The episode navigates a multifaceted discourse on the current state of triathlon training, revealing insights that resonate deeply with both competitive and recreational athletes alike. The hosts, Matthew Sharp and Jeff Sankoff, embark on a dialogue related to significant developments within the triathlon community, particularly the recent acquisition of the Challenge family of races by the PTO T100 organization. This pivotal moment is examined critically, with Sharp and Sankoff contemplating the implications for race quality, participant engagement, and potential shifts in the North American triathlon landscape. Their analysis is enriched by a keen understanding of the industry, prompting listeners to consider the potential consequences this acquisition may have on their future racing experiences. The episode concludes with a reflective discussion on the Winter Olympics, seamlessly connecting the shared experiences of athletes across disciplines and underscoring the universal nature of competition and aspiration within the sporting world. This blend of personal experience, industry insight, and broader athletic context makes for a compelling and informative episode.

Links to topics discussed:

The TriDoc Podcast

Matt's Instagram

Jeff's Instagram

LifeSport Coaching

Email Jeff: tri_doc@icloud.com

Email Matt: Matt@thetemponews.com

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Signup for The TriDoc Podcast Supplement form

Welcome to Tempo Talks, a show that brings you analysis of the biggest stories in triathlon training, tips to make you a better athlete, breakdowns of the latest science and performance.

I'm Matthew Sharp, an Olympian in triathlon 70.3 Champion Co founder of the Tempo News.

And I'm Jeff Sankoff, the tridoc medical contributor for Triathlete magazine, age group winner and coach at LifeSport coaching.

Our goal, inform and entertain two perspectives.

One sport all things triathlon.

Now let's get into it.

Hello.

Hello everybody and welcome once again to another episode of Tempo Talks.

I am Jeff Sankoff, the tridoc coming to you as always from Denver, Colorado and joining me from Phoenix, Arizona.

The amazing place to train that it is.

As we were right now, as we.

Were told summarily by one of our very ardent listeners.

He did.

He took exception to my co host's comments last week.

Matt Sharp, welcome once again to Tempo Talks.

Thank you as always for being my amazing co host.

How are you today?

I'm okay.

I'm okay.

That was a good rebuttal by Brian.

He had a good rebuttal.

It was like a Tucson vs. Phoenix thing and he's definitely got a dog in the fight.

I think he's a long time Phoenix Scottsdale resident.

That was good.

No, he made a good point.

Although I'm still gonna the Mount Lemon factor, it's just there's nothing really like that here.

Well, you've got that there is.

I'm sorry, is this nine mile, okay?

Nine miles, what it's called and it's great.

Like you could do worse than 9 mile for sure.

But if you're gonna stack steeper than.

Lemon, maybe some, maybe most of it.

It is, I don't know, Lemon kicks up a little bit.

I feel like at times I haven't done it in years.

I would love to do it again and if you haven't done it in your life and definitely a. I feel like a triathlete kind of, I don't know, Mecca pilgrimage.

No, Lemon.

Lemon is definitely a must do at some point.

But having done training camps in the winter in both places, there are definitely merits to both.

I, I can see making a visit to either or and enjoying both.

But anyways, have you had a pleasant week?

What have you been up to out there?

Really nice footage of you running trails with.

Yeah, yeah, the running's been good.

It's like my weekend training camp weekday recover from the weekend.

But I'm actually really looking forward to.

I have a bike fit this weekend on my Gravel bike.

And I've been having this like, it band issue on my right leg and I've never had this before.

And it's.

Of course, this is what happens when.

You get old and you're not a pro anymore.

And I just stopped training 20 plus hours a week and all of a sudden my body breaks down.

It's hilarious.

What is going on?

So, yeah, I am excited about the bike fit because I know it's definitely a fit issue because I can run no problem.

There's no it band or whatever area pain going on solely on the bike.

And it's been getting better, but I'm stoked to get on that.

And then maybe they'll make me a little more arrow too.

So when I'm trying to hang on to my wife during her intervals, I'll be a little more arrow and might not suffer as much as I have been.

That's great.

It's been a lot of pole vault over here.

Lauren, she was in Albuquerque last weekend.

She finished fourth in her meet last weekend and we're headed back to Albuquerque this weekend.

I get to go this time.

I couldn't go last week.

So she's got another big meet there that's going to close out her indoor season and then she gets to finally get her wish fulfilled.

Yes.

This is incredible.

Yeah.

I think most of the listeners are aware that my daughter Lauren had Hodgkin's lymphoma when she was 10 years old.

