What an incredible event.
Great buildup with a series of interviews with pretty much all participants hosted by Bob Babbitt. He is a great interviewer. He lets the athletes speak and asks a whole bunch of open ended questions, which are easy to expand on. For example, I had never hear Morgan Pearson being interviewed before and I have been following running for years.
Great venue and coverage. Cameras all over the oval. Oval makes it easy for the motorbike camera to move from one group to the next. Whole event was streamed. I watched entire 3 hours.
Non drafting (20 meter rule). Makes it way more interesting then the boring drafting ITU events. In ITU, if you are not a good swimmer, you are basically out of the game. Bike is simply a drafting competition. Then it’s whoever the best runner is... With this format, everybody had a chance.
Increasing the swim a little, shortening the bike and run a little (as compared with 70.3) was great. Event was probably 30 or 40 min shorter than a 70.3, which is better. The extra 40min of watching the event does not add to the interest. Longer swim, shorter bike made it more fair for the good swimmers.
Prize money was great. Over $1 million available to the athletes. Prize money all the way down to 60th, so every athletes was competing all the way to the end.
I never saw such a great event. All triathlons/running events combined.