Sport Today

Too bad that thread deteriorated into so much non-tri babbling, at
first there were even one or two valid points relating to our sport.
But that's usually the fate of any interesting thread that lasts more
than a generation or two here...

Even if you've never attended one of Brad's events, all you have to do
is look at the race info from triath.com to know what kind of race to
expect.  Sanctioned by Triathlantic, not USAT.  Prizes are plaques.
Lunch, including the ***ly rich Berger's Cookies, is always
provided.  Colorful T-shirts.  Uh, nowhere does it say "a great race
for those really serious triathletes who are ultra-competetive and
expect the race to be run to their specifications."

If you live in the Mid-Atlantic, by know you know that there are USAT
races where you can qualify for the Olympics or whatever your goal is.
 No one around here expects Brad's races to be like that.  We've come
to expect them to be fun, fair and friendly.  I've known Brad for many
years and I've yet to see him tolerate cheating of any kind or bend
the rules for anyone.  He makes a huge effort to make the race the
best it can be for those who come out to enjoy it.  He'll even
tolerate a small amount of ***ing from those too-serious types who
apparently came to the wrong race. Point is, there are alternatives if
the level of rules & competition is not to your liking.

I'd also agree with the point of view that until you've put together a
race yourself, your credibility when critisizing a race director is
pretty limited.  But of course if you're busy trying to win every
race, when would you have time to give anything back to the sport?

Cheers
S. Austin

The important thing you've missed is, no one said anything to
suggest otherwise, **EXCEPT BRAD**, in a chest-pounding,
bellowing tantrum post about how he could bend all the rules he
wanted, for anyone he wanted, etc.  When you introduce yourself
boasting of your ability to be a bad guy, well, then what do you
expect people to think?  He eventually clarified things, but with
nary a word of acknowledgement that he got out of hand earlier.

That's a load of crap, both ethically and logically.  You're
saying that race directors are some sort of elite club immune to
external criticism.  Ever find the food in a restaurant not to
your liking?  Well, just shut up and eat it until you've put in
at least 90 days working as a chef.  Ever had a car that was a
lemon? Before you say anything bad about it, how many engines
have you designed?  There are an awful lot of people who have
something bad to say about Dubya.  By your reasoning, they should
all be arrested, because the only ones who should be allowed to
criticize him are his father, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, and Ford.
In fact most consumers are not also producers of the products and
services they purchase every day, so I guess nobody has much
place criticizing anything in your world.

<snip>
<snip>

Well at least now I understand how so many of these kind threads
diverge from traithlon.  Cuisine, engineering, politics...sorry, I
miss your point as to how these are relevant to the way athletes treat
race directors.  Reasoning by analogy, perhaps?  According to
logicians, one of the logically weakest forms of debate.

I respect your strongly-felt opinion, but gee, don't drag Dubya into
it unless he's now promoting events too...hmm, how about the "Escape
from the White House Triathlon?"

Cheers
S. Austin

It's quite simple - not having done something in no way
determines one's standing to criticize another's performance,
ESPECIALLY when one is a paying customer of that performance.
I've never organized a race, and I've never produced or directed
a movie, but neither diminishes my standing to take issue with
how either task is executed, or the final product, especially
when I am putting my $50 for a race or $7.50 for a movie on the
line for my satisfaction as a consumer.  This is, of course moot,
because I didn't criticize his races, but rather his defense of
them here, and in light of the fact that I was criticizing his
Usenet contention style, I have ample experience.

Oh yeah, I wouldn't disagree with that, the consumer should always
have the right to complain about the product.  My thought about
"credibility" (vs. "standing")
was that how effective one's critisism is.  That depends on how
factual and relevant one's arguments are - as you know, the easiest
way to deflate someone's position in a debate is to show how weak
their grasp of the facts is.

For instance, going to the director and saying "I plunked down fifty
bucks for your stinkin' race and the results weren't online for a
week" would have more clout if it was widely accepted that most other
$50 races had the results up in a day. Even more clout if you could
show that the $50 race you'd organized was one of those.  But if it
were widely known that only the $100+ races that used chips had
results that fast, then the argument would be dismissed as the whining
of a malcontent.

Indeed you do, and without it RST would not be nearly as lively. But
it does seem reasonable that Brad might have taken umbrage at being
compared to RJR, Medellin, and WWF.  On the other hand, with the
explosive way the sport is growing right now, it may be inevitable
that those kinds of, uh, "marketing" approaches end up dominating the
way events are organized.  It's certainly happened in other sports.

Cheers
S. Austin