She is now 16, so she is sers cancer free.

But she never got her make a wish, even though they reached out to her when she was 10.

She had cancer the same year as Covid.

So there was all kinds of problems related to that.

At any rate, it's been a lot of hit and miss about different choices for her wish.

And then finally she settled in on the idea of pole vaulting with Olympic pole vaulter Canadian Olympic bronze medalist Alicia Newman.

And that is coming to fruition.

Next week we are flying to Toronto and we are going to be vaulting or she is.

I'm going to be standing there watching.

She vaults with Alicia Newman and we are very excited for her.

So that's going to be a good time.

I think we're really looking forward to it.

Have you queued up your questions for the Olympian?

You know, the dad question.

She's got a lot of good questions.

Lauren has come up with some really good ones.

Yeah.

And for me, what I'm particularly interested in is whether or not and Lauren already has these questions, but should she consider going to college in the States or Canada for pole vault, because she has offers in both countries and obviously tuition, a significant difference for us.

But we want her to go where she's going to get the best education and where she's going to have the best opportunities for her vaulting career.

That's going to be something we'll be interested.

Alicia herself vaulted at a college in Florida and had great success there.

It'll be interesting to see what she has to say.

And also just, I think getting some mentorship in terms of learn in high school, as a lot of high school kids gets very impatient.

You.

You don't PR in pole vault every week.

There tends to be these lulls as you work on your technique and as she has to learn to be patient.

I think it's going to be good for her to hear from Alicia that, oh, no, it takes a while to start to see big jumps in your height.

So.

Yeah.

And is it just with Alicia, the Olympian, or is there other athletes that she'll be working out with?

And it kind of meet.

We don't know.

She actually, one of Alicia's training partners was at this huge National Pole Vault Summit that took place in Utah.

Sorry, in Nevada back in January, and Aloran got to meet her there and she may be in Toronto and may be training with us when we're there, so we'll find out.

It's all.

All we know is we're spending like two and a half hours in the gym with Alicia and who.

And her coach and maybe someone else.

So it's going to be a pretty amazing experience.

She's really looking forward to it.

And that is a good lead in to one of our topics that we're going to be talking about on the show today.

What are our topics for today?

Matt?

Yeah, we actually had some pretty big news.

Drop the PTO.

The famous PTO.

I never liked calling them the PTO, but the PTO T100 organization just announced that they have purchased a challenge family of races.

So we'll get into that.

We are going to talk about this Iron man announcement that was sneaky regarding the broadcast.

So it appears really on the down low.

Yeah.

Which is weird because I think a lot of people really want to hear this news about their broadcast.

So it's interesting news there.

And then we're going to finish off talking about the Winter Olympics.

We got some great action coming from Milan Cortino.

Looking forward to touching on that because there's some interesting talking points coming out of that.

Yeah.

Before.

Before we get to it, though, As a former Olympian yourself, do you love the Olympics as much as a lot of us do?

I adore the Olympics because it gives me an opportunity to watch sports that I really enjoy watching but don't get to see most of the time.

Biathlon, for example, or luge or bobsled.

Those are things that I just don't watch reg regularly.

But when I get to watch them, I so enjoy it.

I love how we become excited about.

Yeah, I love how we become, like, curling experts for two weeks.

It's amazing what curling I do watch regularly, so.

Good.

Yeah, good.

Oh, that's good to hear.

I'd say the one thing that's been interesting for me, now that I'm on the other side of being an Olympian, it's just.

I don't know, for so long, it was this thing that was on a pedestal, but then you get to it and experience it, and it's.

It is like any other race, any other competition.

So what I like to do is, like, almost, I don't know, when I'm watching them, envision what they're feeling, because I can relate to what they're feeling as they're standing on the top of the hill about to go down.

Maybe this is their one shot at competing.

After so many years of dedication and just understanding what that feels like.

I don't know what a note feels like to go 100 miles an hour down the hill on the skis, but just that kind of.

When you're on the cusp of achieving your dream or go attempting to do something incredible, it's just been interesting to observe that aspect of it.

One thing that I do love as well about the Olympics, I don't know if I've talked about this before, but, like, in Paris, you have all these NBA guys, these millionaires, like, they could be taking their summer off and doing whatever.

Same with the hockey players at the Winter Olympics.

It's like these guys are in the big leagues or whatever, but they are going to absolutely destroy themselves, do whatever they can to bring home a medal.

And so it's just cool that the Olympics has that effect for people who are already at the top or in just a different stratosphere.

