like, well, maybe just train a little bit more and put that your effort into that, and maybe you could actually get the time that you faked uh faked putting down.
[1:19:12] SPEAKER_05: I do think 259's fast though, Greg.
[1:19:14] SPEAKER_05: I know like we deal in pro-triathlon and you're a pro-triathlete and you're a great athlete, but to run 415 per K for a marathon is fucking good.
[1:19:23] SPEAKER_05: Like it really is, and it it is well, well, well above average and hard to do.
[1:19:28] SPEAKER_05: And I have I don't think you've actually even done it yourself, have you, Greg?
[1:19:32] SPEAKER_04: Calling him out here.
[1:19:33] SPEAKER_04: A road marathon?
[1:19:34] SPEAKER_04: No.
[1:19:35] SPEAKER_05: So I mean, I think it's pretty good, and I kind of see it from Iron Ryan's perspective, right?
[1:19:40] SPEAKER_05: Where he has this well, it's a persona he's built for himself, and maybe he sells it to his coaching clients, right?
[1:19:48] SPEAKER_05: Because he has 12,500 followers on Instagram, he has in his bio line that he is a coach and that he turns average to elite.
[1:19:56] SPEAKER_05: And to do that, you have to be elite yourself, right?
[1:20:00] SPEAKER_05: And so for him, in his mind, he's clearly put a lot of weight on this three hour and sub-three hour marathon thing, where if he's on one side of it, he's elite, and if he's on the other side of it, he's not elite.
[1:20:11] SPEAKER_05: And so he had to sell the idea that he is this really good athlete who can go from a big jacked bodybuilder to a really fit marathoner and triathlete and look how good I am.
[1:20:23] SPEAKER_05: And that's where his ego's gotten too involved, and probably his business and trying to paint like this persona of himself to be this fit, strong, elite endurance athlete has gotten big on him, and he's gone and lied to get more coaching clients to kind of um justify his own ego and own character that he's built to himself and probably bought into it himself.
[1:20:46] SPEAKER_05: He probably believed he did break three hours and like bought into the lie, but then we've got this page that's come out and exposed that there are so many ways you can lie about doing this, and clearly the chip time is what matters when it comes to the marathon, and it doesn't matter what your moving time is, it doesn't matter what your Garmin said, it's all about what what happened when you crossed this finish line.
[1:21:06] SPEAKER_05: So I can see how it's happened to him, but also you can't do it.
[1:21:09] SPEAKER_05: Like you can't let your ego get that that big and and take control of you to the point where you're purposely deceiving um everyone that follows you, especially if it means you get money from those people.
[1:21:20] SPEAKER_05: Because what's to say some people, triathletes, runners, haven't paid for coaching by him because they see him as good based on these times and results in races that he's put on social media.
[1:21:32] SPEAKER_05: So that's where it gets a bit dodgy and a bit shady, and I don't think is a laughing matter.
[1:21:37] SPEAKER_05: Because I do think that there are people that you're taking advantage of in that situation, and it's pretty shit ass behaviour from from Ryan.
[1:21:44] SPEAKER_05: Um I have looked into it a bit from from all accounts.
[1:21:47] SPEAKER_05: He's a decent guy, and uh and I can only take that at face value, but it is pretty shitty behaviour, and something I don't think we want in the triathlon world.
[1:21:55] SPEAKER_01: He also had, you know, his his I think birth of his first child was like a few days before one of those marathon races where he claimed to have gone sub three.
[1:22:04] SPEAKER_01: You don't have to be sub-three three days after your child's been born, like that doesn't it doesn't mean anything if you'd gone 301 instead.
[1:22:13] SPEAKER_01: Like, no one's gonna be like, oh god, you're the shit in that race, weren't you?
[1:22:16] SPEAKER_01: I mean, whoa, awful.
[1:22:18] SPEAKER_01: Um, but the other thing I've seen defended quite a few times on both his account or on his his case file, I should say, and others, is this idea of GPS time.
[1:22:28] SPEAKER_01: Oh well, the race was long.
[1:22:29] SPEAKER_01: My GPS said that I did this.
[1:22:32] SPEAKER_01: Nothing worse.
[1:22:32] SPEAKER_01: Oh, exactly.
[1:22:33] SPEAKER_01: We all know that GPS's as good as they've gotten, they're not a hundred percent accurate.
[1:22:38] SPEAKER_01: They are always, always a few percent out.
[1:22:40] SPEAKER_05: And this was at Melbourne Marathon, which is a verified course, which means the stringency of their measurement is certified to a level far beyond just your GPS watch on your wrists.
[1:22:51] SPEAKER_05: Like they do it in lots of different ways to confirm the distance.
[1:22:54] SPEAKER_05: And so an accurate marathon will always be long on your GPS watch.
[1:22:58] SPEAKER_05: Always, and often by quite a lot, by like 500 metres on your GPS watch.
[1:23:02] SPEAKER_05: That's how it should be.
[1:23:04] SPEAKER_05: So, oh that that shits me to no end, Vicky, when people try and say that.
[1:23:08] SPEAKER_05: But what about this?
[1:23:09] SPEAKER_05: Like just go home and be with your wife, or like just jog the marathon to the best of your ability and be proud of that and go home and enjoy the time with your wife and kid.
[1:23:18] SPEAKER_05: Like you've had you've just had a baby three days ago and you're more focused on lying about your marathon time.
[1:23:24] SPEAKER_05: That is that is actually fucking batshit crazy to me, Vicky.
[1:23:27] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, put it this way, as someone who has, as we all know, been through childbirth twice.
[1:23:32] SPEAKER_01: If my husband thought that it was more important for him to be off a marathon a few days after, I'm not sure that would have gone down too well in my house.
[1:23:41] SPEAKER_01: But hey, that is their personal choice.
[1:23:43] SPEAKER_01: And if their family circumstances mean that's what he wants to do and they're all supportive of it, then then fine.
[1:23:50] SPEAKER_01: And like I said, I'm I'm gonna choose to be uh positive about him and say that there is obviously a lot of people who praise him and really think highly of him and really love him, and I'm gonna choose to believe that he doesn't understand that what he's doing is fundamentally wrong because he's just looking at it as a as a harmless lie or as using my chip time or just using, sorry, not using my chip time, using my moving time or using my GPS distance.
[1:24:15] SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna choose to assume that he thinks that all of those things are okay, but I think what we're here saying is it's not, and you gotta not do it.
