ANYBODY WANNA BE A RACE DIRECTOR?

Races are hard to produce. The bigger the race, the bigger the headache; the greater the expense; the more hand-wringing the stress; the more sleep-depriving the risk. As "bigness" goes, the USTS was on the large side of the spectrum. Therefore, the fall I'll be chronicling was from a tall place. A lot of hurt was -- and still is -- there to spread around.

While there has been no announcement, it seems certain that the NATS -- the progeny of the USTS -- is no more. Its fall was so complete that few of those involved in its management are able or willing to talk. Lawyers are involved. What follows is a series that will be published over several days recounting the rise of the United States Triathlon Series (USTS), its morph into the NATS, and its eventual fall.

This story is hard to write on several levels. I am not only the writer covering it, but an integral part of its founding and, early on, its growth. Good people got involved with this series for righteous reasons, and some have ended up financial losers (few came out unqualified winners). Finally -- this is probably the hardest element -- there are people still "losing" as I write this; those I've called my friends, and about whom I'll write.

The USTS was -- in its original 1982 iteration -- that set of events which placed the "Ironman experience" within reach of the everyday man and woman in America. One of my reasons for reestablishing a national series was my alarm at the serious lack of good races in America. Places like Atlanta, the Twin Cities, even San Diego -- hotbeds of triathlon in the late '80s and early '90s -- were losing races at an alarming rate.

The first of my resurgent USTS events was in San Diego in 1997, the one and only event we held that year. My motivation for this race -- the straw that broke the camel's back, as it were -- was the loss of the Mission Viejo (Orange County) race. It was a cornerstone event in Southern California, drawing 1200 contestants (USTS Oceanside took the precise calendar date in '97 that Mission Viejo abandoned in '96).

Southern California is currently blessed with quite a few new events to complement the established ones. These include the Pacific Coast Triathlon in Newport Beach, the revitalized (thanks to Syntace) Big Bear Triathlon, the "almost-half" in Perris Lake, the Malibu Triathlon, and of course IM California, held almost precisely on top of the USTS Oceanside course -- a course most thought our sport would never get. Perhaps the USTS has played some small part in the reemergence of good races around the country, and if so, I'm glad for that.

Along with providing an inside look at race directors and the politics and finances of races and the companies that put them on, I hope the reader comes away with a new appreciation of the finances, work, and personal risk involved in putting on events. Making a lot of money in race promotion is about as likely as hitting it big in Las Vegas. It can be done, but it's rare and, as is the case with craps or roulette, one doesn't go down that road expecting to win. The goal is to have fun. Event directors do what they do for personal fulfillment, and the risk-and-reward ratio is skewed against them.

OCEANSIDE 1997

I'd founded Quintana Roo precisely ten years earlier. 1987 was the year of the wetsuit and the Scott handlebar. It was a good year for triathlon., especially in SoCal where I lived. Good races were there to enter several times a month, if you wanted, from April through September.
Then the liability insurance scare hit and USA Triathlon (then Tri Fed) rose to prominence because of its ability to provide an affordable insurance policy. But back then, in '87, all the problems triathlon would incur over the next decade were in the future.

The original USTS, founded by Jim Curl and Carl Thomas, was going strong in '87, and this series was a proximate cause, and a launching pad, for a lot of things that happened in triathlon at both the populist and the elite level. The original USTS -- AKA the Bud Lite Triathlon Series -- gave a lot of pro athletes a leg up. It established what was to become the "Olympic Distance." It's founders were instrumental in starting both a national and international governing body for triathlon. And it taught a lot of race directors how to put on a first-class race. Many favorite races around the country, including Mrs. T's Triathlon, started out as USTS races.

Then, as the '80's became the '90s, the wheels fell off the USTS. Bud Lite left as a sponsor. Other projects, like the Quarterback Challenge and Michelob Night Riders, turned CAT Sports attention and resources in other directions. The USTS had fizzled by '93.

Part of the blame for the USTS demise, though, has to be laid at the feet of a sportwide trend in America. Triathlon took a breather. Like road cycling, triathlon's user base did, for lack of a more precise explanation, something else. They stopped racing entirely, or migrated to mountain biking, or trail running, or adventure racing. Triathletes are a restless crowd, and in large part triathlon didn't "do it" for a lot of people anymore. Who knows why participation sports ebb and flow? Whatever the reason, triathlon was ebbing.

Or, at least, it wasn't growing. It has since, in the past three years, picked up steam. Races fill earlier and earlier. Ironman races in North America fill almost instantanously. But four years ago things were different.

Hence my concern when a flagship SoCal race in Mission Viejo was axed from the calendar. My business was selling bikes and wetsuits to triathletes, and if there are no triathlons, there are no triathletes. Certainly one of the reasons, so it seemed to me, for the ebb in triathlon participation was the lack of good races. Who wants to go through all that training if there are only one or two good races on the calendar within driving distance?

I didn't think it was enough, though, to simply put on a single race. Southern California's problem wasn't unique. I thought that a lot of communities -- and our sport as a whole -- could benefit from the resurrection of a big national series. And if that's what was needed, why not resurrect the original?

But the first year I wanted to prove to myself that I had a team in place that could put on a first-class race. I didn't want to be going from town to town promoting fiascos. So the first year of the USTS was going to be a series of one.

Who better to put on that first race than the founder of the original? I called Del Mar resident Jim Curl -- who lives across the street from original USTS pro mainstay Scott Tinley -- and asked him if he'd agree to have lunch with me and talk about a project. He warily said yes.

Curl was burned out on triathlon. Who wouldn't be? He'd gotten hammered by a variety of pro athletes who didn't fully get paid from the final USTS year, and all that after essentially making the careers of many pro triathletes over the previous decade. Who needs the aggravation?

Perhaps, though, four years was just enough decompression for him. We had our meeting and Curl said yes, he'd race direct the USTS Oceanside for me.