I love that perspective.

We'll talk more about that, because I want to get back to a couple of things you said there, because I just think for.

For us, just pedestrians watching the Olympics is always such a joy.

And hearing your perspective, I think, just makes it that much more amazing.

Okay, let's begin first with this story that broke Just today we're recording this on Wednesday, as we usually do, and we just learned this Today that the T100 has bought a stake in the Challenge family of races.

Now, they didn't get Roth, which is interesting, which probably tells you a little bit about the nature of the deal and the nature of Challenge's business.

But what other Challenge races are there and what did T100 get a stake in and what does this mean?

So to, I guess back it up a little bit.

Most of Challenge races, I think they're like franchise.

So I know Challenge does own a number of their races, but they just have this brand and a lot of these independent races will become, quote, Challenge races.

They'll license the rights to use the Challenge brand.

And I, I think they do that because the Challenge itself, obviously, I think with Roth, that's a huge thing because Roth is.

It's like the other Kona, right?

Like it's its own tent pole.

It's its own pinnacle of the sport now, I would say.

And so there's always a draw for these races to enmesh themselves with Challenge.

But, yeah, Challenge has just had this reputation of positivity and putting on high quality races for these independent race operators that want to be a part of them.

But then Challenge itself, I believe, like Challenge Wanaka, I think they may own Challenge Almere in the Netherlands, I could be totally wrong, but these are the ones that, like, I know of that are, have been around for ages.

Challenge, like Winker Walshi in Austria, butchered the name, I'm sure.

But there's just like these kind of, I don't want to say iconic, maybe that's the wrong word.

But these are like well regarded races in beautiful locations.

The Challenge brand itself, it's got a lot of positive sentiment towards it.

And now the T100 can.

I don't know how they're gonna go with it.

And just to stick with Challenge for a second, they really do have a cachet, right?

They do.

They've got a great brand name, they've got good sentiment towards them.

I never understood why they weren't able to crack the North American market better than they did.

They, for a while there they had few races, but they never seemed to really succeed.

And I don't.

It was interesting.

And then they have these races overseas that are all, like you said, pretty long standing and have done quite well.

It's a global brand.

Like where they have these races, it's all over the world, in Asia, in Australia, New Zealand, in like Israel.

It is a Global, like South America, Central America, everywhere.

It's a global brand.

Huge in Europe.

That's the thing.

I think they're.

The majority of their races are in Europe but they just have a big footprint.

I don't know.

I'm so curious how this happened.

Was this the 200 basically like coming in with a bunch of money that they challenged people couldn't refuse with the challenge.

People maybe going to them and.

And like looking for an out because it just happened.

I don't know.

What do you think this is over a period of time or was this kind of a quick thing?

Oh, none of these things happen overnight.

It's had to be brewing for a little while.

I just, I look at this from a plus minus from each side.

So what was the plus for Challenge?

Obviously they got a cash infusion.

Maybe they just didn't want to be in the business anymore and this was their way out.

What was the negative?

T100 has a reputation of not exactly doing great things for the brands they take over.

And so I would worry.

Is there a risk now to the Challenge name and the Challenge races?

Potentially.

Now it depends what the nature of this deal is.

We're not really.

It's not clear.

Is T100 taking ownership of these races and going to be running them or are they just getting.

Is this a cash infusion and they get money out of it and it's really not clear to me exactly what's.

Going on, the financial details there.

I don't think there has been any released.

Like I haven't seen any.

Nothing.

And there wasn't any announcement that these races are going to be rebranded.

So I'm trying to understand what T100 gets out of it.

I think one of the big things is it just expands their like their partnership with World Triathlon.

It they went from having whatever eight or nine races depending on how many they put on during the year to partnering with World Triathlon, whatever arrangement they have with World Triathlon.

Now they have over 200 or whatever it is.

This is a way to expand that network even more with the Challenge involved.

Then I think they're kind of probably whether they're actually running these races, whether they're just affiliated with PTO T100 like they're probably getting close to Ironman's like the amount of races that Iron man has and because that was the problem.

Right.

Like they couldn't make it work with only eight races.

But I guess the goal is to make it with these few hundred or so.

We talked about the not A merger.

But I guess the purchase.

When World Triathlon and T100 got together and we talked about it at the time it seemed like more of a benefit to World triathlon.

It seemed T100 was like coming along commercial for sure.

Yeah.

They just had this money and they just needed to unload it somehow, which I don't really understand but.

And so World Triathlon seemed to be the beneficiary in that deal.

