As a reminder, voting is still ongoing for the women’s ballot.

Ryan: We had a good spirited debate on the women’s nominations for this award. Let’s turn it over to the men. Who’s on your short list?

Kevin: Well, this should be fun. I am sure you will be shocked that I would put Patrick Lange on the list – while his year wasn’t super-consistent, he came through on the biggest stage in record-setting style. While he ended up short on the IRONMAN Pro Series title, he still finished second in that. As I mentioned earlier with the women – being an IRONMAN world champion in Germany is huge (yes, I know he lives in Austria, but that won’t affect anything on the sponsorship or appearance front). Taking a third Kona title puts him in some pretty rare company, and 7:35:53 … well, that just takes it all to another level, too. 

While I feel Magnus Ditlev deserves mention for his Roth performance and general consistency through the year, I really don’t think he can factor into the discussion as he didn’t get a world title or contend for the top of the podium in either the T100 standings of the IRONMAN Pro Series. 

I think you have to put Marten Van Riel in the equation (especially since we’ve decided T100 distance is “long”) – the guy won three T100 races and finished second in the other one he competed in. He also managed a seventh-place finish in Cozumel despite having to wait to file a police report after his accident. 

And then there is Jelle Geens. He ticks off the box of having won a world championship (Taupo) and was the only person to beat Van Riel in a T100 race this year (Lake Las Vegas). He was consistent in his other 70.3 appearances – second in Zell am See, third in Tallinn and fourth in Oceanside – and also managed another Olympic appearance (his third) before truly turning his sights to the long-distance stuff. 

Is there anyone you think I’m missing, Ryan?

Ryan: I think you have to put Gregory Barnaby in the discussion given the reasoning you have for eliminating Ditlev; winning the IM Pro Series has to count for something. Again, dueling top 10s at the two IRONMAN World Championships, plus three podiums on the year, counts for something.

But I also would put more weight on Ditlev’s season than you did, Kevin. Although he didn’t wind up contending in the season standings, it’s not like his results at T100 were lackluster. In four races he took a win, two fourths, and then an eighth at the finale – which came just a few weeks after his second place in Kona. 

This is probably controversial, but I think we might have to look at eliminating Lange from this. Yes, he’s the reigning IRONMAN World Champion. Yes, he also won IRONMAN Texas this year. But his 70.3 performances were abysmal by comparison. And I think we have to wind up giving more credit to athletes who are able to excel across the spectrum of what we’re calling long course. (No matter how important winning a world title is in Germany.) That logic also tends toward us eliminating Geens, despite the 70.3 world title.

So for me, this becomes a discussion of Van Riel, Ditlev, and Barnaby. Obviously Ditlev and Barnaby were both more successful at the full distance this year than Van Riel was. Van Riel’s got the world title in his pocket. Barnaby’s consistency got him a $200,000 bonus. And Ditlev was really strong at the two biggest full distance events in the world and had a solid run of T100 races.

I feel like now we have to get very nitpicky, Kevin.

Kevin: I hear you. And I agree that Gregory should be added to the mix, for sure. While I believe that we need to acknowledge his season, it seems crazy to me that we’d give him the Athlete of the Year award over guys who beat him at all the major races. The IRONMAN Pro Series rewards consistency, but are we ready to give the award to someone who was sixth at the IRONMAN World Championship and ninth at the 70.3 worlds? 

I would be happy to leave Magnus in the discussion, too, but remain reluctant to leave Patrick out of the equation. Maybe it’s the era I come from. Back when I was racing, Dave Scott won Kona more times than he didn’t, and often didn’t perform super-well at other races through the season. There was a reason his nickname was “The Man,” though – that ability to come through on the one day that really counted amounted to a lot. Patrick did that in style this year – his win didn’t just net him a world title, it put him in some very special company as one of the all-time Kona greats. The list of three-time Kona champs? Dave Scott, Mark Allen, Peter Reid, Craig Alexander, Jan Frodeno and now Patrick Lange. That, to me, is worth acknowledging.

Ryan: Here’s the thing I struggle with on Lange: yes, he won Kona. And he wound up earning the win in Texas, albeit a few months after the fact due to Tomas Rodriguez-Hernandez’s anti-doping sanction. But his record at 70.3 this year was atrocious – his best showing of the year was 16th place at Oceanside, more than 15 minutes behind winner Lionel Sanders. (Yes, forum readers, we’ve officially hit our Lionel quota for an article on men’s racing.)

