Sam Appleton

[laughs]

Speaking of a man who, uh, loves sleeping instead of being at Ironman races that he should be, Sam Appleton joins us.

[laughs] I do love sleeping.

Um, what a weekend.

They qualify, they make a big deal of qualifying for 70.3 Worlds, and they never show up.

And that's Sam Appleton and Justin Reale.

Year after year, these guys qualify, they don't go, and...

Yeah, you know, I got called out for the same thing by Christian Blumenfeld on the last Triathlon Hour podcast.

And then we'll try to talk about it next week on the show.

Two also, um, retirements announced this week, Sam Appleton, he's going down to do Patagonia man, uh, also announced his retirement.

He's got 20 or 18 or 19, 70.3 wins, uh, like top five all time.

And, um, Johnny Brownlee, obviously, uh, Multiple medals in the Olympics.

by his brother like imagine how many wins he would have had if his brother wasn't on the scene and he was just a complete phenomenal unbelievable athlete like truly one of the certainly one of the top five male short course athletes of all time fair play

Did you say third on the list, Kyle, of wins?

For Sam Appleton? Yeah.

I believe he's fifth-ish.

The floor is yours.

I would like to talk about the announcement that Sam Appleton is retiring from professional triathlon.

So I saw Sammy put up this video this week and everybody playing along at home and a lot of people will know Sam Appleton, Australian triathlete, won many 70.3s, has been a stalwart of long distance triathlon for a long time.

Um, I've known Sam personally for a long time as well.

So Sam went to my high school, Sam grew up in the same town that I grew up in.

Um, my dad is good friends with Sam's dad.

So I've, I've known Sam for a long time.

I have a lot of respect and a lot of love for Sam Appleton.

I look at my phone.

I see Sam Appleton's name pop up.

I go, how good is this? We were talking for about 15 minutes and then you said, hang on, mate, I'll call you back in three seconds.

It's three days later and I'm hearing your voice for the first time.

If there's an athlete you like and you can tell they're clearly sponsored by a running brand – Don't go and copy their shoe because they're wearing it.

Like running shoes are so personal and what shoe you like will change so much.

Like don't just because, okay, let's just use an example, right? Sam Appleton, he's sponsored by Sockany at one point in his career.

Just because you see Sam Appleton jogging in a pair of Sockany Triumph 23s doesn't mean you should go, oh, what shoes is Sam Appleton wearing? I really like that guy.

I think it sounds like they're doing everything but listening to what the core fan base want in that regard, and, and I think they need to win the core fan base back over in 2027.

I think the only thing they should be discussing at their end-of-season board meeting is project how do we win the core fan over? How do we get Sam Appleton and Malachi Cashmore and Greg Harper watching our races every time? How do we make them excited for our races every time? How do we make them excited to come and stand on the side of our courses and watch our YouTube videos and watch our Instagram and buy the brands that support us? Because right now they don't have that, and they're losing that really quickly.

Now, the, the kind of-- The fan who doesn't consume everything as closely might be like, "Oh, I like having a wa- a race to watch every now and then," but they're not tuning into everything and supporting it anyway, so it doesn't really matter.

I think the core fans spread your message, and they're losing the core fan quickly.