And I can't help but wonder if the same thing's happening here where T100 just has cash to burn.

Which seems again odd.

We don't even know if they like how much money they put in.

It's all I guess they could purchase a stake or purchase something, I guess challenge because a lot of these races are franchised or whatnot.

They're kind of asset light.

So you could see some kind of deal that maybe not a lot of money was exchanged or maybe it's like a cut of profits or something where it's just.

I think they're just trying to scale.

They're trying to scale.

They're trying to make it seem like they're this massive global organization and they are in a way that they have World Triathlon and those challenge races under their purview.

But again, I guess they do have to make the numbers add up at some point.

Yeah, at some point.

Right.

What do you make of the Roth carve out Roth.

It was always this way, I believe where it was never.

It goes always independent of the challenge, like brand.

But they.

And I don't know when that happened or if that was always the case but basically like they're two separate entities but they align so many ways with having people qualify for Roth and all that kind of stuff and having that incentive.

I suppose I feel like with Roth there's definitely I think still going to be some involvement with roth and the PTO T100 on some level.

But it does say something to me that maybe they couldn't get Roth or maybe Roth was never for sale.

But the fact that you know, they were able to get all of Challenges assets and let's be honest, 200 they got an injection of cash but they were already in the red.

It's like a forty whatever million dollar cash injection.

So it's not like they have a lot to outlay to splash out to buy these races.

Even if they wanted to buy Roth, I don't even think it would be for sale or wouldn't even have the assets to be able to purchase that.

But I do think they'll still be aligned in some way for sure.

To be continued.

We'll have to see how this kind of plays out.

Like we said, the news is pretty fresh and we don't have all the details just yet and not really sure what to make of the whole thing, but what do you think going to.

Be for age groupers?

Do you think the challenge.

It's funny.

I think I see a lot of the comments on these posts and whatnot and it's oh geez, oh I love challenge.

Oh no, what's going to happen here?

So the vibes are definitely off that way.

Do you think it's the age group experience at these challenge races or PTO races will degrade?

There's that risk or just more or just cost more?

What do you think there's a risk of both of those things happening?

It depends how much T100 is involved and how much T100 has taken over these races.

Look, we've talked about this before.

When T100 just owns the race but doesn't run the race, things go fine.

Vancouver, the one in San Francisco, those races were run locally.

They just had the T100 brand.

Everything went fine.

When T100 actually has anything to do with the organization of the race, it doesn't go so well.

If Challenge retains the ongoing day to day operations of the race, then I think it's going to be fine.

I think age groupers probably won't see much change unless there's a change in price point, which I can't imagine that would be.

It certainly wouldn't be something immediate, maybe over time, but.

So I, I would hope that for age groupers they're not going to see much of a difference.

But that's all to be determined.

Right.

Anytime there's this kind of change in ownership, you have to be concerned that there's going to be a change in branding, that there's going to be a change in quality, that there, there could be all kinds of things down the pike and yeah, we'll see.

Time will tell.

Yeah, I guess when we see consolidation, usually these operators have an opportunity to raise prices if it.

Let's say there's two major players in the business, PTO and Ironman, Ironman's Ironman, they're going to charge whatever.

But then it almost gives the PTO air cover to, to raise prices.

Right.

Like when we saw deregulation or in the airline industry when you went to many more carriers, prices went down and you could almost see the opposite happening this way.

So I think we should be on a cost watch here and see because I think that would probably.

If people are still willing to pay for these events and they're excited.

There has been excitement about the T100 events.

People have done them and have enjoyed them.

I just, I foresee some potential price increases if people are still willing.

For sure.

It's going to be interesting times.

We have another business related story in the world of triathlon and I think this one has been more universally praised and that is news today really announced on the DL.

It really, we just saw it on the Ironman Instagram feed and that is that there's been a change in how the Iron Man Pro series broadcasts are going to be delivered.

So in the past, if you lived in North America, you had to access the broadcast through outside TV app, which was an experience that shall we say, was less than a great one.

I think there were, there were almost.

A nicer way than many people have put it, that's for sure.

Yeah, there were almost as many complaints about the broadcast team as there were about the broadcast app.

They were pretty, pretty awful.

Watching the stream of the events live will now be done on YouTube as it has been done around the world.

What do you think, Matt?

Good move.

Do you agree with everybody else?

It's interesting because like before to watch it you would have to have.

Did you have to pay for outside?

You only had to pay if you wanted to watch the races later, correct?

I think so.

And I think you, if you wanted any other content and I think that still remains.