And yes, to me, “of the year” by definition means we are looking at the entirety of the season, not just one race or performance. Just like a win in Kona or Nice or Roth carries a heavy weight, not being in the mix at another distance (or for a bunch of the year) should also carry a lot of weight. To me, Lange was so far behind in 70.3 events this year that it pulls the value of his two IM wins down.

Perhaps this all puts Ditlev’s season into further perspective – he was competitive every time he started, won the largest full distance race not named IRONMAN World Championships, and took second at IM Worlds (in the fifth fastest time ever in Kona). For as much as I like Barnaby, and that IM Pro Series consistency paid off in a healthy paycheck, I think Ditlev’s year probably outweighs it.

So to me it’s a Ditlev vs. Van Riel conversation. Ditlev was more successful at long course, and competitive at T100. Van Riel was near untouchable at T100 with a well deserved world title, and was on track for an excellent finish in Cozumel until that unfortunate collision. Results are results, though…

But I think we should put it to our readers at this point.

The post 2024 Slowtwitch Awards: Men’s Long Course Athlete of the Year first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

Note that there is no double-dipping at this. With Taylor Knibb winning the voting for Triathlete of the Year, she is ineligible for this award.

Ryan: First, Kevin, I think we probably need to set some parameters as to how we define Long Course, because I’m sure that will ruffle a few feathers.

Kevin: You think? While I don’t necessarily agree with this, I think the PTO has pushed us into a world where T100 and up is now considered long distance. (Which, I note, is hilarious for an organization that was started to help full-distance IRONMAN athletes make more of a living – but that’s fodder for a completely different story or even a podcast!)

Ryan: Yeah. It comes down to thinking that there’s no need to divide up and have a 70.3/T100 distance award – and with World Triathlon dubbing T100 “long course,” we’ll follow along.

Going into the potential nominees, I still think the same case can be made for Kat Matthews that I made for her Triathlete of the Year nomination. Nobody raced more, and across more distances, than she did, and made an absolute killing in bonuses from the IRONMAN Pro Series victory and finishing 4th in the T100 standings. But I think there’s strong arguments for the two women who beat her on some of the larger stages: Ashleigh Gentle and Laura Philipp.

Gentle’s year was similar to that of Matthews; she raced 7 times and was on the podium for 5 of them. Head-to-head, Gentle and Matthews raced 5 times together, with Gentle coming out ahead 3 out of 5 times, including at the T100 Grand Final in Dubai. And although it doesn’t count for the purposes of this award, Gentle also extended her unbelievable win streak in Noosa.

As for Philipp: obviously, she emerged over Matthews in that duel at the IRONMAN World Championships in Nice to take her first world title. She also had her strong second place in Roth. When you race nine times in a year, and your worst finishing position is 7th, that’s an awfully strong campaign. 

For me this comes down to Matthews and Philipp, and it’s not too dissimilar from the point I was trying to make for Triathlete of the Year: I think it’s important that you show the versatility of being able to race both T100/70.3 distance and 140.6. And that’s something that Gentle just has not done.

Kevin: For sure Kat needs to be considered the front-runner on this one. Some notes, though. There was one athlete who actually raced more than Kat last year – I did a profile on Els Visser yesterday. (I did note right off the bat in that piece that she wasn’t likely to be in the running for any Triathlete of the Year awards, but did enjoy a pretty spectacular season.) There’s another name I would add to the discussion – Anne Haug. If you asked me in July who was going to be the Triathlete of the Year, I would have been willing to bet it would be her. I was in Lanzarote when she broke Paula Newby Fraser’s long-standing course record, and wished I had made it to Roth to watch that otherworldly 8:02:38 performance. I truly couldn’t see any way she wasn’t going to win Nice at that point – I hope my beliefs didn’t jinx her.

Unfortunately, as amazing as those two performances were, the rest of the season wasn’t Triathlete of the Year worthy. (Yes, I am also asking myself why I even went down that road, but it just seemed weird not to have any mention of Haug in this mix!)

I agree on your Ashleigh Gentle points, Ryan. I don’t think she ends up ahead of either Kat or Laura based on her mostly T100, with a touch of 70.3 and a dash of Olympic-distance (Noosa) race season.  