Next was the problem of the course. I had one planned out that featured all the best elements of the City of Oceanside, while the bike ride would take place out in the Camp Pendleton Marine Base. Oceanside had been the scene of a couple of big races, neither of which had turned into the sort of annual calendar mainstay the city would like. So I thought we'd better make a good first impression.

I called the beat reporter for the San Diego Union Trib who covered Oceanside politics. I asked her who was the go-getter on the city council. Who's got energy? Who makes things happen in that town? "Easy to answer," said the reporter. "That would be Carol McCauley."

I set up a meeting, explained who I was and what we wanted to do, and McCauley set up a meeting with all the department heads. Curl and I had a spectacular meeting with them. Next came the Marines.

That meeting didn't start off so well. We were early to a meeting in a large room on the base, filled with both uniformed personnel and those dressed in civvies who worked on the base. We came in and sat down, and as no introductions had yet taken place, everyone assumed that we were part of the base contingent. The head of military police said in a loud voice, "Is there anybody here who actually wants this thing to happen?"

I thought we were cooked. But we had nothing to lose at this point, and I sheepishly raised my hand and said, "I do."

Funny thing, it got a lot better from then on. We said and did a lot of the right things, and my biggest fan and warmest friend on the base turned out to be that particular major. Were those first several races we staged on that base the icebreaker for the Ironman that is now staged there? I like to think so.

"I want Mike Plant to announce the race," I told Curl. "Fat chance," replied he. "No way is Mike coming close to anything resembling a triathlon. If you think I was a hard sell, I'm a cub scout compared to Mike."

What did I have to lose? Mike Plant was the marketing guru at the old USTS for several years, and prior to that was perhaps the sport's best journalist. His race coverage articles in Triathlon Magazine almost 20 years ago remain among the best I've ever read. He was also the "voice of the Ironman" for several years on Kona. He eventually gave way to Canada's Steve King, who bowed to current Ironman announcer Mike Reilly. While both are great announcers, neither was better than Plant. Plant also wrote what is perhaps the seminal book on the Ironman zeitgeist, Iron Will.

I called Mike Plant at the Chart House headquarters in Oceanside, where he was VP of Marketing. "Wanna announce our race?" I asked. "Sure," he said. Curl was floored.

We wanted to do everything right. We flew out Charlie Crawford to marshal the race. We gave away good prize money. We had a crack pro field. We had great food before and after the race for competitors.

Dozens of old USTS stalwarts -- many of whom hadn't raced in a half-dozen years -- came out of "retirement" to train for, and race, this race. Many of Curl's original staff, who hadn't attended a triathlon in several years, showed up at the race and volunteered. I hadn't seen these people in years. I was shocked, and touched.

Spencer Smith won the men’s race, and as I recall Michellie Jones won the women's. 550 athletes showed up, less than the 700 I'd hoped for. But we'd gotten off to a good start. Bills were paid, no checks bounced, nobody drowned, and there were no spinal cord injuries. Ask any race director. When all is said and done, as long as those four things happen the race is a success.

WE GO NATIONAL

One thing about the original USTS: It had a crack staff. You never know whether you're lucky or smart when you manage to attract a good group of people around you, and it really doesn't matter. You just thank your stars you've got them. I'm talking about the original USTS staff—the one Jim Curl gathered 'round him in the '80s.

I was betting that Jim was more smart than lucky, and I cajoled him into coming on board more or less full-time. I then set out to hire Mike Plant from Chart House. I applied Chinese water torture combined with flattery, smooth talking, and generally making an ass/fool of myself until he had no alternative but to say yes. I felt he was the only really good option for marketing VP for this series, so Plant was the one I set my sights on.

Good fortune prevailed and Plant came aboard as well. I now had the nucleus of a winning team. Then we hit upon another stroke of luck. Mark Sisson of Primal Nutrition, the architect of the ITU's drug testing policies, called me up and said, "Hey, I know a company who's interested in the USTS."

Sisson came down to San Diego a couple of weeks later, toting John Wildman, Bally Total Fitness’ executive vice president for marketing. We really put on a show for Wildman. Among other things, we surprised him with a fully Dura Ace-equipped road race bike with his name on the top tube. After the meeting, I took him on a tour of the plant. I asked him if he was familiar with the products we made.

"Actually, I'm more than familiar, I'm a customer. Eight years ago my wife threw my brand-new Quintana Roo wetsuit into the dryer after a race. After 45 minutes in high heat, out came a ball of plastic. She was horrified, and without my knowing called you guys up. You said, 'Send it back, we'll replace it with a new one.' Which you did."

I always preach over-the-top service. Not just good, fair service, but outrageous service. The deal we signed with Bally was worth well over a half-million dollars over two years. I don't know how much sending out that free wetsuit made a difference, but that one incident stood out in Wildman's mind eight years later.

Meanwhile, Plant was working like a fiend finding us other sponsors—we landed Bally Total Fitness as the title sponsor—and Curl was busy lining up race directors all over the country. That was in late '97, preparing for the '98 season. We lined up eight races, and our race directors included Steve Tarpinian, Ken MacKenzie, Jonathon Grinder, and a home-grown group in Atlanta that sprang up out of nowhere—well, from the resurgent Tri Atlanta club—to put on a race there. We had eight races in all.

We also brought in some good people to work with us in-house, including operations help for Curl (chiefly Val McCutchen) and public relations help for Plant (Deb Weaver). Our "site guy" was Mike Laurion, whom we'd hired away from Softride. He was QR's tech rep, and we got him to double as the guy driving from race to race—to all eight races around the country.

We were off and running.

Plant used to have me biting my fingernails to the stub with his brinksmanship. He'd land a sponsor and then keep going back to the well for more. Even from big-money, six-figure sponsors like Bally or Isuzu, Plant was the master of getting all sorts of in-kind services from them. We eventually got a big truck from Isuzu that was plastered like a billboard—literally—that we took from race to race. This was a big diesel thing, brand new, built out for us to our spec.