Let's say we watch Oceanside like afterwards we're not gonna be able to watch it on YouTube but I think if you're more global you can do that.

But in North America, if you want to watch the replay, you'll have to subscribe to outside.

And I think it's good.

It feels like a first step to the next phase of what Iron Man's going to be doing with this broadcast.

I'm waiting for them to announce Jeff Sankoff on the broadcast team.

Haven't heard.

I don't think anybody else is waiting.

I'm waiting.

So to me it's a positive step.

I guess it just makes it more like YouTube.

I don't know the numbers on YouTube, how it relate, but YouTube is now like TV for people.

So if that's what it is like you gotta be where people are.

You don't want people fumbling around with some random app.

If you want distribution, make it as easy as possible for people to see you.

I think if Ironman was like planning on doing, I thought they might do their own streaming service.

But when they make moves like this, that kind of makes me feel like, okay, if you've given people full access on YouTube, you can't really take that away.

So that to me signals that they probably won't go their own streaming service route, which is interesting because it doesn't stop them from running their own ads.

There's obviously like the YouTube ads, but.

Yeah, you could monetize your YouTube stream.

Listen, I think this makes more sense than a streaming service because the streaming service would have been fraught.

Right.

You need good tech savvy people to do that.

Right.

And this way you just, you know, piggyback onto a very well established streaming service.

I'm watching the Olympics on YouTube and of course it's great.

So I, it's.

There's.

I don't know, I just think this makes a lot of sense.

I think you're going to make a lot of people happy to not have to watch those awful outside repetitive ads.

There might be repetitive Iron man ads.

I'm wondering though, if it's just.

I feel like it's still going to be.

I guess they wouldn't have the outside ads, but they would still have the hyperbole.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Still, we're on YouTube.

There's a step in the right direction.

I'll take it.

I'll take.

Yeah, I think we could look forward to a better experience streaming wise because the outside app was always a little bit glitchy.

We all remember how many times we had trouble with it cutting out or people not.

We would see online, people would be complaining that their stream wasn't working or there was a delay or things would just give out halfway through.

I think YouTube's much more likely to be a reliable service and a service that's going to potentially be significantly improved in terms of a watching.

Now if only they invested more into, as we said, the broadcast team and potentially more cameras, that would be the icing on the cake.

But not gonna hold my breath, but we can hope.

I'm wondering, like, do you think they will have some kind of progress on the broadcast team this year or just the broadcast itself?

You don't think so?

I mean, I haven't heard anything.

But that would be something you would really building up.

And because, especially because they know how unpopular it is and this is more.

But like last year, they, they also introduced Will McCoy to the broadcast.

He did that full Iron Man Karen's broadcast.

And I don't know, I feel like maybe they could be doing more of that, like adding in different voices, basically testing them and rehearsing them to see, hey, who's got the juice here?

Who do people respond to?

So I, I think maybe they'll go down that road just to test different voices because why not?

Really?

Why not?

It can't get much worse.

So just try throwing someone else in there, especially if they're professional and seeing how they respond.

Will did a very good job.

I didn't watch that podcast fully obviously, but when I listen in, it's just this guy, he's a professional, he's dynamic, he asks good questions, he's funny.

And there's a lot of, there's a lot of potential other folks as well who could step in.

I'm saying it now.

We're going to see some more voices to the broadcast.

That's my.

I'm going to call that.

We'll see.

My calls are famously good as the podium.

Well, we'll see.

All right, we're going to shift to our final topic and I want to.

Before we get into the Winter Olympics, I do want to come back to a couple of things you said because I thought they were really interesting.

I know as a viewer and as somebody who could only dream about being at the Olympics, your comment about this lifelong pursuit to get there.

Do you do a lot of these athletes go thinking or just knowing that they're not there for a medal, they're just there for the experience, or does everybody go with the realistic sort of thought?

I am here to compete for a medal even If I'm ranked 110th in the world.

No, the Olympics too.

In a sport like triathlon and I'm sure in many other sports you see where like the competitor, many of the competitors, not many, but like there are competitors on the start line that kind of have no business performance wise being there, but they have these Kind of universality.

Yeah, but I don't mean.

Let's talk about, like, the top 20.

Like, I was watching moguls today, and it starts with a field of.

I think it started with a field of 28 or something.

And then they narrow it down to the final, which is 10.

And to those women in the top 28, is every one of them starting at the top, at the gate thinking to themselves, I'm here for a medal?

