Race scam - a warning to all triathletes

Did the volunteers offer to share their beer?

This is not Brent Kamenka's first triathlon.  http://www.komotv.com/news/archive/4193216.html

This guy has literally been banned from a number of municipalities. "My First Triathlon" is his specialty because targeting people unfamiliar with the sport is his best bet. Those familiar with triathlon in the U.S and Canada usually know to stay away from any race he's involved with.

I can believe that he could be this bad once. ONCE!

But if people keep getting fished in by this dude, that is just unacceptable.

The city of Parksville loves him too,

MY FIRST/MY NEXT TRIATHLON ANNOUNCEMENT

As previously advised the "My First/ My Next Triathlon" event advertised to be held in Parksville during August 2007 has been denied by Council.

On June 25, 2007 the City obtained an Injunction Order from the Supreme Court of BC against Brent Kamenka, carrying on business as World Endurance Sport, ordering that the "Respondent is prohibited from holding the Triathlon scheduled for August 18, 2007; or any other event on any other date within the boundaries of the City of Parksville unless written permission has been obtained from the City of Parksville for such an event".

For information please contact, Laurie Taylor, Director of Administrative Services, 250-954-4664.

http://www.city.parksville.bc.ca/cms.asp?wpID=6

My first tri ever was a Brent Kamenka "My First Tri" in Galveston, Texas.  Similar problems - maybe not QUITE as bad as that, but certainly stuff nobody but a noob would put up with.   Not knowing what to expect, we had fun, but it wasn't safe at all.

The guy was banned from doing that race, which was taken over this year by one of the BEST RD's in the country - BT was even a sponsor!    Same weekend of the year, same island, but totally different race.

The bad versions of the Galveston race got extensive space on the houstonracing.com forums.  It's AMAZING this guy hasn't found a new line of work other than scamming triathletes.  I guess he makes a buck, moves on, repeats.

I thought those triathlon.net folks sounded familiar.  Can you believe these guys put on an Iron distance race?  Here's a warning post on that from someone at TNO...

Sounds downright dangerous.

-Steve 

Yup -- he was in Texas the year before he came to Washington. Same story there. Now he's apparently moved on to another part of the country and done the same thing. And next year I'm sure he'll pop up again somewhere else.

The guy is just soaking off a fairly well-to-do demographic. As I recall, for the Chelan event, he was taking registrations online the day before the event, even though it had already been canceled. Another RD stepped in at the last minute (BuDu Racing -- always puts on pretty high-qquality events, and I used to bike race with the guy) and a few other local organizations, and made the race happen, but the participants were rather surprised that their registration with Kamenka wasn't any good.

I'd love to see him participate in one of his own events...

Of course, I'd love to meet up with him in a dark alley too...

Let's hope that this scam artist is not providing a phony name next.  It's easy enough to change the business name.

Hmmmm, maybe an America's Most Wanted episode? 

It seems like it would be a lot easier to make a lot more money with other types of fraud.   

Here's the houston thread:  http://www.houstonracing.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=1118&b=... may need to be a member though.  Basically it's a blow-by-blow of the big fiasco of  WES  (World Endurance Sports) trying to pull together the 2006 race in Galveston - various branches of government saying the race hadn't been approved, etc.  Then just before race date it was taken over by another local RD.