And on and on. Free this, free that. Stuff I'd never have thought to ask for. What's more, Plant kept these big sponsors happy by leveraging opportunities between them. We'd have three, four, five-way deals going. We were like the 5' 8" ref amid a gaggle of 7'2" NBA heavyweights. We'd put Bally's 30-day free trial period coupons in our shoe sponsor's shoe boxes—with our entry forms printed on the other side—and in turn we'd bring in the shoe company's athlete to appear at some event that had something to do with another sponsor. All sorts of stuff.

I began to realize that I'd have been cooked without Plant and Curl. They kept telling me, "We're with you, we'll go all the way, but you have no idea how hard it is to do what you want to do." They were right. But I had the right guys, and in the right business environment.

I know in retrospect—and I knew at the time—that there were legitimate questions about the validity of doing this series. Not the series per se. The bigger question was, should I be doing it? We'd bought Merlin Metalworks in February of '98. We bought another company in September of that year, a little bike parts maker called Real Design. We'd gone from one company—a tri bike and wetsuit maker—to four companies in one year: QR, Merlin, Real and USTS. Was that too much to bite off? Perhaps. I don't know. I suspect that I ought to analyze that, knowing what I now know. But I don't know if I'd learn anything. I suspect were I plunked down in the same situation, I'd do it again.

So why did I devote so much of our company's energy to the USTS? I think it was because I had a vision of what things ought to look like in four or five years, and I thought we could get from here to there without too much pain. I was wrong about that.

Where did I see us in five years? With a nice revenue stream—perhaps a couple of million a year—that represented a marketing profit center. In other words, you've got your marketing expenses, and you budget for that. But what if we could make the largest part of our marketing something that was actually a profit center instead of a cost center? That was my idea. A set of events around the country in which we'd control the message—the expo, the regional marketing, everything would have our brands in the center. And we'd make money doing it.

Furthermore, we'd be strengthening local race director cells. By helping race directors get a leg up on the local level, perhaps we could encourage more races in total to occur in a region. Perhaps adding a USTS race in Atlanta might net three or four new races in the city. And if the event directors and local retailers had us to (at least in part) thank for it, perhaps we'd ride that gratitude when it came to the sales of our core products: bikes and wetsuits.

RACE DIRECTORS ANONYMOUS

Was I right? Perhaps so, in theory. Only partially so in execution.

We were nothing, though, if not consistent in our reasoning. Hey, we were all about empowering local race directors, right? (My aim was not for us to own and direct these events ourselves, but to empower those in local communities to own and direct their own races, subject to our series guidelines.) We leveraged that into a race director conference.

Jim Curl got a call from a very capable and energetic lady in Memphis, Tenn., who invited him out to be a guest speaker at the USAT Race Director Congress. "Sure," he said. "What does it pay?"

"Nothing."

"Well, OK," he said. "What about the expenses?"

"Can't help you there, either," was the answer. "But we can give you a discount on the Congress attendance fee."

As I write this, I do not intend to cast aspersions on USAT. It and its management do a truly fabulous job in many areas, much better than I could do. But it was clear, after talking to the team of volunteers putting on this Congress, that USAT had—at that particular point in time—not infused much energy, and exactly no money, into its Congress. So we took it.

The first annual Quintana Roo Event Director's Conference was switched from Colorado Springs to San Diego and held in February 1998. We took USAT's staff of volunteers as well. But we did it more or less with USAT's blessing, I think, and they had a role in our conference.

Our keynote speaker the first year was Ironman founder Valerie Silk. This was another one of those situations in which I believe I surprised Curl with my ability to get people to—at least temporarily—unretire from their triathlon retirement. Valerie Silk dropped off the triathlon planet after she sold the Ironman to WTC in 1989. Nine years later—not having once attended anything akin to a triathlon in the interim—we got her to fly out and address our 80 race director attendees. She was, and remains, one of the most entrancing speakers I've ever heard. Her speech alone was worth all the work we put into the conference.

Boston Marathon RD Dave McGillivray was our co-keynote speaker, closing the Congress, and the following year our keynote speaker was Billy Mills. I'm proud of how we injected life into what I believe is a crucial annual event.

While the entire events division I ran in 1998 is no longer functioning, Active.com continued our race director conference. I believe Curl and Plant helped Active put on the first one, held last year. I get the sense that Active is still fleshing out exactly how it ought to interface with race directors, and I believe it is thinking of having several regional conferences in place of a single, national one.

Some people hold a special place in their heart for abandoned and helpless people. Others care for abandoned and helpless animals. My particular burden is for abandoned and helpless race directors. My logic tells me there is no such thing as a triathlete if there is no such thing as a triathlon. If you want to push a sport to the brink of extinction, just diminish the opportunities for its practitioners to, well, practice.

Triathlons are hard to produce. Besides the fact that they are logistical nightmares, there’s the cost, and the fact that residents in the immediate area are often inconvenienced. Triathlons require a lot of volunteers. And marketing. And front-end-loaded cash. And on and on.

The USTS was an exercise in building up local race organizing committees, in bringing big-time, big-money racing back to America, and in helping ourselves to some robust marketing. It was all of that, at least in theory. Our race director conference was a further logical step in that direction.

One additional step was our race director support program. We sold swim caps, bike water bottles and other items to race directors at prices much below what had been available before. Again, we had a twin agenda: We wanted to help race organizers by reducing their costs. Also, every one of the items we sold had "Quintana Roo" emblazoned on it.

OUR CURIOUS RELATIONSHIP WITH USAT

Although I was trying to "do good," and to do the same sort of good that USAT intended to do, I found that I started bumping into USAT at every turn. In retrospect it was inevitable. My mission was helping RDs. USAT’s mission was helping RDs. We wanted to bring back big-time racing to the U.S. So did USAT. (At that time, only four years ago, prize-money races in the U.S. were at a dangerously low level.)

