Ultraman Florida Champ Eventually DQ’d After Back and Forth Over Camera Use
The Ultraman community is generally extremely close-knit and positive, but that vibe has been shaken over the last couple of days after the first man across the line at Ultraman Florida last month posted a video explaining why he was giving up on his quest to complete all five Ultraman events this year. In the video, Steven Keller, a 39-year-old from Virginia Beach, VA, said that he was withdrawing after a disagreement with the Ultraman Board of Directors that eventually saw him disqualified from the race in Florida.
Keller’s video led to lots of posts criticizing the decision. We contacted three members of the Ultraman Board, who weren’t able to comment on any of the confidential discussions that took place during board meetings. A couple of board members did have issues with some of the statements made by Keller in the video, though. Here’s what we’ve been able to gather through our conversations with Keller and the board members.
Ultraman Florida Race Weekend
A short time before the start of his first of five Ultraman events planned for 2025, Keller (the winner of Ultraman Florida in 2020 and Ultraman Arizona in 2022) found someone who was willing to help with videos from his races. With that in mind, he mounted a camera on his handlebars for the two days of cycling at the Ultraman race. (Day 1 involves a 6.2-mile swim followed by a 90-mile bike, Day 2 includes a 171.4-mile ride.) According to Keller, no-one would have known that he had a camera on his bike through the first day of riding, but at that night he posted a video from the day’s racing on Instagram, which was liked and shared by the Ultraman Florida race organizers. Keller said that Ultraman Florida race director Jen McVeay was aware of the camera for the second day of biking.
While that might be the case, the Ultraman rules (including for the Florida event) clearly state that:
Filming of the event will not be permitted whether for personal or commercial purposes unless prior written authorization is obtained from Event Organizers. Such authorization may be withheld if the filming is in conflict with the granting of other film rights and/or registered logo use.
According to Sheryl Cobb, the Co-Race Director of the Ultraman World Championship, “The Board has documentation showing that no prior approval was granted.”
Post-Race Reaction
After the videos were posted, Ultraman Canada race director Brad Sawa received queries from athletes asking if having a camera on the bike was allowed. During a subsequent board meeting the issue was discussed. While the specifics of the meeting remain confidential, both Keller and Cobb have confirmed that after the meeting they had a call about the issue, and offer conflicting versions of the conversation.
Keller said that until Cobb pointed it out, he didn’t realize that mounting a camera to his bars was violating a rule.
“The first thing out of my mouth was ‘I did not know that was a rule,'” he said. “That’s on me.”
According to Keller, he was told that he should take videos down and post an apology to the board. In his video post he said that he had been told that Sawa was the one pushing for him to be penalized, and that he was told that the penalty would be decided “based on the quality of the apology.”
Cobb disputes that take.
“I did speak to Steven and when he asked about a penalty, I told him the precedent for this type of rule violation was a DQ,” she wrote in an emailed response to our questions. “I also told him that the Board asks him to take down the videos and send the Board an apology that did not need to be a video and should just be an email. I did NOT confirm that Brad Sawa was pushing for the penalty because he wasn’t. Brad offered a possible compromise to a DQ penalty. I also told him that he had made a nice video about why he keeps coming back to Ultraman and that was a net gain for the brand, but then, posting video of him violating a rule was a loss for a net zero gain for the brand. Steven did not apologize. He stated, ‘I wouldn’t have done it.’ Steven was not offered an ultimatum. He was told there would be a penalty regardless of what he did as he had violated a rule. The consensus of the Board was to give him a significant time penalty rather than a DQ had he taken the opportunity to be accountable for his actions.”
Rather than take down the videos and send an apology to the Board, Keller decided to withdraw from the remaining Ultraman events that he’d registered for – the race organizers received that email roughly 14 hours after his call with Cobb.
Which brings us to Monday morning, just days before he was to have competed at Ultraman Arizona, when Keller posted his video, which he said was prompted when he saw that the results had been changed on the Ultraman Florida site. McVeay confirms the results were posted on Sunday night, but other members of the board said the results weren’t changed until after Keller’s post.
Aftermath
The end result, in many aspects, has been a lose-lose for both Keller and the Ultraman series. This was the last thing the Ultraman brand wanted to be dealing with at all, let alone heading into this weekend’s race in Arizona. For Keller, who not only competes in Ultraman races but coaches a number of Ultraman athletes, the split puts him “in a bind.”
You don’t gear up to compete in five Ultramans in one year unless you’re passionate about the sport. You certainly don’t put on an Ultraman unless you have a deep love of the endeavour, either. Neither Keller or the Ultraman organizers are remotely happy about this situation.
What’s the rationale for the no camera rule. Made a lot more sense when cameras were bulky and could potentially be hazardous. Any arguments about privacy are nonsense, as the rule can simply say no cameras in changing tents, and the rest of the race is in public spaces where anyone can theoretically film.
The rule can say no filming for commercial purposes to protect the organizers broadcast rights if they’d sold them to a media company. Then there is the finisherpix model – I suppose they might feel a bit threatened if racers start documenting their races with FPV cameras… (solution – use your exclusive to lease cameras to athletes and sell them the footage).