[1:24:24] SPEAKER_04: I want to see the uh triathlon version of this Instagram account where we see people's PRs and then we look into it and the swim was cancelled and like all this type of stuff, you know.
[1:24:34] SPEAKER_04: I I feel like I see it a lot in the triathlon world to be like sub 448.
[1:24:38] SPEAKER_04: I'm like, what?
[1:24:39] SPEAKER_04: That's not a thing, you know.
[1:24:40] SPEAKER_04: I'm just like, or just like, oh sub 512 half.
[1:24:44] SPEAKER_04: I'm like, what?
[1:24:44] SPEAKER_04: You in 5'11, like people are just like making these like barriers that aren't actually a thing.
[1:24:49] SPEAKER_04: Like three hours, I get or like sub-five hours or sub four, would be like, yeah, sub 432 is sick.
[1:24:54] SPEAKER_04: Like that was my goal.
[1:24:55] SPEAKER_04: Like just to make it seem faster.
[1:24:56] SPEAKER_04: So it's interesting.
[1:24:57] SPEAKER_04: But you know, it's you'd even say Iron Man California, you know, it's like the you know, the Dan Plug's world record, all these type of things when these swims are way downriver, or people are selling their coaching services in a shortened swim or a cancelled swim.
[1:25:11] SPEAKER_04: I'm sure it goes on a lot.
[1:25:13] SPEAKER_04: I don't spend the time researching, and I'm sure you could spend hours and hours a day trying to uncover uh that type of stuff in the travathon world as well.
[1:25:21] SPEAKER_05: Should we start these Instagram accounts?
[1:25:23] SPEAKER_05: Should we we could do it, Greg?
[1:25:24] SPEAKER_05: We could do it.
[1:25:26] SPEAKER_04: I just like how much effort?
[1:25:28] SPEAKER_04: Like this accounts it's like tons of effort, and it's like it's so s it's so official.
[1:25:34] SPEAKER_04: It's like they like they comment on the thing, like, oh, we're we are under investigation, they have a case file with evidence.
[1:25:40] SPEAKER_04: I'm like, dude, this is like hours a day for one person.
[1:25:44] SPEAKER_04: Can you imagine all of that?
[1:25:45] SPEAKER_04: Uh how much time that would take, Jack?
[1:25:47] SPEAKER_04: So yeah, um, if you hey if you spearhead it, what about Vicky?
[1:25:50] SPEAKER_04: She's just sitting at home with her her her kids, huh?
[1:25:52] SPEAKER_04: She's not doing anything.
[1:25:53] SPEAKER_05: She doesn't even do anything.
[1:25:54] SPEAKER_05: Vicki could definitely do it.
[1:25:56] SPEAKER_00: Easy, lads.
[1:25:58] SPEAKER_00: We've been getting on well today.
[1:25:59] SPEAKER_00: Let's not let's not throw me under the bus like that.
[1:26:02] SPEAKER_00: Or we could we could be in trouble having a bit of an argument.
[1:26:05] SPEAKER_05: Okay, we'll move on from that.
[1:26:07] SPEAKER_05: The the last thing I would say, Greg and Vicky, is that if Iron Ryan listens to this, because we know he's listened to the podcast before, I've been told that.
[1:26:14] SPEAKER_05: And and like we like we said, he even follows the famous Kim Morehouse of the Morehouse Morehouse method, not a 55-year-old female, actually an attractive, sexy 35-year-old male with a hot wife and uh three kids, as Vicky reported last week.
[1:26:28] SPEAKER_05: Um, you know, so clearly.
[1:26:30] SPEAKER_05: I quite like that.
[1:26:32] SPEAKER_05: That's exactly what Vicky said.
[1:26:33] SPEAKER_00: I think I called her a worldie.
[1:26:35] SPEAKER_05: Yeah, worldie.
[1:26:36] SPEAKER_05: I took that, I thought that meant hot.
[1:26:37] SPEAKER_05: And you're off air, you were like Kim.
[1:26:39] SPEAKER_05: You kept saying Kim Morehouse is actually super sexy, guys, which we found weird, but you didn't say it on air, but um uh that was in the message.
[1:26:46] SPEAKER_05: Thunder.
[1:26:47] SPEAKER_05: Anyway, uh what I was gonna say is I think that we put it out there that we will coach Iron Ryan for free.
[1:26:55] SPEAKER_05: Myself, Vicky, Greg, and Apo.
[1:26:57] SPEAKER_05: We'll give you free coaching if you want to do a marathon Iron Ryan.
[1:27:01] SPEAKER_05: We'll coach you legit to a sub three hour marathon.
[1:27:04] SPEAKER_05: So just slide into our DMs, let us know.
[1:27:06] SPEAKER_05: You'll get all four of us as your personal coaches, and we'll finally make that sub three happen.
[1:27:11] SPEAKER_05: And then you can post on your Instagram that you actually did it.
[1:27:15] SPEAKER_05: I think we all know by now that fueling your training and racing has become such a massive part of getting the most out of yourself as an athlete.
[1:27:22] SPEAKER_05: And if you're someone who doesn't realize that or knows it, but still does a lot of faster training or just wings your day-to-day training nutrition, or even worse, your racing nutrition, then you need to stop doing that.
[1:27:34] SPEAKER_05: And the best way for you to fuel your training and racing is using precision fuel and hydration.
[1:27:39] SPEAKER_05: Precision's PF90, PF30, PF30 caffeine, and flow gel are the best gels on the market.
[1:27:44] SPEAKER_05: They taste great, their texture is incredible, unlike almost every other gel I've used.
[1:27:48] SPEAKER_05: And the packaging they come in is just so easy to use, which is low key a huge benefit.
[1:27:53] SPEAKER_05: They also have energy chews, which are a nice mix up from gels and honestly probably taste even better than gels.
[1:27:59] SPEAKER_05: They're really easy.
[1:28:00] SPEAKER_05: Easy to use on the bike or out on a long run.
[1:28:02] SPEAKER_05: They're just a great mix up.
[1:28:03] SPEAKER_05: They also have a carbohydrate drink mix, which is great to use on the bike, or if you've got someone riding next to you while you do a long run, or just to have on pool deck while you swim.
[1:28:13] SPEAKER_05: It's an awesome option for that.
[1:28:15] SPEAKER_05: Precision, they just make the best training and racing nutrition on the market.
[1:28:18] SPEAKER_05: There's not even a close second, in my opinion.