What ought to have been a collaborative effort was often a contentious battle. I can’t say it was all USAT’s fault. While we didn’t verbalize this, often our body language said: "Look, you guys have your system, we have ours." We were happy to work in parallel, but separate, directions. USAT, for its part, was equally happy to do its own thing.

In hindsight it seems to me that there ought to be a more collaborative effort between USAT and those entities that have some strength, and that share goals. At this moment in time I have no bullet points to list. I suppose I could propose an agenda, but my history with USAT tells me that I, USAT’s staff, and the sport in general will be better off if I do my thing and USAT does its thing. I don’t want to snipe at these hard-working people.

Part of the problem is the way Olympic sports are set up, and USAT didn't and doesn't have a vote in this. A national federation has several bosses: its membership, the national Olympic committee, the sport’s world governing body. It’s a silly system. Personally, I’ve always felt that USAT would be better off if it had a clear distinction—with clearly separate management—between its age group and race direction matters on one side and its Olympic development matters on the other. In a system like that I think "outsiders" like me would stand a better chance of having a fruitful working relationship. As it is now, USAT’s biggest boss—its "immediate supervisor," as they say in the corporate world—really isn’t its membership, nor is it the ITU. It is the USOC.

Why do I say this? Because the USOC is the largest single contributor to USAT’s bank account. But that money comes with heavy-duty, triple-braided, industrial-gauge strings. This all but guarantees that the great majority of USAT’s time is spent developing "Olympic talent"—and doing so in ways that stay within USOC’s comfort level. Meanwhile, there isn’t a lot of time left over for USAT's management to implement new ways to make triathlons safer, cheaper and easier to produce.

Enter private industry—that was our view, anyway. Compassionate conservatism, and all that. Unfortunately, when that happens, USAT—although it has little time to help make things better for race directors—feels (if a governmental entity can feel) threatened. That's natural. (If I was a governing body I'd feel threatened, too.)

All I know is, we can do better. Any governing body ought to have, as its No. 1 goal, helping its event directors produce more and better events. You want to make faster Olympians? You want to identify talented juniors? None of that is possible without a grassroots network of strong and healthy events put on by strong, healthy, and knowledgeable local organizing committees. These committees must understand how to operate a race, how to work with local governments, how to raise money, how to spend money more wisely, and so on.

Lew Kidder told me a dozen years ago that race directors were not a national federation’s most important customers, they were its only legitimate customers. You want to help a card-carrying USAT member? Help his or her local race director put on a better, safer, cheaper race. It took me five years to come ‘round to Kidder’s view. It’s taken me the last seven to help implement it, and I’m still trying.

USAT’s apologists will point to the things USAT does offer. Like very cheap sanctioning. A robust officials program. And so on. But it seems to me that USAT offers just enough of a carrot to keep competitors out. It could, and ought, to do more. But as long as USAT’s focus is on keeping the USOC happy, triathlons aren’t going to become any easier to produce. I don't blame USAT for this. It was inevitable, once triathlon became an Olympic sport. That's the sinister side of how the Olympic system works. The urgent things—pleasing your national Olympic committee and your sport's world governing body—take precendence over the important things. Unfortunately, USOC doesn't give its daughter federations any money for the important things.

Having said all that, the immutable fact remains that there is no USTS, things didn't work out as I'd planned, and the vision I had didn't come to fruition. Who is to blame for that? Certainly not USAT. Neither Steve Locke, Jim Curl, Mike Plant, Ken MacKenzie, nor the people at Saucony—my employer at the time—nor Bally Total Fitness, nor anybody else can take the blame for this. That begs the question: Was the vision wrong? Or was I unfit in executing it?

I don't know. But at that moment in time, we were still on the upward arc. The USTS was about to hit its stride.

1999 - 8 RACES TO 12

As Charles Dickens might've said, we were the best of race promoters, we were the worst of race promoters.

What did we do well? As Billy Crystal might have said, we looked mahhhvelous.

What did we do badly? As LBJ (or whoever it was) might've said, all race promotion (like all politics) is local.

If you looked at our race series from a hundred miles above the earth, we looked pretty darn good. Our magazine ads, brochures, race sites, start and finish lines, transition areas, expos, all were done first-rate. Where we didn't perform well—and we knew we were blowing it—was at the grassroots level. We ought to have had little gaggles of volunteers running around six months before each race, in each town, putting a flier under the windshield wiper of every car at—as Tommy Lee Jones might've said—every foot race, bike race, stage race, three-legged race. (OK, you get the point.) Every member of the human race (in each town) should've known about the USTS six months before that town's race.

If I had it to do all over again, that kind of pavement-pounding, grassroots marketing would be moved waaaaay up the list of priorities. As I'm fond of saying (and I'll say it here for the third time) there is no such thing as a triathlete if there is no such thing as a triathlon. But there's another question just as philosophically valid: Is there any such thing as a triathlon––for you––if you don't know about it?

Of course we did do a variety of things—direct mail, stuff like that. But we ought to have done—or have forced the local event promoters to do—much, much more. It's all about getting people's attention. It's about reaching a critical mass of information—repeating the message, smothering people with the message—until the prospective entrant says, "OK, already! I'll enter your damn race!" And we didn't do that as well as we could've.

We had a dozen races in 1999. We had some first-rate sponsors: Bally Total Fitness, Isuzu, Reebok, MetRX, BodyGlide, and in a funny sort of turn, "Baywatch". This TV show wanted to mainstream itself—legitimize itself, as it were. At least that's how I understood it. Some pretty cool stuff happened with that sponsorship. A couple of "Baywatch" cast members flew around and raced the races—Jose Solano, primarily. And a two-part episode of the show featured cast members doing the race. OK, laugh if you want to, but several hundred million people watch that show, and it was pretty neat to turn on the tube and see most of a pair of episodes devoted to people training for, and participating in, your race.

