Conflict

Our sport's board of directors just had its quarterly meeting and I know that's news to you. Well, not all of you. There were eleven board members, many of whom read Slowtwitch, and they knew they had a meeting. This was the last meeting of the "old" board, but things won't change much. Ten of the eleven members of the new board are returning starters.

There were some notable items on the agenda, and this meeting probably achieved more than eight of the last meetings combined. By "achieved" I mean they took action. Whether the action will pay off we don't know and won't for a year.

Membership fees went up, from $25 to $30. Race day licenses went up as well, from $7 to $9. Slowtwitch to triathletes: Don't complain about this. Get over yourselves (if you haven't already). Buy an annual license (which 13,000 more triathletes did this year over last).

Speaking of buying, USAT is buying itself three new staff members, a "risk compliance officer," a "CFO," and a "duathlon coordinator." I put the names of these positions in quotes because in reality the federation is hiring neither of the first two positions, and should be hiring something quite different in the case of the third.

If "risk compliance officer" is synonymous with "risk manager" that person is a paper pusher who pores over loss ratios and actuarial data, who liaises with insurance agents and companies, and who says "no" a lot. a risk manager would say "no" to our whole sport—it's too risky to manage.

What USAT really needs is somebody who knows how to put on races, and is anal about putting them on safely. This person needs to build a how-to race manual for new RDs, and for many established RDs as well. In working with our sport's RDs, "The successful applicant must be able to work in a collegial environment," must be a "consensus builder," and all that. This person must also be willing to say to recalcitrant RDs, even the successful ones, "Hey, bud, we love you, but we can't afford you any longer. Your races are too dangerous, and you're not willing to make them safer. We can no longer sanction you until and unless you're willing to move in our direction on safety."

The person for this job is Jim Curl, original founder of the United States Triathlon Series in 1981. He's written the manual already, and he's managed many of our sports premier RDs back when Curl recruited them as rookies. But he won't be the one doing this job, because he'd require too much control. Plus, he'd have no problem saying, "Hey, bud..." to too many RDs (from our national office's perspective). He'd be too expensive anyway. Let's hope the federation finds Jim Curl, Jr., out there.

Likewise, the last thing our federation would ever hire is a real live CFO. These people are the ass-kickers of any corporation. Though they're down a rung or two on the organizational chart, they pretty-much run their companies. Like authentic risk managers, CFOs also love to say No. They are often vice-presidents, but in demeanor they are more like vice-principals. Good CFOs are also expensive—much more than our federation would be able to afford.

What our federation will more likely be hiring is a junior accounting officer—somebody who might say, "Excuse me, but if we count that as revenue we'll all be playing badmitten at a minimum security facility of our judge's choice." Our federation is probably going to be looking for a fellow or gal who'll carry around a huge GAAP manual and who'll be offered the title of CFO only because giving the person the high-falutin title will save the federation $5000 in annual salary. Smart thinking.

We're going to be funding our "high performance plan" instead of just talking about it. This is the term for our sport's version of "The Bachelor," or "Elimidate." We go out and find a bunch of young, good looking potential triathletes and eventually whittle the list down to those who'll make our Olympic Team.

South African Libby Burrell (coach of Conrad Stoltz) is heading this up. She's refreshingly non-protective of her turf. Heretofore I think our federation thought the likes of Sheila Taormina and more recently Julie Swail were accidents, that is, these athletes found us, we didn't find them. Their entry into our sport wa not accidental, just extra-governmental. These two women were certainly recruited by those inside our sport, just not inside our sport's governing body. Burrell has figured out that it's not helpful to see Bill Leach (who discovered Swail, the fastest age-group female at this year's World Championship) and Lew Kidder (who discovered and nurtured Taormina) as rivals. It's more helpful to see them as allies and, for lack of a better term, sub-contractors.

Burrell is the first federation official to openly espouse the idea that Kidder may be right after all, that fishing for talent among the ranks of college seniors exiting their NCAA programs is the way to go. The problem with this view is that our federation has been spending its time, money and political capital on programs for juniors, high schoolers, and even those younger than that. It will continue to do so, simply because of inertia. But make no mistake, though we'll spend part of your thirty annual dollars telling seventh graders how cool triathlon is, our sport's future stars will be those twenty-one-year-olds who aren't quite world class as single-sporters.

In shopping for a duathlon coordinator our federation intends to hire this third new staff position. Duathlon is the jayvee discipline under the umbrella of "triathlon" and while I think hiring for "a" position is a good idea, hiring "this" position is not quite on the mark. Our federation apparently still doesn't fully grasp what makes our sport tick—what makes races work, what makes athletes enter. Our sport really isn't triathlon per se, but multisport. I don't know about you, but the sport in which I'm invested can be described as, "Getting from point A to point B using multiple means of endurance-based human powered locomotion." Most other triathletes I've known feel likewise, because when you look at the great duathlons throughout history, like the original Zofingen Powerman and the Desert Princess Duathlons in Palm Springs, they were and are peopled chiefly by triathletes (who usually win and/or place highly).

I would be in favor of our federation hiring a person who will do pretty much what Libby Burrell is doing: finding talent. In this case the "talent" would be inanimate. How many courses are there that haven't been discovered, whether they're swim/bike/run or run/bike/run? Find the good course, find the right RD, help the RD gain access to the course, that's a good goal. In other words, we need a "high performance plan" that finds and develops great new race courses, not just great new athletes.

We don't have enough races, that's our sport's problem. Increase the number of events in the San Francisco area and the race transfer problem is abated. The race transfer issue exists largely because of the dearth of events. People must sign up six or eight months ahead of time in the Bay Area, or they can't race. Situations change in six months and, right or wrong, people transfer their entries to recoup their investments. Our federation would best serve us by hiring a race course scout and facilitator, and charge that person with finding duathlon courses as well. If the course is good the athletes will come, water or no.

The notable piece of inaction involved the aforementioned issue of race transfers, or race bandits if you prefer. Notwithstanding petitions by a Bay Area tri club for a less-harsh treatment of those who attempt to transfer race entries, USAT will not change its policy of suspending those from the federation who do so. They cite rising insurance costs for their hard line.

At the same time, the board passed a resolution that requires RDs to submit their entry and refund policy when applying for a USAT sanction, publish those policies as part of their registration, and USAT is offering assistance in developing a refund/transfer policy. In other words, USAT is leaving this issue up to the RDs, but it's hoping that the RDs will not be overly hard-nosed.

All in all I give our board a B+. This is not to suggest that I would've achieved an A if I were ruling USAT. I'd probably do C work, as I'm not able to work in a collegial environment, and while I have the desire to be a consensus builder I don't have the skills.