Or are many of them, like you described really nicely before, are they standing at the top just thinking, man, I worked my whole life to be here.

This is it.

I'm going to enjoy the moment.

I know every athlete who's on the line, on the start line, there's.

They want this to be the best performance of their life.

That's what they want.

Like, at the end of the day, you've trained for this.

This has been your pinnacle.

At least it was for me.

Like, I didn't do this to want to get a good result at World Championships.

I did this because I wanted to go to the Olympics and compete at the highest levels going.

I would say, from my experience going into Tokyo, obviously I wasn't there to win a medal, but I wanted to execute as best as I could, like, on the start line that day.

I wanted to perform the best I could, like, with what I had, really, and make the most of my experience.

And every athlete has that mindset.

Unfortunately, injuries happen, leading in.

Maybe you just don't have it on the day.

And so I think when you and I saw it in Tokyo, and I know other athletes have talked about this, like, when you cross the finish line at the Olympics, not a lot of people are happy, like, not a lot of people are, like, ecstatic because it's.

Oh, yeah, most people don't have that kind of metal moment or shining thing, but.

And most people, honestly, maybe not don't have the best performance of their life at the pinnacle of their career.

So there's that interesting contrast as well.

Again, all these people want to perform their best.

I think realistically, people know if they're in for metal.

There's always surprises.

And that's what we love about the high stakes, high drama, Olympic spotlight.

This is it.

Every four years, you get your chance.

And sometimes people like, I. I know in Paris, you think of someone like Julie Darren, I don't think she was picked as a metal favorite.

I don't think anyone had her on their podium going into that race.

And she got on there.

So maybe she started that day.

I think she probably believed she could win a medal.

And it played out well.

I would say, realistically, maybe 10 or so athletes think they can get a medal in a field of 50 or whatever.

50 plus, everybody's there just wanting to have their best career effort.

That's awesome.

So it's the Winter Olympics, obviously, no triathlon.

Is there any specific events that you like to tune into that really are of interest to you?

Yeah, I'm just.

I'm trying to watch as many things as I can because I just, again, like, I love to see these athletes competing and just feeling that feeling again of, of being there and achieving that goal.

Like, I. I'm almost getting a. I don't know, another Olympics of myself just watching these people.

It's hard to describe, I guess, but Winter Olympics wise, like, obviously, I love the ice hockey.

Tough day for the women of Canada yesterday.

Oh, I was at the office.

They had the TV on and I was tuning in when I could.

And it was tough.

It was tough.

But hey, they've got more games coming up.

I love the ice hockey.

I love figure skating.

I've always loved watching figure skating and I'll never watch it other than the Olympics.

And I really should because it's incredible.

I'm fired up for the figure skating.

I love all the freestyle skiing too, like the day I used to ski as a kid.

So I enjoy it.

I don't know, I just love all sports.

I love it.

So I'm not a huge fan of the judged competitions.

So that's.

Anything that's judged, I tend to be more.

And a lot of the Winter Olympic sports are judged.

Like, I was having that conversation with Kirsten the other day and she put.

And she brought that up.

Like many of these sports are.

I know more than some are.

And for that reason, I.

So I spent a lot of time watching cross country skiing, which is against the clock.

I love the speed skating against the clock.

The sliding sports.

Curling is a score, Hockey is a score.

So I don't really follow.

Many of the judge sports admire what they do.

I think it's amazing.

But because it comes down to this random sort of.

I don't understand how the judging works.

So I'm like, I'm not that interested.

But if you haven't seen short track, speed skating, relay, you gotta check it out.

Crazy.

It's absolutely wild.

It's four teams with each team has four people.

They're all on the ice at the same time.

It's insane.

And it is such an exciting race to watch.

So that's really cool.

I love any of the speed skating on the big oval is great.

Hockey, of course, it's interesting.

Of all the Olympics, right, the women's teams, Canada and the U.S. have been head and shoulders above everybody, but they've been very evenly matched.

And this is the first time that I can remember that one of the two teams is really.

The Americans are, I hate to say it, significantly better than my home country, Canada, this year.

But on the men's side, the Canadian men are looking significantly better than the American men.

Hopefully, we'll see how it all shakes out.

The men's tournament starts soon, but what I really wanted to talk about was what we saw in the downhill and the women's downhill just a few days ago with Lindsey Vonn.

And it's an interesting story.

Lindsay's story.

She obviously an incredible athlete.

This woman has done everything that one could hope to do as a downhill skier.

And I found myself thinking, when she announced that she was coming back in the hopes of coming to the Olympics to win a medal, I remember thinking to myself, why are you doing this?

