fascinating to me that Mark Allen, T.O, Rinny, Michellie, and Crowie are all on the TriDot website still. Pretty sure their financial pathways are via the M-dot brand.
I see lawyers next to extricate them from TriDot which will be hard given all the video content imbedded in the "TriDot owned Ironman U content". Or, the purchase of said content.
Bottom line, stop mucking about and align with TrainingPeaks already!
Unrelated to the topic but I like how you closed the forum topic on the article and merged it to this existing post. Nice feature of the new(ish) forum.
Tridot don’t need lawyers, they have chatgpt
Well if the 100’s or previous Ironman sponsors give us any template, then this is it. Occam’s razor tells us that is was all about money. Now if true to form, the entity doing business with Ironman signed a very bad deal, one that was never going to make money or bear fruit, and it is just a matter of time before they realize their FU. On Ironman’s side, they gouge and go for as much as they can in the short run, and thus viturally all of their sponsors are short lived…
Obviously more athletes at the 70.3/IM distance will have coaches than say the sprint distance (generally), so I understand TriDot wanting to get into the coaching ranks (and their athletes)…but 70.3/IM events have 3k athletes at basically every race. There is probaly 800 of those likely uncoached (if not more) who could do the monthly AI generated under $50/$100 plans right vs wanting to pay $200+ a month for “coaching”? Like is TriDot failing cus the coaches didn’t buy into it who already were going to view a AI generated platform sorta suspiciously?? Sorta seems like it was doomed from the start if that was the preferred market.
(I’m not coaching as much LC so I didn’t even realize TriDot was in the coaching certification business, I just assumed it was basically only an AI platform and using coaches at the gold standard for the “personal connection” price point piece.)
Roka 10 years, Normatec/Hyperice 13 years, Hoka is 9 years… seems their recent large sponsorships last longer than most marriages lol
I can tell you that one of those partners you have listed was not interested in renewing their agreement on the old terms, but Ironman reduced their demand significantly, such that they agreed to continue.
That’s awesome they knew their value and the value of their relationship with Ironman and held firm to that during negotiations. Smart on their part to ensure it was the right move for their long term health of their organization to not sign something that was outside their budget.
Ya the interesting thing to me isn’t that it didn’t work out, it’s that they doused gas on the relationship and tossed a match on it while their former partner was sleeping.
All of those…. Not just one…
Interesting. I have met Scott twice, and heard very good things about him. With his visit to Roth, I hope he came away with a better understanding of how to create a win-win with partners. Ironman is sorely lacking in that consumer offering right now, and as a result the expo at each race leaves a great deal to be desired. Roth has that recipe down pat. They are the leaders in that area. Hopefully Ironman can up their game.
Just read some books, you don’t need a coach. Listen to your body. Especially when you consider the price of coaching, unless you’re making 100k it’s hard to justify that.
Also, an AI tool, that’s hilarious. How’s peakers AI doing? I remember getting early access for that and the cost for early access was insane. Then they hired coaches so you could hire a coach?
I like Scott a lot and sadly I think a lot of things have to do with how things used be…
I was in Kona and met with the owner of tridot before they signed that deal…
It was a bad deal.
Ironman did everything they could to make it work…
But in the end… it’s just a bad partnership.
Ironman needs to be in the event business… not the “university business”
I agree. Messick was the worst thing that could have happened to Ironman. He ruined the relationship with the people of Kona and railroaded all partners in to agreements that were not win-win. He just wanted to show a profit to his bosses instead of realizing he had a responsibility to leave the sport in a better place after his tenure. Scott has already made several decisions that seem to be to the long term benefit and health of the sport and the athletes. He has more changes to make to restore the brand. I remain optimistic he can proceed on course.
this is a interesting point , and me as a coach laugh about ironman university.
but if I was to put my ironman owner hat on I would of course see the massive amount of money I could make from all this , selling first timers training plans.
make a coach out of the guy that has done one ironman and now thinks he is a tri expert and wants the ironman logo for credibility.
You only have to look at/follow the Tridot facebook group to see there are quite a lot who believe the Ai will coach them better than a coach. After all the Tridot slogan “AI-Powered Triathlon Training | Less Training, Better Results”
Yet there are many questions posted in the group looking to the collective of the group to give them answers. Does then AI $50/$80 give better value than a coach when there are so many things these athletes do not understand and question whether to follow the AI generated blindly?
I, like many think Tridot were trying to using IM partnership/coaches as a deemed validation of their platform, to which many coaches did not buy into. Coaches didn’t really have a choice as we were pushed to Tridot when the partnered.
I’m sure there are a bunch who feel that way because they don’t want to pay $200+/month for coaching. So they’ll tell themselves AI for $40/month can do the same thing. Maybe it can, maybe it can’t. Training plans can both be simple and also difficult to put together I mean after all it’s just workouts. But it’s how you put it all together that will make or break the plan.
I recognize why LC coaches use IM U for the education and likely catalogue for athletes to pick you to coach them. I sorta quit chasing this pathway cert or that cert years ago. Hell I only keep up my usat cert cus I occasionally coach for the federation and have to be usat cert to be eligible. Again I didn’t even know Tridot was doing coaching education, I thought it was just AI generated plans, that’s how far removed I am from even caring about IM U, I also coach ncaa ranks now so my focus is pretty much that.
On the other hand selling a true coaching program to a triathlete beginner might be more than they need.
And a lot of coaching programs are little more than training plans.
How much are coaches spending on each athlete every week? If it’s less than 10-20 minutes is the coach providing more value than an AI? I don’t think this is a simple yes/no answer, it depends on the coach and the athlete.
I remember paying a lot for the coaching program of a famous coach. They were clearly good at marketing but I wasn’t being coached. It was a very expensive training plan with a decent knowledge base. I’m sure an AI could be better than that program.
I still saw improvements with that plan. After all, it doesn’t take that much to improve if you’re just getting started. I did eventually want to have a coach I could talk to and I probably would have improved faster if I had a real coach.
I would not phrase it that way. This is an capitalism; he has a responsibility to maximize shareholder’s value, not to give back anything to anyone.
But there’s a strong argument that by optimizing for the long run, creating good partnerships, investing in the sport, etc. he would be doing a better job for the shareholders than focusing on short term profit.
But since executives (and politicians) often know they are in the seat for a relatively short period of time, and they want to get paid as much as possible, they optimize for the short-run and leave scorched earth behind.
And if you extrapolate this even further, that is why everything around us is going to shit (e.g. global warming, national debt, etc.) Everyone is optimizing for their short-term interest, rather than thinking about the long-term wellbeing of everyone around them.
Sorry for the rant. Carry on…
Not to defend IM, but are there good examples of “for profit” businesses the scale of IM that think long term “betterment of the sport” and still get maximum profits? It kinda seems like IM gets shitted on for doing exactly what they should be doing if that’s their goal/expectation, it’s just that that then sorta flies in the face of the “betterment of the sport” at times.