Anyone who watched the PTO T100 Grand Final in Dubai last Saturday not only saw an unleashed Taylor Knibb racing to the day’s victory and PTO world title, but also could hardly ignore the footage showing the American athlete shit herself during the final kilometers of the run. Now this does happen more often with professional athletes – as unpleasant as it is – but for this to be so widely reported in the traditional and thus not triathlon-oriented media is pretty new.
Knibb, with a few kilometers to go, looked at the cameraman and literally asked him to please not show her buttocks or backside on video anymore because she had unexpectedly shit herself. At the finish line, Knibb immediately sat down and was almost immediately – as she should be – handed towels.
Not much later, the PTO remarkably chose to share on Instagram a video of Knibb herself asking not to film her, and on it you can hear her saying: “I just shit myself”. This was particularly noteworthy, all the more so because Knibb explicitly asked not to film the incident, but then immediately after the finish the PTO did share the video on socials. Not much later they deleted the content, most likely because of all the negative comments under it.
Numerous traditional worldwide media outlets already published the video at that time. They have come under considerable criticism and dozens of followers think it is a bad thing that more is written about the “pooping Knibb” than about all the achievements at the race.
Triathlon Today will not share the video.