[1:28:20] SPEAKER_05: So if you're using other brands, at least give precision a try because I think you'll like them more and you'll realize why they're literally taking over the triathlon fueling market.
[1:28:30] SPEAKER_05: It's not because they spend a heap of dollars marketing, because they really don't compare to some other big brands.
[1:28:36] SPEAKER_05: It's just because their stuff is the best.
[1:28:37] SPEAKER_05: So try it for yourself.
[1:28:39] SPEAKER_05: Head over to Precision Fuel and Hydration's website and use the discount code TTH25 for 15% off your first order.
[1:28:47] SPEAKER_05: Okay, moving on to your Spotify comments, which is how we finish every show at the moment and is by far our favourite part of the podcast.
[1:28:54] SPEAKER_05: So I'll start us off.
[1:28:56] SPEAKER_05: Jordan P.
[1:28:57] SPEAKER_05: Yule says Greg's triumphant moment of correcting Jack on the pronunciation of La Quinta was somewhat undermined by him referring to it as an English word, classic Greg.
[1:29:10] SPEAKER_05: Now, Greg, I also found this funny myself when uh you said that I wasn't good at English, when as an English speaker, I just mispronounced a Spanish word, despite the fact that you have really not gone a single episode without stuffing up the English language.
[1:29:26] SPEAKER_05: And then I mean, I guess this is is probably just another example of you stuffing up by not even knowing the difference between the English and Spanish language.
[1:29:34] SPEAKER_04: I honestly have no defense on that.
[1:29:36] SPEAKER_04: I didn't even think about it in that way, and um I I bleed red, white, and blue.
[1:29:42] SPEAKER_04: Alright, I don't know what to tell you.
[1:29:44] SPEAKER_04: Alright, Paul Thornton says, so no one is gonna mention the golf cart driven by an Ironman employee rolling down the hill into pro athletes' bikes.
[1:29:54] SPEAKER_04: Uh and Nat Stews says something similar.
[1:29:57] SPEAKER_04: They love to drag T100 under the bus, but miss the opportunity to throw Iron Man under the bus.
[1:30:02] SPEAKER_04: Or under the golf cart here, as we could say.
[1:30:05] SPEAKER_04: Um yeah, that it actually is kind of crazy.
[1:30:08] SPEAKER_04: So I think it was what Jackie Herring had to race on a different back wheel and um Steph Clutterbuck's Steph Clutterbuck's bike.
[1:30:15] SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I mean it I I feel like they got dragged a little bit on the Instagram, like some memes and things, but it seemed like it ended up fine, but you know, Iron Man, they they know how to just move on from stuff.
[1:30:27] SPEAKER_04: Uh they just sweep stuff under the rug and they just pump out more content to make you forget about it.
[1:30:32] SPEAKER_04: So uh yeah, that that's that's pretty bad though.
[1:30:35] SPEAKER_04: Like, was he like was he drunk?
[1:30:36] SPEAKER_04: Like what what was happening?
[1:30:37] SPEAKER_04: Was it in the middle of the night?
[1:30:38] SPEAKER_04: Like what I don't know what the s exact situation was.
[1:30:40] SPEAKER_01: See, I mean it is pretty bad of Iron Man to have an incident where they are actually trashing athletes' bikes so their actual equipment is broken and it impacts on them whether they can even start the race or not, and whether they're riding on their own equipment or not.
[1:30:58] SPEAKER_01: That's that's a pretty huge deal.
[1:31:00] SPEAKER_01: And yeah, we we were a bit remiss there not to mention that last week because that was a pretty major F up by Iron Man there.
[1:31:09] SPEAKER_05: We did mention it, we talked about it and we brought it up.
[1:31:11] SPEAKER_05: We just didn't throw Iron Man under the bus for it.
[1:31:14] SPEAKER_05: But uh Paul and Nat, shithouse by Iron Man.
[1:31:17] SPEAKER_05: Absolutely shithouse.
[1:31:19] SPEAKER_05: You cannot have your race organizer ruining your race before the race has even started by destroying your equipment.
[1:31:25] SPEAKER_05: I really hope that Jackie and Steph have been looked after.
[1:31:28] SPEAKER_05: I haven't looked into whether they have.
[1:31:29] SPEAKER_05: I'll I'll maybe reach out to them and ask so that we can follow up on it on next week's podcast.
[1:31:34] SPEAKER_05: But you hope that Iron Man, you know, financially remunerated them because it's definitely ruined at least one, if not both of their races.
[1:31:40] SPEAKER_05: Not good enough by Iron Man.
[1:31:42] SPEAKER_05: But also, I just wasn't surprised.
[1:31:43] SPEAKER_05: Like I heard it and I kind of laughed and I was like, yeah, of course.
[1:31:46] SPEAKER_05: Like that doesn't surprise me at all.
[1:31:48] SPEAKER_05: Um, only question I have out of it, Greg, for you if you had like, if you were rich, if you were super rich and you had a personal driver that took you around to all your appointments and your training for the rest of your life, who would you rather have drive that car?
[1:32:02] SPEAKER_05: The La Quinta or La Quinta golf cart driver or the T100 boat driver from San Francisco?
[1:32:11] SPEAKER_04: Oh, that is a tough one.
[1:32:13] SPEAKER_04: I mean, probably the T100 boat driver because they would just stop way short of the of the transition zone and they wouldn't get anywhere near it.
[1:32:21] SPEAKER_04: So it would be safer, you know, for the athletes.
[1:32:23] SPEAKER_04: I'm I'm thinking about the other people.
[1:32:25] SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, and it would get me in better shape because he would just drive halfway to all my appointments and I would have to walk the rest.
[1:32:31] SPEAKER_01: It wouldn't like drive into your house or something on the way home.
[1:32:36] SPEAKER_01: Guys, guys, stop the press.
[1:32:39] SPEAKER_01: Kim Morehouse has written in again in response to the Vicky investigate speech last week and has said, no apology needed.
[1:32:49] SPEAKER_01: Calling Kim a unisex name is generous.
[1:32:52] SPEAKER_01: I've only ever met one other male Kim in my entire life, and even he was unsure about this.
[1:32:58] SPEAKER_01: I've embraced the confusion and used it to my advantage for years in job interviews, free upgrades, and now travel on podcasts.
[1:33:05] SPEAKER_01: My kids now think we are famous, and I even forced my parents to listen to this segment just so they finally understand.
[1:33:12] SPEAKER_01: Yes, I make the name work for me, but let's be honest, it's absolutely a girl's name.