The seminal moment in the whole enterprise, though, happened when Saucony and I went our separate ways. I'd sold Quintana Roo to Saucony in 1995, and I'd run it for them until mid-'99. In that span of time we'd built the bicycle division to a reasonable size, but the mood was changing inside Saucony. Its footwear division—not doing much in '95, when Saucony bought us—was growing in huge chunks. Its footwear president, Art Rogers, hit the ball out of the park and nearly doubled domestic footwear sales in a period of three years. The bicycle division became a bit of a distraction, I think, and we weren't the profitable enterprise in the last two years of my tenure that we were in the first two years.

And I was burning out. I think I just altogether flamed out. As I look back on it, I was an ineffective manager in the last year or year and a half of my tenure at QR. I don't blame myself. It was just the result of an accumulation of a dozen years of going hard at it.

My last day at QR (and therefore at the USTS) was June 20, 1999. The net result was that things in which I took a personal interest, like the USTS, no longer had a champion among the Saucony management team after I left.

But 1999 was a good year. We gave away $175,000 in prize money. We served about 10,000 racers. We sold about 50,000 swim caps to other event directors, along with about 30,000 water bottles and a variety of other items, saving event directors a lot of money. We hosted the U.S. pro national championship. Several of our events served as U.S.-based points races for ITU Olympic qualifying, and that was back when there were very few such options in North America for U.S. athletes. Altogether, I think we did a lot to bring back good racing for a lot of previously disenfranchised pro and amateur athletes in America.

I was certainly not the only person who could've put on this series for Saucony. But I was the only person in Saucony's management who thought event promotion was part of QR's mission. While Saucony was obviously not going to continue the USTS past 1999, its management—all very honorable people, for whom I have a world of respect and still consider close friends—continued the USTS through the '99 season, keeping faith with all those who had an investment in its continuance.

But Saucony started talking that autumn with Jim Curl and Mike Plant about them taking the thing over. Plant had investors lined up. He was working the sponsors, getting them in position to move forward for another year. He was frustrated, though, because Saucony wasn't moving as fast on the sale as Plant and Curl would've liked. It dragged on for months.

Why? My view is that I just don't think the people at Saucony liked Plant and Curl very much. I think if a warmer relationship had been in place, the deal would've gotten done and it's quite possible the USTS might still be going.

This brings up a point I must address. Not to talk about it would be an obvious omission to those who are, or were, close to the series.

Lots of people think Plant and Curl are horse’s asses. Who are these "lots of people?" Those who've had to perform some service or other for the USTS—pro athletes who race it, employees who help produce it, race directors who contract with it, city officials who host it, and in some cases sponsors who pay for it. To all those people who feel that way, I suspect you're right. They are horse’s asses. Or, to put it more precisely, they can be horse’s asses when they have to be.

And thank God for that. If you ask those who've been in this business for a while—if you talk to those who've been around long enough, done it enough, watched it done right; if you ask people like John Duke, publisher of Triathlete Magazine, or Jan Caille, owner of Mrs. T's Triathlon—these two guys know how to get it done. They know how to extract, how to demand, how to verbalize in no uncertain terms, how to make the event happen in such a way that it will come off properly. These two guys are Patton and MacArthur, going to war, and the only thing worse than the enemy in front of you is the boot cocked behind you, ready to give you a swift and painful kick should you not do your duty. If you want to open a McDonald's franchise, you don't need these guys. If you want to perform what is, on paper, the impossible task of putting on a national triathlon series, you'd better have guys like these in the foxhole with you. Horses asses or no, I'm glad to call them my friends (and, I suppose, it takes one to know one, eh?).

USTS BECOMES NATS

Plant and Curl were not people people. Well, they were and they weren't. It depends on the context. If there's enough money, and everybody involved in the deal—whatever the deal is—is professional and does his or her job with talent, there's no problem. It's when there isn't enough money, and the staff isn't quite up to snuff—when you've got to make a project go on a shoestring, when you're holding it together with duct tape and baling wire—that's when Plant and Curl have a harder time. They don't suffer incompetence or inefficiency or even, sometimes, inexperience.

I suspect that's partly due to the inevitable comparisons between "our" USTS staff and the staff Curl put together in the mid-'80s. It's an unfortunate comparison, though, because the earlier USTS happened at a different time. Bud Lite was putting in a lot of money back in the ‘80s. Triathlon was a new, sexy sport, still on its way up. It was an extreme sport, an adventure race, "Survivor", and the next logical iteration of the 10K all rolled into one, perfect, made-for-prime-time event. Simply put, there was more money back then, and that made it easier for Curl to do what he wanted to do.

Also, back in the '80s, everybody associated with triathlon was making it up as he or she went along. The staff had a chance to make mistakes and grow as a unit. I think Plant and Curl felt, "Hey, we've been there, done that. We don't want to spend a lot of time engaging in free-for-all discussions 'round the campfire, figuring out how to put on a national series. We know how to put it on. We're getting paid to put it on. We don't have the time or the inclination to allow you to grow into your positions. We'll tell you how to do this thing. Your job is to execute."

Technically, they were right. But that's hard to hear if you're a bright-eyed, enthusiastic, hard worker agreeing to take a cut in pay to make the world a better place for triathlon. In the latter USTS incarnation, nobody really came from a position of knowledge and expertise. We took a lot of raw talent and tried to mold the people into what we needed them to be. That was what our budget would allow. Whether it was operations, marketing, or PR, nobody came to us via lateral transfer.

Our PR woman, Deb Weaver, was a people person. Everybody liked her. She was, and is, a natural. What she lacked in moxie, in writing skills, in polish, she made up for in sheer personality. And she was a quick study. But she was very willful and insubordinate as hell—a lot like myself, as a matter of fact. This didn't play well with Curl and Plant, and after a couple of fiery meetings, these two prospective owners told Weaver that she wasn't going to be part of the new team.

Everybody assumed Plant and Curl would be the new USTS owners, but the deal hadn't been finalized. Weaver was the pivot point, as it turned out. She'd been in on every meeting. She knew every move that Curl and Plant were making. And she was all of a sudden out of the loop.

