Happy Holidays!
I hope everyone is having a happy holiday season!
The offices of KevinCollington.com will be closed for the holiday season…and by ‘offices’ I mean I’m going to stop going to Panera to get internet on my computer to update my blog.
So thanks again for reading and I’ll see you in 2009!
I’ll leave you with some pics from the early season that I never got to put up since I started writing in April. Enjoy!
In Viña del Mar, Chile in January. I guess it’s normal to take up a lane of traffic on a major road with a luggage cart.
Goats at the airport in Nevis.
Coming out of the water in Nevis with Chrabot.
New Plymouth, New Zealand. What an amazing place.
The wind wand in New Plymouth – it blows in whatever direction the wind blows.
The TriGators and Hunter Kemper at Collegiate Nationals (Olympic Trials was the same day as Coll Nats).
Richie Cunningham destroying me in a sprint for 5th at St. Anthony’s.
Triathlon and the Economy
Has anyone noticed that the world economy isn’t doing so well lately? I think I read something about that in the news somewhere. Being a young, developing professional triathlete, I don’t really have any money of my own, but I’ve heard from people who do have money that they lost a lot of it recently. Most of the world’s major economies are in recession, and we hear everyday of a new company cutting x thousand jobs, x% of staff, etc. Is there anything that isn’t being significantly affected by this economic downturn? Triathlon can make a pretty good argument to this end, at least in the United States. Check out this article from the San Diego Union-Tribune.
For those of you who don’t like to click links, I’ll summarize. Basically, while many other sports organizations are cutting back in expenditures, triathlon continues to grow. There are several reasons that could possibly explain this, the biggest of which is that triathlon in the United States often isn’t a hobby but rather a lifestyle. Most people can’t put a price on the fitness and happiness that participating in triathlon provides, and so they continue to race and train despite the sagging economy. To be honest, though, my summarizing skills are not very good, and you are better off just reading the article.
The Dow Jones…not doing so good.
I can personally attest to the resilience of triathlon in these bad economic times. The ITU just announced it’s new World Championship Series, complete with title sponsor Dextro Energy and a $2,000,000 total prize purse ($150,000 at each of the eight races and a $700,000 overall series purse). As I posted a few weeks ago, the Hy-Vee Triathlon raised it’s already ridiculously huge prize purse to $1,000,000 (it was $700,000 previously). Sponsorship for 2009 is also going well. So far I will be working with two new companies next year – Kiwami, a French company that makes race suits, and Rudy Project, maker of sweet helmets and sunglasses. That’s two more sponsors than I had at this time last year when the Dow Jones was 57% higher!
Go Gators!
The Gator football team won the SEC Championship last Saturday, once again proving that athletes from my arbitrary region of the country are superior to those from other locations in the United States! The Gators will play the Oklahoma Sooners for the national championship on January 8th in Miami, FL, and despite my sarcasm, I’m pretty excited to watch it!
On another note – is the BCS (Bowl Championships Series) a fair way to determine the NCAA Football National Champion? Absolutely not! A playoff system is definitely needed. However, I can’t really complain because the Florida Gators are seemingly always the beneficiary of BCS ridiculousness, having received two last minute bids into the National Title Game in the past three years.