[1:33:19] SPEAKER_01: Kim, all I can do is give you a round of applause there.
[1:33:23] SPEAKER_04: I mean, well done.
[1:33:25] SPEAKER_04: What a legend.
[1:33:26] SPEAKER_01: What a legend.
[1:33:27] SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for supporting the podcast, but also for your humour.
[1:33:31] SPEAKER_01: Very much appreciated.
[1:33:33] SPEAKER_01: And in response to that, David Goddard has also commented and said, Kim knew what he was doing.
[1:33:38] SPEAKER_01: New nickname unlocked, catfish Kim.
[1:33:41] SPEAKER_01: So I think we've got to appreciate both of those.
[1:33:44] SPEAKER_01: And uh yeah, just absolutely love that.
[1:33:46] SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Kim.
[1:33:47] SPEAKER_04: I love the part about free upgrades.
[1:33:49] SPEAKER_04: Like it just pretend, like I don't know, just like pretending to be a woman, like getting stuff and be like, hey, what's up?
[1:33:54] SPEAKER_04: I'm a man.
[1:33:55] SPEAKER_04: Like that's like kind of kind of amazing.
[1:34:00] SPEAKER_05: Just goes to show you women have it easier in this life, Greg.
[1:34:03] SPEAKER_05: They're always getting the free upgrades, and Kim knows it.
[1:34:06] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, maybe, maybe it's in the name because Vicky's not doing much for me on the free upgrades front.
[1:34:11] SPEAKER_01: So maybe that's it.
[1:34:14] SPEAKER_05: How funny is it that Kim's gone from having a prediction method named after him to now having a nickname of catfish Kim?
[1:34:23] SPEAKER_05: Like the the highs to lows of Kim Moorehouse on his podcast has been pretty funny to follow.
[1:34:29] SPEAKER_05: And again, Kim, I can only apologize for how many times Vicky has called you sexy on the group chat.
[1:34:35] SPEAKER_05: Um apologies.
[1:34:36] SPEAKER_05: That's all I can say.
[1:34:38] SPEAKER_00: Stop it, Jack.
[1:34:40] SPEAKER_05: Katie Dickerson says 55 is an elderly woman.
[1:34:44] SPEAKER_05: Jack.
[1:34:44] SPEAKER_05: Speaking of which, I always assume Jack was a 55-year-old man and was shocked to learn how young he is.
[1:34:51] SPEAKER_05: Not because of appearance or voice, just because he's so knowledgeable.
[1:34:54] SPEAKER_05: Well, Katie, thank you for that.
[1:34:56] SPEAKER_05: You're right.
[1:34:56] SPEAKER_05: I am very knowledgeable on almost everything.
[1:34:59] SPEAKER_05: And I do take back my comments about 55 being an elderly woman.
[1:35:02] SPEAKER_05: I've copied that on every social media that I have: Strava, Instagram, Spotify.
[1:35:07] SPEAKER_05: Everyone's called me out about that.
[1:35:09] SPEAKER_05: I did some Googling.
[1:35:10] SPEAKER_05: It's generally accepted in Western culture that elderly is 65 onwards.
[1:35:15] SPEAKER_05: So uh I didn't quite have Kim Morehouse as a 65-year-old, so actually not an elderly person.
[1:35:21] SPEAKER_05: Um, so apologies to anyone who's between 55 and 65 that I may have offended on last week's episode.
[1:35:28] SPEAKER_05: Um, and then another comment, Zhang Zhang, which I believe is probably not Zhang's real name, said 55 is elderly, not cool, hilarious pod.
[1:35:37] SPEAKER_05: I almost dropped my kettlebell at several points while listening.
[1:35:41] SPEAKER_05: And I read this comment because I wanted to ask you, Greg and Vicky, how do we feel about people lifting kettlebells while they listen to our podcast?
[1:35:49] SPEAKER_01: Uh well, I listen to podcasts in the gym.
[1:35:51] SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't know normally do kettlebells, but I do other kind of weights.
[1:35:55] SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I'm I'm I'm alright with that.
[1:35:57] SPEAKER_01: We are we not okay with that?
[1:35:59] SPEAKER_04: I feel like podcasts for like lifting is like an interesting choice.
[1:36:04] SPEAKER_04: You're just like, oh, just like lift light.
[1:36:06] SPEAKER_04: Like I'm listening to a podcast.
[1:36:08] SPEAKER_04: Like you should be in there freaking hitting that death metal, that yeah, that Apo death metal, dude, and be lifting huge weights.
[1:36:15] SPEAKER_01: We we don't all need the death metal to get ready to lift weights.
[1:36:19] SPEAKER_01: Some of us just have that internal drive.
[1:36:21] SPEAKER_04: We don't all need to look like iron ryan, you know, and push those massive amounts of weights.
[1:36:27] SPEAKER_05: I always just associate kettlebells with like Jim Bros, who would listen to more Joe Rogan, Theo Vaughn style podcasts, not the triathlon hour.
[1:36:35] SPEAKER_05: That's that's what I straight away thought.
[1:36:36] SPEAKER_05: I'm like, oh cool, we've actually got some strong dudes listening to the podcast.
[1:36:39] SPEAKER_05: That's uh that's uh that made me happy, not just like skinny armed little people like me and Greg.
[1:36:44] SPEAKER_04: I'm jacked.
[1:36:45] SPEAKER_04: Um Nick Warner says, I really enjoyed 10 beers deep Apo on last week's pod.
[1:36:51] SPEAKER_04: Can this be a regular occurrence?
[1:36:53] SPEAKER_04: He's already adds lots damn it.
[1:36:57] SPEAKER_00: Oh no.
[1:36:59] SPEAKER_00: Oh Greg, you were doing so well.
[1:37:02] SPEAKER_05: Uh guess what, Greg?
[1:37:03] SPEAKER_05: That's that's not in.
[1:37:05] SPEAKER_04: He already adds a lot of podcast value, but after his third beer, it got loose.
[1:37:11] SPEAKER_04: Also, what would happen if Greg had a few beverages before next week's pod?
[1:37:15] SPEAKER_04: Will he be able to string a sentence together?
[1:37:18] SPEAKER_02: I can't do it normally.
[1:37:21] SPEAKER_04: Fuck up.
[1:37:23] SPEAKER_04: I've been.
[1:37:27] SPEAKER_04: Um no, I speak better.
[1:37:29] SPEAKER_01: Um well, let's try it next week.