Ken MacKenzie was also disgruntled. He'd been USTS’ Rock of Gibraltar earlier on. If we had a flagship race in the series, it was our hometown event in Oceanside. But right up there with it was MacKenzie's race in Madison. It drew good participant numbers, he had a great relationship with the city, the races were put on well, and they looked good. He was our Midwest anchor.

As the series expanded from eight races to 12, MacKenzie was the focal point of the expansion. He owned and directed three or four of these 12 races, in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota. But as Curl puts it, "He's like a lot of people in this sport. His gaze exceeds his grasp." Curl and Plant told MacKenzie that he needed to change his modus operandi or he was out of next year's USTS.

"He wouldn't build an organization," Curl said. "Ken MacKenzie is a very hard worker. He’ll stay up three nights in a row to put on a race. His virtue is that he'll do the job if it kills him. He's stoic. He'll get the job done through sheer force of will. But we couldn't rely on Ken to do it all. We told him we couldn't do business with him if he was going to keep trying to put on three races with five guys."

Weaver, knowing all this—and after getting her own pink slip—called MacKenzie and urged him to contact Saucony himself. Which he did.

The Saucony folks hit it off with MacKenzie. Who wouldn't? Ken MacKenzie had all the virtues and merits of a Boy Scout. You had confidence in this guy. He was solid. And in a very short span of time the deal was done—sort of. The press release went out on November 3, 1999, a spare few weeks after the '99 series came to a close. As it turned out, that final '99 event, in Oceanside, was the last race to bear the USTS name.

The nucleus of the USTS crew came over to MacKenzie, and that included Deb Weaver and Mike Drury. Shortly thereafter I had a meeting with MacKenzie, Drury, and Paul Braatz—an employee in MacKenzie's company. I proposed putting on the Oceanside race myself, and over a period of weeks we examined that.

But I told MacKenzie that while I was excited for him, and for the series, I saw a looming problem. "You've got a hole in your organization," I told him. "You don't have anybody who has the skill to sell the sponsorships the way that Plant did. Whatever your issues with Plant, you could do worse than burying the hatchet and making a deal with him to come aboard.

"Let's face it, " I said. "He put together over $700,000 in sponsors. I don't see anybody at this table who can do that."

I don't remember his exact reply, but it was along the lines of, "We've got it covered." But I remained skeptical. It's hard to close a six-figure deal. That's especially the case when you're selling vapor. I can sell a bike. That's easier. "Look, here's this bike. You give me two thousand bucks, I'll give you this bike." A sponsorship is harder. "You give me two hundred thousand bucks, I'll give you this...this...banner."

Over the period of the next few weeks I got a feeling that I ought to bow out. Nothing particularly bad happened. It's like when the proverbial hermit prospector gets a twitch in his knee when a storm is approaching but not yet apparent. I kept getting a twitch in my knee that told me, "You're about to commit yourself to something you'll regret." It was hard for me to give up an association with a race I'd started three years before, but I called up the city of Oceanside, and Mike Drury of the "new" USTS, and said, "Good luck, I'll be your biggest fan, but I'm out."

In retrospect, the day the deal between Saucony and MacKenzie got done was the high-water mark. Things just never got better. In a surprise to me, months later I found out that the letter of agreement between Saucony and MacKenzie never got consummated into an actual sale. The deal that I thought got done never actually got done. USTS 2000—as the series was to be called—became the NATS, the North American Triathlon Series.

One after one, all the '99 sponsors melted away. Replacing Isuzu with Chevy, a hoped-for deal that badly needed to happen, ended up not happening. Weaver—the person who orchestrated Saucony’s switcheroo from Curl and Plant to MacKenzie—left NATS early in 2000. I expected MacKenzie, at some point, to fold the tent. But, as Curl put it, "Ken's a proud man. He's very military, in a way. There's a lot of honor there. And a will to keep things going."

And against the odds he did keep going.

NATS: GOOD RACES, BAD FINANCES

Ken MacKenzie thought he could keep it going for two reasons. "First," he said, "We had a different approach. Not like Jim and Mike. We didn’t have nearly the overhead. Second, we didn’t have signed deals from sponsors, but we had verbal commitments. That was one of my big mistakes [of which he would name three]: going forward banking on deals that weren’t yet signed."

It’s a great temptation to rely on somebody’s word. But it’s dangerous. I recall a situation in ’98 when we had such a "verbal." A sponsor told Plant, "We’re in for next year." Still, that wasn’t good enough for me. I called the sponsor personally and asked, "Look I know you told Mike, but I need to hear it from you. Should we stop selling this slot?"

The response I got was, "You can stop selling."

That was in June. But the deal didn’t get done. It dragged on and on. Finally, it was November. I called that company’s CFO. "Look, I said," Your guy told us to stop selling. We did. See it from our point of view. Your guy made a representation that caused us to alter our strategy. You’ve got to honor what your guy said."

It was still like pulling teeth to get the deal finally signed. It’s tempting to want to believe that a person’s word is his bond. But in the real world of selling sponsors it’s different. How do you know if a guy’s for real? You have him send you over a signed letter of agreement. Absent that, what the guy is really saying is, "If it was only up to me, we’d have a deal." Problem is, the marketing guy is never the only guy who needs to bless a six-figure deal.

But this was new territory to MacKenzie. Up to this point his scope was limited to his popular Wisconsin Multisport Series and the Madison Marathon. He’d previously been doing deals in smaller amounts, with people who live in and around Madison and Milwaukee––those he’d see in the grocery store––people whose word really is their bond. He was unprepared for hearing "This looks good to me," and realizing the deal is, at that point, only a short distance along the way to completion.

