![]() ![]() Larry's job was to try and get TV to cover events. Some went to expenses, and I took a leave of absense from teaching and the team paid me to start this up. So we hired him, sort of on a contingency thing, he wasn't getting paid on a regular basis, but J David put up the money. He was an endurance athlete himself he had done Western States five times. It was a great interview he had great connections with sports world, with the TV world, knew everybody, knew Barry Frank. Said Leach: "He came over from Kauai to see us. The group was introduced to Larry King (not of CNN fame this King was a tennis promoter and Billie Jean King's husband). Leach was president, but they needed a marketing specialist. "Plus, there was no track record of women's inequality, and none of that bickering that some sports have with separate men's and women's organizations and events, like pro volleyball, pro surfing, that still holds those sports back. J David was a complete scam, of course financially, it was all a ponzi scheme, but we didn't know it, and we developed a lot of high ideals, like, 'Hey, you guys, continue your education, save your money, this isn't going to last forever.' "We could have just worked as a team and done our thing," Leach said, "but a sort of an altruistic attitude came out of the organization. The experience galvanized them into forming a union-the Association of Professional Triathletes, or APT-which would protect their interests and the interests of those less powerful. "Barry Frank from IMG came out, they picked him up with the J David limo, we were all in the offices, and he said, 'What's it going to take?' We said, 'We're not going to come unless you equalize the money, men versus women, you change the date, and you make the distances more fair.'" The athletes got what they wanted. "But we wanted it more our way," Leach said. The J David team balked at going because it was too early and the distances were too run-oriented. ![]() This would have been the third marathon run trailing the swim and bike since Ironman. The next big event came in March, again organized by IMG, in Marbella, Spain. It was November and the athletes weren't enamored of a race in the beginning of winter. We were zipping through signals thinking that everything was under control, but it wasn't."Ī month later International Management Group (or IMG, a large sports agency conglomerate) conducted the first Nice Triathlon. "It was good that there were new, big races, but it was a made-for-TV race, and there were problems. People complained, 'What right do you have to call it that?' Plus the fact that it came about three weeks after the Ironman, which was too soon. Right after the Ironman in October '82 came the Malibu Triathlon, which was billed as the national championships. "The team's athletes were George Hoover, Mark Allen, both Tinleys, Kathleen McCartney, Scott Molina, John Howard, and others. "It actually started with Team J David," Leach said. It was the first and best chance the pros ever had of making such an association stick. Longtime pro and world-champion masters triathlete Bill Leach helped organize the Association of Professional Triathletes back in 1982. While there will be no test on the subject matter below, there will be a gathering on the weekend to paint signs, rehearse "We Shall Overcome," and practice the secret handshake. Results have been mixed and, in the wake of the pontoon plot and the Florida fiasco, the clarion call is again being sounded. Is it fair that-for all the hard work and accomplishments made by pros before them-the pro triathlete of today has less charge of his destiny now than ever before?Įach day this week will chronicle professional triathletes' efforts to "form a more perfect union," or, failing that, any union that would give pros a piece of the decision-making pie. Still, one wonders where the sport would be today without Tinley, Mark Allen, Dave Scott, Julie Moss and other pros like them who hoisted the sport onto their backs to help make triathlon popular and newsworthy enough to become both an Olympic sport and a tradename worth enough to propel Timex to the sports-watch stratosphere. No one doubts that the pros have been their own biggest enemies by being too short-sighted to seize opportunities handed them by Bill Leach, Scott Zagarino, David Yates and others. He wants an organization that can stand up to the International Triathlon Union, World Triathlon Corporation and others who are either causing-or watching-the erosion of any control pro athletes have over their own destiny. Tinley is the latest in a long line of those trying to form a pro union with the traction and momentum to stick around. Ask him to organize those same professionals into a union that will represent their best interests and you might as well ask him to raise the dead. Give Scott Tinley the task of beating up on a gaggle of pro triathletes on the race course and he's more than capable. ![]()
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