[1:37:31] SPEAKER_04: It's a tipping point.
[1:37:32] SPEAKER_04: Well, what?
[1:37:33] SPEAKER_04: I'm thinking drunk in the middle of the day on Sunday.
[1:37:35] SPEAKER_04: I gotta train still.
[1:37:36] SPEAKER_01: Hey, it's Christmas.
[1:37:37] SPEAKER_01: It's a Christmas Christmas podcast.
[1:37:39] SPEAKER_01: You can have uh mold wine or something beforehand.
[1:37:41] SPEAKER_01: Let's go for it.
[1:37:42] SPEAKER_04: Uh Americans don't drink mold wine, Vicky.
[1:37:45] SPEAKER_04: I don't even know what that is.
[1:37:46] SPEAKER_04: Don't speak to me like that ever again.
[1:37:48] unknown: Okay.
[1:37:50] SPEAKER_01: You don't know what you're missing out on.
[1:37:52] SPEAKER_05: Alistair Bramley drank a lot of it, I believe, Greg.
[1:37:55] SPEAKER_04: I'll drink some mead over here.
[1:37:56] SPEAKER_04: How about that?
[1:37:58] SPEAKER_04: You guys drink?
[1:37:58] SPEAKER_00: Are you in Harry Potter now?
[1:38:00] SPEAKER_00: What the hell?
[1:38:02] SPEAKER_03: Butterbeer.
[1:38:03] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[1:38:04] SPEAKER_01: That is what it is, exactly.
[1:38:07] SPEAKER_01: Alex Markman says, loving the pod, and this is my first comment ever.
[1:38:11] SPEAKER_01: Congratulations, first comment ever, getting it read out.
[1:38:14] SPEAKER_01: This one has been bugging me for a while.
[1:38:16] SPEAKER_01: Whenever you guys talk about the Mount Rushmore of Tarathlon or goats of trathlon, why is the great Chrissy Wellington never mentioned?
[1:38:25] SPEAKER_01: And I've thought about this.
[1:38:26] SPEAKER_01: You're absolutely right.
[1:38:28] SPEAKER_01: There is no way in hell we shouldn't be mentioning Chrissy more than we do because she was seriously legit.
[1:38:35] SPEAKER_01: And the only reason I can think of why we don't mention her as much is probably because her career was actually relatively short.
[1:38:42] SPEAKER_01: I mean, she packed a ton into just a few years, but she wasn't a professional for a really, really long time.
[1:38:49] SPEAKER_01: And so maybe that's sort of added to her being a little bit forgotten, a little bit quicker than she should have been, because there's no way we should be talking about her.
[1:38:57] SPEAKER_01: The way she burst onto the scene and was so exceptional at what she did, she has to be one of the greatest ever, right?
[1:39:04] SPEAKER_05: I think there's a couple of things, Vicky.
[1:39:07] SPEAKER_05: I think she's overshadowed by Danny Allah Reef.
[1:39:09] SPEAKER_05: I think if Danny Allah Reef never came into the sport, Chrissy Wellington would kind of fill that spot on the mantelpiece on the Mount Rushmore as the best female triathlet of all time.
[1:39:19] SPEAKER_05: But because Danny Ella came in and did what Chrissy did, but probably better with the 10 world titles instead of only the four world titles, I think it overshadows Chrissy, especially because they had the same coach and Danny Ella Reeve kind of started doing it directly after Chrissy finished.
[1:39:35] SPEAKER_05: Chrissy's career was incredible.
[1:39:37] SPEAKER_05: She won four Iron Man World titles, she won 13 Ironmans and she only started 13 Ironmans, so she was undefeated over the Iron Man distance, the only athlete in the history of the sport to be undefeated at the Iron Man distance.
[1:39:50] SPEAKER_05: She broke the world record multiple times.
[1:39:53] SPEAKER_05: Like she did everything in long course triathlon, and she was the most dominant triathlete that the world has ever seen.
[1:39:59] SPEAKER_05: But I think the two factors are that Danny Alleref came in afterwards and probably did it a little bit better, and so she gets forgotten about.
[1:40:06] SPEAKER_05: And she only did it over that short period of time, like Vicky said.
[1:40:09] SPEAKER_05: Like her career was what, like 2006, 2007, to 2011.
[1:40:13] SPEAKER_05: So a very short career, relatively speaking, but she did more in those years than anyone else has ever done.
[1:40:18] SPEAKER_05: So you're right, we don't probably bring her up enough.
[1:40:20] SPEAKER_05: I probably have her as like the maybe fourth or fifth best triathlete of all time, probably fifth best triathlete of all time on my list.
[1:40:28] SPEAKER_05: So still regard her really highly, but uh not quite top four for me.
[1:40:32] SPEAKER_05: Keith says, How about a pretendee award for the best Spotify comment of the year or the person with the most Spotify comments read out over the year?
[1:40:41] SPEAKER_05: Give us pretenders something to compete over in the comments section.
[1:40:44] SPEAKER_05: Enjoy the pod, keep up the good work.
[1:40:46] SPEAKER_05: Greg and Vicky, what do you reckon?
[1:40:47] SPEAKER_05: A pretendee for the best Spotify comment of the year?
[1:40:50] SPEAKER_04: I like that.
[1:40:50] SPEAKER_04: Um can you put them all on a Google Doc for us, Jack?
[1:40:53] SPEAKER_04: That'd be great.
[1:40:54] SPEAKER_04: Thanks.
[1:40:55] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
[1:40:56] SPEAKER_01: I vote if Jack can compile them, I absolutely would vote on that.
[1:41:01] SPEAKER_01: I think that's a great one.
[1:41:02] SPEAKER_01: But I'm not doing the legwork.
[1:41:04] SPEAKER_05: I'll compile all of the comments we've read out and we'll we'll narrow it down to the four best, and we can vote on that.
[1:41:09] SPEAKER_05: How's that sound?
[1:41:10] SPEAKER_04: Done.
[1:41:11] SPEAKER_04: All right, Lewis Sendra says, guys, Trevor Foley released his 2026 calendar and it only includes North American races.
[1:41:19] SPEAKER_04: Again, seriously, what the fuck happened in Cabo?
[1:41:22] SPEAKER_04: And uh this is in reference to uh an older comment um during the Daily Pods uh for the 70.3 World Champs that Trevor Foley had been banned from leaving America, pretty much hadn't raced outside of America since his last trip uh to Cabo.