So the season rolled on, full of expectation, but with no good news forthcoming. As MacKenzie looked further into the USTS deal, he got less interested in making the purchase. He eventually decided to go on his own, and he switched the series name to NATS. He contracted with many of the same race directors who had put on races for Curl and Plant. One big difference: Whereas in "our" USTS we wanted the races to be locally owned, MacKenzie’s vision was for the series to own them. This wasn’t a bad thing for the local race directors. They’d turn over ownership of their races, but they’d be paid a flat fee––say, $7,500––to put on the race. That’s probably more than they’d have made on their own, and in any case it took the risk away from them.

This put the onus on MacKenzie to make the race pencil at the local level. In the USTS model––the way Curl, Plant, and I engineered it––most of our money came from sponsors. Whether an event drew 400 or 700 participants meant much more to the local race organizer than it did to us. Our incremental financial increase was marginal, but the difference to the race director was enough to financially make or break his race. Under MacKenzie’s arrangement the dynamic was reversed, and this led to MacKenzie’s second of three mistakes.

"We got started too late," said MacKenzie. "We never reckoned on getting 300 in Arizona. Or 500 in Oceanside. This just killed us."

The local event organizers had the local, grass-roots promotional monkey off their backs. Under the Plant and Curl plan for 2000, the monkey would’ve been replaced by a gorilla. "We were going to make it harder for race directors to do well unless they invested in local promotion." To counteract that, Curl said, "We, ourselves, were going to put $25,000 per race into local promotion." But the net result would’ve been that a race promoter who could only generate 300 attendees would’ve taken a bath. Not so with MacKenzie’s model.

To me––and I know it sounds clinical, and perhaps heartless, to say this––this is when the psychological drama gets interesting. What do you do when the wheels come off? When it’s your representations, your promises, your reputation, your leadership, all on the line, what do you do when a good thing turns bad?

There are plenty of people who see Ken MacKenzie very differently now than they’d seen him before the NATS’ edifice crumbled. Brendan Connelly, who was, according to Ken MacKenzie, his third mistake, said, "Ken was one of my heroes. I once saw him jump into the water, fully clothed, and swim out to help a triathlete struggling in the water." In a different conversation––recounting how he felt after having invested money into NATS––Connelly described MacKenzie to me in words much less flattering.

The bottom line is, the race directors––at least some of them––who thought they had a much safer deal with MacKenzie than with Curl and Plant, ended up not getting paid at all. Neither did the pro athletes who raced at NATS. Investors, employees, entire classes of vendors, ended up getting shorted or entirely unpaid.

It is natural to think the worst of someone who promises to pay and doesn’t, yet I think there are some wrong impressions generated about what was and is in the mind of MacKenzie. When Jim Curl’s original USTS––the series that helped put a lot of money in everybody’s pockets for a decade––starting going bust in the early ‘90s, Curl dealt with debts owed with pragmatism, not emotion. "I answered every phone call. In fact, I anticipated their phone calls. I called them first. I called 75 debtors, and I said, ‘I’ve got this much debt, and I have very little money. How much will you take?’ Nobody was happy, but everybody reconciled themselves to it. No suits. No small claims. No attachments."

"But," as Curl said, "MacKenzie is a proud man."

He’d been a hero to many Wisconsin triathletes. He’d put on race after race, year after year, without a hitch. He’d earned nothing but praise from Midwest racers. The crumbling of his national series was not just hard to take. It was impossible to take. There is a saying: "He’s out of business, he just doesn’t know it yet." This was MacKenzie. He kept hoping against hope that things would turn. "We were looking for the thing that would save us," he said. Enter Brendan Connelly.

"I met him at the Madison race," said MacKenzie. "He was in my office a few days later. He’d had experience in raising money." MacKenzie hoped Connelly represented the answer. But this was mistake number three, according to MacKenzie. "I trusted people too easily."

Whether Connelly approached MacKenzie or the other way around is in dispute. Either way, Connelly did hand a sum of money to MacKenzie. How much of it was Connelly’s, how much was others', is also in dispute. The total invested seems to be about $80,000. Connelly is furious, and thinks he was defrauded. He says he realized within a very few weeks that the series was in a shambles. He’s since been in discussions with the Wisconsin Department of Securities––a State of Wisconsin analog of the SEC––as one of its agents looks at circumstances surrounding the money invested into Quest Events, Inc., MacKenzie's company that produced NATS.

MacKenzie, for his part, while acknowledging his mistakes, "which were many," is upset that Connelly has been hitting below the belt by––says MacKenzie––spreading stories and rumors pertaining to MacKenzie’s personal life. MacKenzie’s wife Mari is furious about that as well. There certainly have been issues, apart from the series, that have plagued MacKenzie over the summer––issues that lopped personal grief upon the angst MacKenzie was already facing. "I’m a private person," said MacKenzie. "My personal life is in turmoil. We’re selling our house. I’m getting a job. I don’t know what’s in my future. But I know this, I’m ostracized from the sport with which I’ve been involved since 1983."

I’ve sent and received a lot of emails to and from Brendan Connelly, trying to get the facts straight for this story. While I abhor pop psychology, the term "love-hate relationship" does seem to fit. Connelly feels burned. No. Make that, Connelly was burned. Whether or not MacKenzie gave full disclosure of the risks involved is beyond my knowledge. It seems hard for me to believe, though, that anybody would turn over $80,000 of his and other people’s money to a business that was in the shape that Quest Events was in by August of last year. While I don’t know what’s in the mind of Brendan Connelly, he seems to me both righteously pissed off while also trying to keep some sense of personal equilibrium about the thing.

"Forget about all the ‘he said, she said’ and the ‘my word against Ken’s,’" Connelly told me. "Forget about all the money that was and all the ill will that’s been created because of it. The truth is I still care about the guy on a personal level, as well as his family. Our kids play together. To this day I love Ken and his family, and consider them friends."

I guess I understand this sentiment, if I’ve truly got the sense of how Connelly feels. If so, it’s a sentiment I share. I’m still trying to square the Ken MacKenzie I’ve known for past twelve years with the Ken MacKenzie I’ve seen for the past twelve months.