Your body has been through so much.

You.

You already have one knee that's been replaced.

You are facing decades of likely disability, and now you're going to come back and put it all on the line.

To what end?

What more do you need to accomplish now?

Again, it's not for me to question.

I think that the woman can do whatever she wants.

And clearly, at 41, she has been.

She proved she could come back and win, but then we saw how it ended in just the most horrendous way.

I feel terrible for her.

But I wanted to ask you, as somebody who's recently retired, because I felt like this looked to me like Lindsey Vaughn has been at the top of her sport for so long.

The center of attention, the just like having the adoration of crowds and everything else.

And then she steps aside and retires.

And is there suddenly, like we've seen in other sports, this, like, vacuum?

And so she finds herself inexorably drawn to come back because she's starving for that, to fill that emptiness.

I. I don't know her.

I obviously have no idea if that played a role in why she came back.

But you have just recently retired now, obviously, triathlon, very different level in terms of.

It's.

We don't have as many big crowds, but I don't see crazy crowds.

I don't know if it's a pretty big star, right?

She was a star.

And that's the thing.

Like, she was I don't want to say.

Again, I don't want to say like iconic.

But she was an.

Like an A list athlete.

How about that?

A list athlete.

Yeah.

Good.

So she had an outsized attention on her.

Obviously one of the best skiers of all time.

Not the best skier all time.

Like it just.

So she was used to being on top of the world all the time.

And honestly I'm not well read on when she left and how long it was in between drinks, so to speak.

If you're used to that.

Like there's a.

Is an addictive component to it certainly like the endorphins and all those neurotransmitters of performing and training as well.

Like she was.

Goes from training consistently.

And I feel this as well.

Like I'm definitely.

It was definitely hard the first bit when I stopped training all those hours because I. I was my baseline of whatever.

Endorphins went down quite a lot.

And I think there is a withdrawal like symptoms.

Like it's kind of like a drug addiction in a way.

Like we need boil it down.

It's just socially acceptable.

And I worry about Lionel Sanders for example, who comes from a history of addiction.

And of course I've always wanted to have him on my show so that I could ask him this very question.

You went from one addiction to another.

One was unhealthy, one is healthy.

What happens when the healthy addiction goes away?

Have you thought about that?

Have you planned for it?

Have you given any kind of consideration to what you will do?

And I look at Lindsay and I can't help but wonder if it's not this exact thing that you're talking about this addiction.

And we see how addiction in substance abuse can lead to catastrophe and life changing events.

And I wonder if this is.

Listen, it's the likelihood that Lindsay was going to win a medal on the weekend.

Was there.

She's that it was there.

And that's the thing.

But it's still small.

And the risk that this was gonna happen was potentially greater.

Especially given that she recently crashed, had this unstable knee.

I 100% agree that her knee had nothing to do with this crash because this crash was totally a different thing.

But it was there.

The potential for disaster was high.

And I just feel so bad that.

And I know I'm not alone.

A lot of us do, a lot of us feel terrible that this happened to her.

I just what was there for her to gain in doing this?

And I just worry that this is an example of she couldn't leave the limelight and just.

And needed to fill that emptiness.

I think it's.

I'll relate this back to me.

And it's like the Olympics, I guess, if you're in that sphere or if you're always.

I actually did see this image of.

It was like her when she went to her first Olympics and her when she was here in Milan this year.

And that was like 20 years.

So for almost 20 years, like her whole, I don't want to say existence, but like her identity was based on performing on this day at the Olympics and just having something to calibrate around.

And I feel like I'm going through that same feeling where it's.

Oh, like I'm not calibrating around.

I'm calibrating around like my wife's races, I guess.

But internally she always had this thing to calibrate around and to focus on.

And so maybe when she left the first time, that kind of was tough to deal with, not having something like that to calibrate around.

And then you obviously take away, I think those endorphin inducing feelings of like competition and adoration.

It's just, it's.

It was incredibly hard, I think.

And I don't want to speak for her, obviously, but clearly she thought she could come back and be successful.

And did she not win a race?

Oh, she did.

She clearly was still at the apex of her sport.

She's that good.

And so I'm wondering, this outcome will not diminish her.

No, in, in truly not.

No.

She is absolute legend.

Yeah, she is a legend.

Yeah.

I think if she came back like when she came back, decided to come back like, I, I think she obviously wanted to be in this position to, to win a medal, but I think along the way, if she had.

Was getting feedback that she wasn't gonna be able to get there.