[1:41:39] SPEAKER_04: So yeah, Trevor, staying on the North American scene.
[1:41:42] SPEAKER_04: I I just hope you can get over those demons, brother, and we hope to see you in Europe uh next year.
[1:41:47] SPEAKER_05: And we did hypothesize that maybe Trevor had committed some sort of crime or gone on a m mass crime streak in his time in Cabo, and there was maybe some issues with the authorities, and that's why he wasn't allowed to leave America anymore, and that's why he didn't do the 70.3 world champs in Marbella, Greg?
[1:42:02] SPEAKER_04: Or maybe he was in Marbella doing other things.
[1:42:05] SPEAKER_04: I mean, we talked about the crime spree crime spree in Marbella that you reported on.
[1:42:11] SPEAKER_04: Was Trevor somehow involved?
[1:42:13] SPEAKER_04: We don't know.
[1:42:14] SPEAKER_05: Did anyone actually see Trevor that week?
[1:42:17] SPEAKER_05: Can anyone give an alibi for Trevor?
[1:42:20] SPEAKER_05: Where was Trevor Foley the week of Iron Man 70.3 world champs in Marbella?
[1:42:25] SPEAKER_05: If he doesn't have an alibi, I'm putting him as prime suspect number one for the guy driving the boat that tipped the body oversea over overboard in the 70.3 world champs film course.
[1:42:36] SPEAKER_01: He's now involved in the Spanish mafia.
[1:42:38] SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
[1:42:39] SPEAKER_05: I don't check out the Spanish Mafia.
[1:42:41] SPEAKER_05: I think it's the Moroccan mafia or the Moroccan gang crime.
[1:42:45] SPEAKER_05: I don't know.
[1:42:46] SPEAKER_05: I think it's the Moroccans, is what I was being told by some locals there that week.
[1:42:50] SPEAKER_05: I was asking everyone about it, Vicky.
[1:42:51] SPEAKER_05: I was the only one who was fascinated about the what was going on at Marbella, I reckon.
[1:42:55] SPEAKER_05: Um anyway, Matteo Potato, again, I don't believe to be his real name, says, You guys need to do live ad reads and take the piss out of each other while doing it.
[1:43:05] SPEAKER_05: I read this and I thought it was a brilliant idea.
[1:43:07] SPEAKER_05: We obviously had Apo reading an ad read where it sounded like he had a gun to his head.
[1:43:12] SPEAKER_05: I think we do it next week.
[1:43:14] SPEAKER_05: I think we all pick one of the brands that that support and partner with the Trithon Hour, and we all create our own ad read and we have to one by one read them.
[1:43:23] SPEAKER_05: So we'll like have a section where it's like okay, Greg's ad read time, Apo's, Vicky's, Jack's, and we just you get one go at it.
[1:43:30] SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that's it.
[1:43:31] SPEAKER_05: There's no redo's, there's no editing.
[1:43:34] SPEAKER_05: We just have to have to have to kind of have a crack at doing a live ad read.
[1:43:37] SPEAKER_05: What do you guys think?
[1:43:38] SPEAKER_01: I am so excited for Greg's.
[1:43:41] SPEAKER_04: I'm gonna crush it.
[1:43:42] SPEAKER_04: You guys, I'm not gonna write anything down.
[1:43:44] SPEAKER_04: That's my that's my fault.
[1:43:46] SPEAKER_04: I can't read.
[1:43:47] SPEAKER_04: Okay, I can talk.
[1:43:48] SPEAKER_04: I just can't read.
[1:43:50] SPEAKER_04: We'll see.
[1:43:52] SPEAKER_01: Zachary Cunningham, I believe could be his real name, says, Hey, love the show.
[1:43:57] SPEAKER_01: I think the guys who raced the Iron Man Pro Series did so because they are too slow for the T100s.
[1:44:03] SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to ask the question which would be harder to win, a T100 race or an Iron Man Pro Series race?
[1:44:10] SPEAKER_01: And I think you're right.
[1:44:11] SPEAKER_01: On the whole, I think not everybody chose to go away from T-100 because they weren't fast enough.
[1:44:18] SPEAKER_01: I think some of them just chose to focus solely on the really biggest races of the year for them, and that might have been 70.3 worlds or Iron Man World Champs.
[1:44:26] SPEAKER_01: But I do agree that I think it is harder to win a T100 than an Iron Man Pro Series, and I think in pretty much four out of five cases, you would say the field is stronger in a T100 than in an Iron Man Pro Series.
[1:44:40] SPEAKER_05: Without question.
[1:44:41] SPEAKER_05: This is not even a question.
[1:44:42] SPEAKER_05: Joe Skipper came fourth in a pro series race.
[1:44:45] SPEAKER_05: Jackie Herring and Matt Marquis won a pro series race.
[1:44:48] SPEAKER_05: All good athletes.
[1:44:50] SPEAKER_05: I don't think you'd say great great athletes, but all really, really good athletes.
[1:44:55] SPEAKER_05: None of them are getting close to winning a T100 race.
[1:44:59] SPEAKER_05: T100 is by far the hardest, harder race series to win.
[1:45:02] SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it was only only a couple males, maybe like Christian or Sam Laidlow, who could potentially win a T 100, um, even though they weren't in the series.
[1:45:10] SPEAKER_04: So yeah, uh hundred percent T100 is harder.
[1:45:13] SPEAKER_05: James Domini says, Sounds like Jack's not getting any, and he's making sure his athletes are also not under the guise of performance gains.
[1:45:22] SPEAKER_05: I just wanted to put an end to this conversation.
[1:45:24] SPEAKER_05: It has nothing to do with my sex life, whether I am or aren't getting any, although uh I'm not.
[1:45:29] SPEAKER_05: So if you have any tips on how I could maybe start to have more sex, let me know.
[1:45:34] SPEAKER_05: However, I do deeply care about the performance of my athletes, and I think and stand by, having sex within seven days of your A race is a bad idea.
[1:45:44] SPEAKER_05: Kills the legs, don't do it.
[1:45:47] SPEAKER_04: SH5WK3Y3 says Great show this week.
[1:45:54] SPEAKER_04: In all seriousness though, does Jack have a date for his Apo tattoo yet?
[1:45:58] SPEAKER_04: Or Apo tattoo tattoo?
[1:46:01] SPEAKER_04: Um This is bullshit.
[1:46:03] SPEAKER_04: To quote one of the best movies of all time, Top Gun.
