Utah will reverberate. Last weekend was a bad one for our sport on two continents. The Powerman in Spain was cancelled the day before the event, but that's another story. Far worse were events in Provo, Utah. One experienced male triathlete died in or proximate to the water, and the swim was cancelled and the event re-jiggered by a frantic and fast-thinking race organization.

I've heard the accounts of many people who were in Utah on Saturday and there are a lot of opinions on how things should've been handled. Almost all praised race organizers for doing an outstanding job of thinking on their feet in the face of horrendous circumstances. The one extant issue is whether the swim should've ever been attempted. I wasn't there and so have no personal basis for forming an opinion, though I've yet to hear from anyone who's ever seen swim conditions this bad.

I won't offer an opinion of what race organizers might've done differently since I was 500 miles away when the wind whipped up on Lake Utah. A few things come to mind, though, mostly born of my own experience.

I was part of the organizing committee for a USTS race in Oceanside (was it 1998?) where the waves were unseasonably tall and forceful. I had the ability to make a decision to cancel the swim and make the race into a duathlon. I chose not to do so. Had things gone badly somebody could've died in the water that day. Nobody did. I exercised judgement. It was either good judgement, or it was bad judgement and I dodged a bullet. (Then again, maybe the quality of your judgement doesn't enter into it. Maybe you just make your best call and sometimes bad things happen and thank God they usually don't.)

The fact is, even though I'd grown up at the beach and knew precisely what dangers the ocean presents, I was only an expert only on how the dangers related to me, not to the less "oceanworthy" in our field. Nor was I able to gauge how much of that risk I should expose our racers to, nor how much they expected to be exposed to, nor how well they were prepared to gauge the risk for themselves.

There is no guidebook for this. There is no lawyer, no sports federation, no priest or wise man who can answer these questions. There is only the race director (RD), in whom we seem to want to invest an awful lot of wisdom and knowledge.

In one or two emails the issue of money has come up. Would an event like IM Utah be started in its entirety--swim included--if there was no financial impact on the RD one way or the other? I'm absolutely certain this did not factor into the IM Utah organizers' decision to (initially) hold the swim, for two reasons. First, Ironman North America race programs always publish the caveat that race courses can be changed, and so it is axiomatic that IMNA could've omitted the swim with financial impunity. Second, one year ago (almost to the day) Perry Rendina died competing in IM California. I've spoken to IM North America's Graham Fraser at length about that, and there is no amount of money that compensates for having to make a phone call to the surviving next of kin.

All that said, money is a fair topic to contemplate. I'm chagrined that some racers think it's only fair to broach the subject of money as it relates to the RD, though, and are unwilling to point that question back toward themselves. The RD's investment is paralleled by the investment each of us makes in getting ready for, entering, and traveling to the event. Are we to expect the RD to exercise the judgement we aren't prepared to exercise? If we suspect his decision might be colored by his time and money invested, are we not just as liable to start an event for the same (sometimes ill-advised) reasons? Why are we let off the hook? Further to the point, aren't we much better arbiters of our individual abilities to absorb the challenges of inclement weather than the RD?

The question of money ought to be broached. We ought not to hold the RD financially liable for "Acts of God" or disasters beyond his control, and it appears that in the case of both the races in Spain and in Utah our sport might benefit from a common protocol. Yes, with the waiver we all sign we basically give away all our rights, including the right to a refund, but I suspect there is an expectation on behalf of most participants that we'll get our entry fees back if the race is called off. It's an expectation we ought not to have, and we ought to codify that sportwide.

Why do I believe this? Because our sport doesn't exist without RDs, and all it takes to financially ruin an RD is one event in which he pays out the money to produce it, yet recoups none of the entry money for it. The RD pays out every dollar, except perhaps the prize money, regardless of whether the event goes off or not. Further, he'll probably have to rebate some back to the sponsors if the event doesn't occur. If athletes demand their money back, the RD goes bust. What if there was no Graham Fraser producing events? Or no Terry Davis? Or Rob Vigorito, Or Fred Sommer? And it all happened because of and Act of God and overly-demanding race entrants?

It is not enough that an RD isn't legally required to refund the money. He also needs to know that we won't expect the money to be refunded, because to do so would be only to hurt ourselves. He needs to know that the triathletes won't hold it against him the next time he organizes a race.

I don't have anwers to all the questions which are going to be asked about Utah. Ought the swim to have been started? Ought there to be a Saturday Ironman race in a state in which the opportunity for a Sunday "rain date" is not there? (The opportunity for a one-day postponement for weather reasons is the traditional reason for holding IM Hawaii on Saturday, but I've heard that this is absolutely not possible in Provo for religious reasons: e.g., no volunteers would be available on Sunday). There are no easy responses to those questions. I can only suggest that it might be slightly less burdonsome on the next RD who'll face the wrath of Mother Nature if there is a sportwide "Act of God" protocol in place.

Now, about the weather and other inconveniences that impinge on our fun. One reason we all love this sport is that it gives us an opportunity to live life close to the edge, to test ourselves against the elements, and to face up to a stiff challenge. All it takes is an outside factor that causes us to have to deviate from "the plan" and we're over that edge. Maybe it's a kick from the guy in front of you during the swim followed by the guy behind you swimming overtop. Or a cyclist gone down in front of you. Or bad weather. What we're doing is not so unlike climbing a mountain, skiing an extreme slope, or diving deep under the surface of the ocean. Bad things happen. Add to that the plethora of Ironman races that any Joe can enter and our odds are no longer as favorable as they were. Yeah, yeah, you all agree. But will your next of kin agree if and when your life ends in a triathlon? What will your loved ones do if you're not there to say, "No, don't sue, I took the risk gladly!" Or will your death be the one that puts your sport out of business?

As a result of bad things that happen, within the past year Graham Fraser has had to address the families of two people who would otherwise probably still be alive today. As for Utah, I have no idea whether Graham's judgement was sound, nor the judgement of USAT officials, the event's RD hired by Graham, nor the swim course coordinator, nor the person in charge of water life saving on that day. All I know is that the RDs and race promoters that I know use their best judgement without anyone there to guide or help them (when a crunch-time decision needs to be made it's noteworthy that the armchair experts aren't willing to stick their necks out). Yet the RDs will always second guess their own decisions when bad things happen. That is a much heavier load to bear than our loss of the money we've paid to enter and travel to an ill-fated event.

True, the RD's burden is not as heavy as being one of those family members getting the RD's horrible phone call. (It's sometimes a bad sport for families. One strong man I know spectating Utah said he wept when watching the faces of frantic family members on the beach). But I'd just ask you to think about the events you enter, and what it must be like to be the RD who wonders if today will be the day somebody dies who wouldn't have if he didn't enter this race. Or imagine the RD thinking not unlike a farmer, who must pray that bad weather doesn't ruin a year's worth of money and work invested.

There isn't much you and I can do to make the sport overtly safer; to imbue RDs with a wisdom and judgement that, even if we had it, we ourselves would only occasionally exhibit. If there is one good thing that can come out of Utah, though, might it be the understanding sportwide that the financial burden of an Act of God ought to fall on us all just a little, not entirely on the RD's head? Standing behind our RDs will only make the sport less risky for everyone in every way risk can be measured.

Suffice it to say I'm glad not to be among the dead, the left behind, or the event's director. I'll just continue to pay my entry fee and not bitch about it.