She goes to the races and she's barely cracking the top 20 and consistently just not improving or whatnot.

I think she may have exited stage left, whether just because she didn't go or whatnot.

Like, it's just.

I think she just kept reading the signals and taking in the feedback.

And the feedback was good.

Yeah, the feedback is good.

Like she literally came to the Olympics having won a race.

Yeah.

At the highest level.

So I think she just followed that.

But unfortunate to see her go out like that.

It was, that was tough to watch, but it just, it adds to her legend.

Keep thinking, I just keep thinking how she will now fade a little bit, obviously as she goes through a very extended rehab.

And I just feel Bad that she's going to have 20, 30 years of really discomfort.

And you wonder if the rest of her life will be negatively impacted by this decision.

I hope not.

I hope not.

Orthopedic surgeons can do amazing things.

But when you hear that her leg was broken as badly as it was, that it's going to take multiple surgeries to repair, and you're looking at probably more than a year to a year and a half of rehab just to get walking again.

And I just.

Anyways, I truly hope that this is something.

She's obviously not the kind of person who's ever going to look back with regrets.

She's not.

But she said something that I, she said something that I thought was interesting.

She said in her Instagram.

She said, the failure is not that I fell.

The failure would have been to not have tried and never have known.

And I thought to myself, I'm not entirely sure that's true.

I think that, I think that for a lot of us, we need to recognize our limitations and know when it's not a good time to try.

And obviously, like you said, she was getting positive feedback and she was getting encouragement.

And I don't mean by outside external forces, internal validation, by getting good results that this was a good thing to keep trying.

And so I, I think for her, that statement that she, it was a good idea for her to try and see what she could do, I think that's good.

But I'm not entirely sure that message is a good one to give everybody else.

Because you're wondering if she would say that in, in 10 years, she would.

Say, I just don't know.

I can't tell you.

As an emergency physician, I cannot tell you how many people I would see coming in with completely ridiculous preventable injuries because they tried something.

Because why not?

Here, hold my beer.

I'm going to try this.

Because I think I could do this.

And it's not necessarily well reasoned.

I admire what she says about, hey, to not know.

Because to not know would have been a bigger failure than to try and fail.

I think that's true in a lot of cases.

But at some point there's gotta be another side of that says, let's stop and pause and think about this and think about whether or not trying is really a great idea.

Yeah.

Although in her line of work, and I guess what's downhill skiing, who filters for people who have to take risks?

It filters people who are willing to ride the line, go beyond the line.

I just think she's.

This is, that's What I had to do, like to do this goal.

And so maybe, I don't know, maybe in 10 years she might be like, maybe I shouldn't have done that.

But at the same time, maybe in 10 years, if she hadn't done it, she'd be like, oh, I was, I wish I had.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

I don't really, personally, I think if she wanted to go for it, go for it.

It was pretty inspiring, honestly, to see her come back and literally get to the top of the mountain again, so to speak, or pun intended or whatever.

Yeah, it was really cool.

It was just really cool to see that.

It was.

I, I, I 100 agree with that.

She is pretty amazing and she obviously has had a huge impact on a lot of women around her age as well.

And I think that will never go away.

And it also just makes again, I always like to say during the Olympics, I wish they had the average person out there just to show us because I have skied like the downhill run at Beaver Creek and that run scares the crap out of me.

Skiing it normally, I can only imagine skiing it like downhill is just insane.

The fact that she, as an amazing athlete, had that fall early in the run just tells you how a normal person would have died.

So, yeah, my pants at the top.

Of the hill, I, I think too, one thing we're seeing from these Olympics, the footage, like, of the drones.

Like the drones.

Oh, it's amazing.

Drone footage that has been very revelatory.

Yeah.

Just how fast they're going.

Yeah.

And have you seen the drones on the luge track?

Yeah.

How they do it, I mean, that is insane.

Been cool.

That's been cool.

That innovation, drones follow drones.

They're going to have that, I think, on Lionel Sanders at Oceanside.

I think Iron Man's bringing that to the broadcast.

They need to drones, individual drones.

Yeah.

Because 100% concur.

Drones have really made like the slope side events, the moguls events, the sliding events, the down.

I could not believe how fast those drones were going and how steady they were to follow the athletes.

It was amazing.

Well, with that I think we'll wrap this one up because it's been once again a wide ranging and exciting conversation.

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Thanks everyone.

Tempo Talks is a production of the Triathlon Performance Hub and is produced and edited by Jeff Sankoff.

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