[1:46:06] SPEAKER_04: Jack, your ego is writing checks that your body can't cash.
[1:46:09] SPEAKER_04: Time to get it done, sir.
[1:46:11] SPEAKER_04: I've had this thought myself.
[1:46:13] SPEAKER_04: I don't even believe it's gonna happen.
[1:46:16] SPEAKER_04: Jack, enlighten us.
[1:46:18] SPEAKER_05: I'm just not getting a tattoo while I'm in Europe.
[1:46:20] SPEAKER_05: I reckon people who get tattoos when they're overseas are kind of lame.
[1:46:23] SPEAKER_05: Uh as soon as I get back to Australia, I'm gonna book in.
[1:46:26] SPEAKER_05: I'm gonna get Apo tattooed on my arm.
[1:46:28] SPEAKER_05: Don't worry about it, it's happening.
[1:46:30] SPEAKER_05: Um but the bigger thing from that comment, Top Gun overrated, low-key shit movie.
[1:46:36] SPEAKER_05: If you like Top Gun, the only reason I can possibly accept for you liking it is you liked it as a kid, so it's a bit of nostalgia.
[1:46:43] SPEAKER_05: But if you're like myself or Vicky, who only watched it for the first time as adults and you like Top Gun, you're just a weird, weird, weird, weird unit.
[1:46:52] SPEAKER_01: I enjoy that you've left it really open-ended there as when I go back to Australia.
[1:46:57] SPEAKER_01: So so essentially, if you just never go back to Australia, you decide that you guys are gonna live in Europe now, there's gonna be no tattoo.
[1:47:04] SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure that was a uh condition of the deal, but hey, there we go.
[1:47:09] SPEAKER_01: That one's just been added in last minute.
[1:47:11] SPEAKER_04: That's the kicker, Jack's actually been banned from Australia.
[1:47:14] SPEAKER_05: So taking up a life of crime on the Mar Bayo coast.
[1:47:19] SPEAKER_01: Maddie Roo says, release the Angirt Files.
[1:47:22] SPEAKER_01: And 1126 replied to that comment saying Vicky should investigate the A files.
[1:47:28] SPEAKER_01: So maybe that's the uh the topic of my next Vicky investigate segment.
[1:47:32] SPEAKER_01: I have no idea what's on the Angirt files, and I'm gonna have to delve into Jack's laptop to start my investigation, I think.
[1:47:40] SPEAKER_01: Could be dangerous.
[1:47:41] SPEAKER_05: The Florian Angert podcast will never ever be released, and the details will never be shared.
[1:47:46] SPEAKER_05: Matthew O'Neill says, at the risk of stoking the Ari slash Patrick Lang beef, can we get a quick comment on Ari finishing the year ranked higher than Patrick Lang?
[1:47:57] SPEAKER_05: I mean, yeah, of course.
[1:47:58] SPEAKER_05: I think it's a great year from Ari and a quite a bad year from Patrick Langer.
[1:48:03] SPEAKER_05: I think the worst year of Patrick Lang's career in quite a long time.
[1:48:06] SPEAKER_05: And coincidence that it comes the year after he started beef with the triathlon hour.
[1:48:12] SPEAKER_05: I don't know.
[1:48:12] SPEAKER_05: I don't know.
[1:48:13] SPEAKER_05: I'm not saying it is, I'm just I'm just putting it out there.
[1:48:16] SPEAKER_05: His worst year came after he started a beef with the triathlon hour.
[1:48:20] SPEAKER_05: So I think in order for Patrick Langer to have a better year in 2026, he needs to he needs to be the bigger man and come and shake Greg, Ari's, my, Vicky, and Apo's hands and say, I don't want this beef any longer.
[1:48:33] SPEAKER_05: It's affecting my career.
[1:48:35] SPEAKER_05: Um, and if he ever does do that, we'll accept it.
[1:48:38] SPEAKER_05: We will accept an apology and an end to the beef with Patrick Lang if he if he offers it to us.
[1:48:43] SPEAKER_05: Um but yeah, good good result from Ari.
[1:48:46] SPEAKER_05: They also only raced uh each other once at Oceanside, and Ari beat him and ran faster than him.
[1:48:50] SPEAKER_05: So I guess from Ari's perspective, he's starting to think, well, who's the idiot now, Patrick?
[1:48:55] SPEAKER_04: Oh yeah.
[1:48:56] SPEAKER_04: Okay.
[1:48:57] SPEAKER_04: Angry Creatine Farts' back.
[1:49:00] SPEAKER_04: Uh and they and they say we forget them.
[1:49:03] SPEAKER_01: Also, we believe not their real name.
[1:49:06] SPEAKER_04: That might be best Spotify name of the year, potentially.
[1:49:10] SPEAKER_04: Um all right, as a longtime listener of the pod, I had built up an image of Jack as Shaggy from Scooby-Doo type Aussie.
[1:49:17] SPEAKER_04: So it was quite a shock to see him for the first time on the T-100 looking like Gen Z Uncle Fester.
[1:49:24] SPEAKER_04: To make things more confusing, I saw him on again on Yella Gaines' Strava, looking ripped and tearing it up on the track.
[1:49:32] SPEAKER_04: Please help me make sense of the two versions of Jack.
[1:49:35] SPEAKER_04: Will we see Jack race next year?
[1:49:37] SPEAKER_04: Will we be going head to head with Mark Matthews to reignite the podcast wars?
[1:49:41] SPEAKER_04: Or uh that's the end of the comment.
[1:49:43] SPEAKER_04: Or, you know, maybe a little race with our our late Justin Reale.
[1:49:46] SPEAKER_04: Who knows?
[1:49:47] SPEAKER_04: What about what do you have to say, Jack?
[1:49:48] SPEAKER_05: Uh I don't know who Uncle Festa is, but Vicky laughed, which makes me Uncle quite.
[1:50:00] SPEAKER_05: Be correct, Vicky.
[1:50:01] SPEAKER_01: I mean he's interesting looking.
[1:50:02] SPEAKER_01: He's from the Adams family, so you know it's uh Oh, I just googled him.
[1:50:08] SPEAKER_05: He's bald and he's fat.
[1:50:12] SPEAKER_05: Greg's the one that's bald, not me.
[1:50:14] SPEAKER_01: Everyone's bald in our imagination, apparently.
[1:50:17] SPEAKER_05: Admittedly, Vicky, I was a little bit fat in 2024.