But I can’t see any positive for Ironman (or Ultraman) to have less people sharing race videos in this age of selfies, social media, etc.
These races should want more people filming and self promoting their efforts. So please give me the rationale? I’m usually as pro business / race organizer as they get and I’m not seeing it?
Protect from embarrassment? (again, public spaces and others can film standing around without being told not to)
There’s probably an element of safety to it. I.e., they don’t want athletes fiddling with cameras while they are supposed to be looking at the road.
I also think it’s kinda dumb though. You’d think a small, niche, and expensive race like Ultraman would like to get all the publicity they can. Also, with the “prior written approval” clause in the rule, it seems like there’s room to allow athletes to do this. To me it looks like they’re just flexing their authority by doing this.
When they say that the penalty is dependent on the degree of the apology you know it’s become about egos.
how niche sports dig their own graves with silly miniscule poltiics.
Correct…Ego’s.
The slow,downward spiral of the Ultraman brand started years ago when Sheryl Cobb took over as race director from UltraMomma Jane Bockus.
I’ll sign a petition for the board to be replaced if somebody starts one. Post it here.
Explain to me why a race with less than 20 starters needs a board. 20 people is smaller than probably 1000 group training workouts I have organized in my life. I did that with a board of one person with one side of my brain talking to the other part and figuring out how to get people to the workout. Many of these were multi day training events. With these UM events requiring self support well…
Don’t really know why this rule is here, but I can say I’m glad there is a rule to prevent hundreds of wannabe influencers with an 86 subscriber channel spending half their time talking to the camera.
Its a race, just race goddammit. No one cares about the 10000th “I tried an ironman… I did not expect this…this is what happened…”
I have no beef in this. Punish him, or not, but I totally agree that more and more folks and wannabe influencers start filming themselves which gets slightly annoying…
Who cares
Well there are the couple of hundred who resoponded to his IG post for a start and at least one who cares enough to take the time to ask “who cares?” .
Let’s use some common sense.
These UM events barely have a two handsful of participants. Most people are not in it for social media, “look at me, I got a finisher medal”. If you want to do that, there is a local sprint tri you can do, and proclaim you did your first Ironman16.3 on social media.
Anyone doing a UM is pretty darn committed and if they are trying to package up their story, this is good for the sport.
When the so called board says, “the punishment will be proportional the apology” I think this is all we need to know. It’s about egos and muscle flexing only, because the punishment should only be proportional to the infraction, not the level of apology. Othewise someone commits a murder and gives a massive apology and gets off the hook and another person rolls thru a stop sign, refuses to apologize and get the slammer.
That’s board governance asleep at the wheels. Board governance should be about fairly applying all governance frameworks of an organization. This is not a “board” if this is how they operate. It’s just an ‘exclusivity club’ randomly creating and applying their own frameworks.
The quality of your apology will determine your penalty does not sit well with me, at all. We all make mistakes & should own up to them. However, when in the history of long course triathlon has an athlete ever had their punishment determined based on a public statement?
While I can understand the board’s view point of all athletes are expected to know and follow all rules. The punishment seems excessively drastic. Yes, it says on 2 different pages no video/camera use. However, it also says “penalties will normally consist of time penalties assessed against the athlete at end of each stage, with immediate disqualification occurring for major misconduct and/or infractions…The event/race director has the authority, at any time, to overrule any rule…the race director has the ultimate authority in reguards to all rules, their interpretation, and their enforcement”.
I interpret this as the only person who is permitted to DQ Steve is UMFL Race Director, and it would have had to occur on site, not after the race. Seems like UM Board is breaking their own rules listed on page 17 by 1. doing this after the race has been concluded and 2. not letting UMFL have the sole authority
Just to be clear, Devashish, Sheryl Cobb said that she did not tell Steven that “the punishment will be proportional to the apology.”
Here’s what she said:
“I also told him that the Board asks him to take down the videos and send the Board an apology that did not need to be a video and should just be an email. I did NOT confirm that Brad Sawa was pushing for the penalty because he wasn’t. Brad offered a possible compromise to a DQ penalty. I also told him that he had made a nice video about why he keeps coming back to Ultraman and that was a net gain for the brand, but then, posting video of him violating a rule was a loss for a net zero gain for the brand. Steven did not apologize. He stated, ‘I wouldn’t have done it.’ Steven was not offered an ultimatum. He was told there would be a penalty regardless of what he did as he had violated a rule. The consensus of the Board was to give him a significant time penalty rather than a DQ had he taken the opportunity to be accountable for his actions.”
I think you also have to be careful of making any assumptions about what the board may have said or done. They are abiding by the board’s confidentiality rules, so aren’t able to disclose a lot of what went on. Steven has no such limitations.
I do completely agree that this absolutely didn’t need to get to this point, though, and there could/ should have been a much better way to resolve all of this. Figuring out a way to acknowledge there was a rule broken, explaining why it was an issue, and figuring out a way to ensure that in the future stuff like this was covered and dealt with should have been the goal. As I said in the story, this is a lose-lose on both sides, which is a real shame.
Ultraman is a self supported event, hard to call it a “race” when you have to bring 8 people with you to support you and stuff. I saw the headline and the body of the article just confirms this for me.
Ultraman should encourage vlogging of their events.