MacKenzie’s explanation? "This isn’t anybody else’s fault. It’s my fault," he told me. "It was my responsibility. I’m ashamed, I’m embarrassed, I feel guilty as hell. I’m sorry for what’s happened to our vendors, but more importantly to the pro athletes. I feel sick about that. Like Victor Plata. He was a real champion of the series. He came to our races, and he didn’t have to. Then there’s [U.S. Olympian] Nick [Radkewich]. Those guys stuck their necks out for us. We couldn't pay them. I hope some day I can make it up to them. I can't right now. I hope I can make good on it someday.

I asked him if he thought, anywhere along the way, that it was time to fold the tent. "I never thought of that," he said. "That’s not my style." "I don’t quit," he told me. In this case, the ability to quit was the virtue MacKenzie needed, but didn’t possess.

Sometimes––in fact usually, I think––a person’s great strength is also the proximate cause of his weakness. I’ve known many overachievers who’ve been difficult to stomach on a personal level. But without their pride, or bombast, or egotism, or narcissism, or blind spots, would they’ve attained their success? Probably not. In my view, MacKenzie’s pride, honor and sense of duty––assets when things are going well––became an impediment once his fortunes started to turn. They kept him from being able to call it quits when he should have.

I think MacKenzie’s great sense of pride––now turned into mortification and humiliation––has kept him from returning the calls. "I’m so ashamed about what’s happened," he said. Had he been able to deal with the debtors in the practical manner Curl did, perhaps the debtors would have a different response now.

Those debtors have in large part turned against MacKenzie––not so much for the debt, but for MacKenzie’s lack of facing them; from returning phone calls. Some to whom I’ve spoken interpret this as a callus attitude, and a shirking of responsibility. It also spawns the inevitable question: "What did Ken do with the money?"

I think that question is simple to answer. It’s not sitting in a secret account. It’s gone. It’s in the T-shirts finishers are wearing. It’s in the insurance. The timing and results. City permits. Porta-potties. Magazine ads. It got paid as payroll (the amount of it that did get paid).

Mari and Ken MacKenzie say they grossed only $30,000 between them from NATS. Is that possible? While I don't know if that's true, to me it's certainly feasible. While a key employee in the company––who is owed a substantial sum––alleges that a lot of personal MacKenzie expenses were paid out of the business, he doesn’t suspect that there is a secret MacKenzie slush fund.

In our last year of USTS, we banked about a $1.1 million in revenues, and our expenses were right up at that level, and perhaps just a bit higher. Even in our first year, with only 8 races, our expenses topped two-thirds of a million (as I remember right). MacKenzie’s NATS didn’t end up with much in sponsorship money collected, perhaps $20,000. Race entries perhaps totaled $150,000. Add to that another $80,000 in investment. The total is $250,000––maybe a third of what would be needed to run the series.

What went wrong? Curl said it best, and he might’ve said it about any number of race promoters. "His gaze exceeded his grasp." That’s the story of triathlon. Ever since the days of Team J David, we seem to have wanted more for our sport than it can afford. I’ve been as guilty of that as any. Okay, I met all my obligations, but only because I had a large company behind me. In another sense I did fail to meet them, because I failed to earn as much money for my company as I should have, through overreaching on marketing expenses (like the USTS).

Our sport has often provided a grand spectacle. We’ve lived lavishly, but that’s just us. Our heritage is one of outspending our means, but that’s our heritage just the same, and we feel encumbered to live up to it. In some cases––the best of the Ironman races around the world are examples––we can pull it off. Same with the successful short course "classics," like Mrs. T’s, St. Anthony’s, Santos, Nice, Pucon, any number of races in Australia, and on and on. We set an awfully high bar for ourselves. When we fail to clear the bar, it’s a painful landing.

This brings me to the most difficult part of telling this story, which is figuring out how to feel about Ken MacKenzie. How do I juxtapose the good and bad in the fellow? I'm still waiting for that resonant ker-plunk, where I know I've reconciled and digested it all. I know I'm not there yet, and that is why it's taken me longer to write this last, eighth, chapter––which has undergone many revisions, even since I first posted it on Slowtwitch 24 hours ago––than the seven previous chapters combined. Below is my best current effort at bringing closure to a story that is by no means closed.

"I’m ostracized," says MacKenzie. In the long run I don’t think so. I think there are a lot of people who’ve enjoyed the fruits of MacKenzie’s labor over the years. Those who’ve grown fond of races MacKenzie has promoted are eager for them to return. Indeed, a segment of those people who’ve lost money investing in NATS are trying to find a way to keep the Wisconsin Multisport Series going. A lot of good was done. A lot of races were staged successfully. Even the one single person who may be the biggest financial loser––and who’d prefer not to be named––said, "I’m still proud that we were able to pull off the entire NATS series."

People are forgiving in this sport, and they’ll also remember the good things MacKenzie did for them. Yet, there has been pain spread around, and it would be wrong to write anything that would appear to absolve MacKenzie, or downplay the pain. One investor reportedly put in $20,000. Another $50,000. An employee put in $10,000. Another reportedly is on the hook, through co-signing a note, for $75,000. All or most of it is gone. Race directors, pro athletes, and all the work they put in––gone. The expenses they fronted––gone. And there’s nobody to blame but MacKenzie.

Ken MacKenzie is not a hero. Neither, I suspect, is he an embezzler. In his attempt to do something good for his sport and himself, he contracted a huge blind spot that disabled that otherwise reasonable ability to make decisions. He just got in over his head and––along with those with whom he did business––fell into the path of a steamroller.

Our sport is a good. It is strong. It’ll suffer just a little. The NATS event directors, pro athletes and investors will suffer more than a little. Perhaps a national series will rise from the ashes. While it may take quite awhile, so to, I suspect––only after megadoses of humiliation, apologies, restitution, and decompression––will Ken MacKenzie.