[1:50:21] SPEAKER_05: It wasn't uh wasn't my best year, but uh, I think um like as uh Angry Creatine Farts said, I've got myself back on track this year, and I did drop Yalla Geans on a run in his 70.3 World Championships build, which was something that Christian Blumenfeld wasn't able to do, so make of that what you will.
[1:50:38] SPEAKER_05: And I also um dropped Fred Funk on an easy run the other day, and he wasn't that happy about it because it was supposed to be an easy run, and I went out and started running four minutes per K when it was supposed to be about five minutes per K, and he got a bit grumpy at me.
[1:50:49] SPEAKER_05: Um, but we won't talk about that either.
[1:50:51] SPEAKER_05: Uh, in terms of racing, yeah, I'm I mean I'd love to race Mark Matthews.
[1:50:56] SPEAKER_05: We've had a very rocky relationship.
[1:50:58] SPEAKER_05: We've hated each other, we've liked each other, we've hated each other, we've liked each other, and now I would say we're pretty neutral.
[1:51:04] SPEAKER_05: Maybe there's a little bit of underlying hate there, but I think that uh we saw each other at the 70.3 World Championships, we had a quick chat.
[1:51:11] SPEAKER_05: It was very, very friendly.
[1:51:12] SPEAKER_05: And the irony is that apart from one incident that we won't talk about, me and Mark have always had nothing but friendly, uh, friendly kind of chats when we've seen each other at races.
[1:51:22] SPEAKER_05: So I definitely would be up for racing him over something.
[1:51:25] SPEAKER_05: Uh don't know what it would be, maybe a 5k, something like that.
[1:51:28] SPEAKER_05: If he was in for it, I'd be in.
[1:51:30] SPEAKER_05: Um as opposed as opposed to Justin Reale, who I'm never racing.
[1:51:33] SPEAKER_05: He's not fast enough, he's too slow, he's not on the same level as me as me and Mark Matthews.
[1:51:38] SPEAKER_05: So yeah, Justin Riale race never happening.
[1:51:41] SPEAKER_01: Can I just ask whether dropping athletes on easy runs is because you're super fit or because you're a dick?
[1:51:49] SPEAKER_05: A dick.
[1:51:50] SPEAKER_01: A dick, okay.
[1:51:50] SPEAKER_01: Just wanted to know because you know that's a real dick move, isn't it?
[1:51:55] SPEAKER_05: But Vicky, it's so funny because I haven't been doing triathlon training, I've just been running, and I am reasonably fit at the moment.
[1:52:03] SPEAKER_05: But say take Fred, for example, or Yella, for example, you can get them at times because they've just done a long run or they've just done a run with Susan.
[1:52:10] SPEAKER_05: I know.
[1:52:11] SPEAKER_01: And you go trust me, I'm asking this from the point of view of an athlete who would totally be like, What the fuck are you doing?
[1:52:17] SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm on my easy run, and you're like, no, I'm gonna go run four minutes per K.
[1:52:22] SPEAKER_00: Like, go away.
[1:52:23] SPEAKER_00: No one wants that.
[1:52:24] SPEAKER_05: Oh, it's so funny though.
[1:52:26] SPEAKER_05: Like, I don't do it all the time, but like these are my mates, so I kind of I don't feel bad about it.
[1:52:30] SPEAKER_05: I wouldn't do it to some random person.
[1:52:32] SPEAKER_05: Like, if I went for a run with Paula Finlay at a T100 race, I'm not gonna go and be a dick like that.
[1:52:37] SPEAKER_05: But when I can sense that Fred's maybe a bit tired and he's got a long ride to do after the run and he just wants to run easy, I just find it funny to go and try and make him run faster than he wants to and him have to crack the shits at me.
[1:52:47] SPEAKER_05: Uh and Yellow the same thing.
[1:52:49] SPEAKER_05: Yellow would always crack the shits at me for for getting dropped on sessions, but then pushing the paces on easy runs.
[1:52:54] SPEAKER_05: So yeah, I just did it for my own amusement because it's play when you're out there running for 10 hours a week, it gets quite boring.
[1:52:59] SPEAKER_05: So if you can make yourself laugh while you're, you know, running for one of those hours a week, I think that's okay.
[1:53:05] SPEAKER_01: I'll let it slide.
[1:53:06] SPEAKER_04: I'm never training with Jack.
[1:53:07] SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that's because you get dropped.
[1:53:11] SPEAKER_05: Okay.
[1:53:12] SPEAKER_05: Uh, Vicky, Greg, that's the end of a podcast.
[1:53:15] SPEAKER_05: This is the longest podcast we've done in 2025, officially.
[1:53:19] SPEAKER_01: And it's I think we um I think we have to rename this one as the triathlon two hours.
[1:53:23] SPEAKER_05: The tri The Triathlon Two Hours.
[1:53:26] SPEAKER_01: That's the name of the podcast for this week, I think.
[1:53:28] SPEAKER_01: It's gotta be.
[1:53:29] SPEAKER_05: Oh, we've been so good at keeping them at like exactly an hour or year.
[1:53:32] SPEAKER_05: I don't know how this one got out of control and ended up at two hours.
[1:53:35] SPEAKER_01: Do you know what happened?
[1:53:36] SPEAKER_01: You got me on the podcast.
[1:53:37] SPEAKER_01: I think since that happened, they've been getting longer.
[1:53:40] SPEAKER_01: So apologies.
[1:53:41] SPEAKER_01: All my all my fault.
[1:53:42] SPEAKER_05: Can we seriously talk about it one more time quickly?
[1:53:45] SPEAKER_05: Where the fuck is Apo?
[1:53:46] SPEAKER_05: He literally just didn't reply to the message.
[1:53:48] SPEAKER_05: And he did we we even sent him the podcast link.
[1:53:51] SPEAKER_05: We sent him the podcast link, assuming like, oh, he hasn't replied, but he'll be there.
[1:53:55] SPEAKER_05: We waited for five minutes, he didn't show up.
[1:53:58] SPEAKER_05: Like, it's just insane what's happened.
[1:53:59] SPEAKER_05: So, Apo, you've got a lot of apologizing to do in the group chat uh once you listen to this episode.
[1:54:04] SPEAKER_05: If you even listen to this episode.
[1:54:06] SPEAKER_05: Uh okay, Greg, Vicky, uh, thank you.
[1:54:09] SPEAKER_05: Long one, fun one.
[1:54:11] SPEAKER_05: Uh let's do it all again next week.
[1:54:13] SPEAKER_04: Later.

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