Which leaves us with the Kat / Laura debate for this one. I do believe there is an argument for giving Laura Philipp the award here. As you pointed out, her two “worst” performances were the pair of seventh-place finishes at T100 Lake Las Vegas and T100 Dubai, both of which came after her incredible day in Nice. It’s impressive to me she even made it to those races. People in North America have no idea how big a deal it is to be an IRONMAN world champion over in Germany. The sponsor and media requirements for her after winning Nice must have been nuts. 

Philipp’s year was truly focussed on Nice, too. After the race she told me that she’d had it in her head that the race in Nice was her best shot at a world title from the day IRONMAN announced they would be heading there. So, I guess it comes down to what people think is most important when it comes to picking a Triathlete of the Year. Consistency? Being able to take the world title? A combination of the two?

Happy to hear any arguments, or simply send this to a vote!

Ryan: I think this one is awfully close. In my opinion, you have to give some additional weight to performing at both IRONMAN world championship races (and, for that matter, Dubai as well). But I suppose we can send it to a vote.

The post 2024 Slowtwitch Awards: Women’s Long Course Athlete of the Year first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

First up is the big prize: Triathlete of the Year.

Kevin: Well this one is easy. She won the T100 Triathlon World Tour. She took her third straight 70.3 world championship. She also put together an incredible sprint to get the Americans the silver medal in the mixed relay at the Olympics. (There were a bunch of other T100 wins, Oceanside 70.3 and the national TT championship, too.) On the “long-distance” triathlon front – I am anticipating we’ll have a good ol’ debate about that, too – she was unbeaten this year. I really can’t imagine how this can go to anyone other than Taylor Knibb.  

Ryan: I can go different than Taylor Knibb!

When I think of Triathlete of the Year, I think of remarkable consistency across the entirety of the year, regardless of what they were racing. Don’t get me wrong: Knibb’s run of success is remarkable. She’s unbeatable at 70.3/T100. But her individual results at Olympic distance events was lacking, outside of a single second place early in the year: 19th in Paris, 11th in Caligari, her last two races at that distance. I also don’t put too much stock in Mixed Team Relay results, especially when you had the early race collision between New Zealand and France.

So in my mind there’s another woman that comes to mind: Kat Matthews. Ten long course races in her year. Of her nine finishes, eight of them were fifth or better. Two wins and four seconds mark highlights, including her incredible dual silvers at IRONMAN and IRONMAN 70.3 World Championships. She managed to satisfy both T100 and IRONMAN Pro Series requirements, earning $275,000 in year end bonuses (on top of the prize money from her other finishes). 

So I think it really just comes down to how you define your parameters, Kevin.

Kevin: I 100 percent hear you that Kat’s year was incredible. I certainly acknowledged that in the story I did on her IRONMAN Pro Series win last week. I even acknowledged how impressive the year was considering the adversity she faced – torn calf in Miami, DQ in Hamburg. 

In terms of my parameters, normally a season like hers would get my vote. For me, though, the head-to-head competition has to be a factor when you’re handing out the “triathlete of the year.” Yes, Kat got to within 1:15 of Taylor in Taupo, but at no point was Taylor ever threatened in that race – you certainly got the feeling there was another gear there if it was needed. I won’t count the difference in any of the T100 fall races because Kat was still recovering from Nice, but you look back at T100 San Francisco and the gap was pretty close to four minutes. 

The other factor, for me, comes from Kat herself. At the post-race press conference in Taupo, she (and the rest of the women in attendance) acknowledged that Taylor was in a different league this year. Yes, I know they’re likely being professional and respectful (Kat Matthews, Ashleigh Gentle, Imogen Simmonds and Julie Derron are all class acts), but they all made it pretty clear that Taylor was a step above them over the half distance this year.

And I might be a bit biased since I was there watching the Paris Games, but it is really hard to discount Taylor’s performance there. Bouncing back from a brutal time in the Time Trial, and a tough day in the individual, she found another level to get the US up a spot on the podium. I get that France should have dominated that day, but that’s racing. You can only compete with the people who are there.

Back when I used to do this for Triathlon Magazine, one of our criteria for Triathlete of the Year was that the athlete had to have won a world championship or major event (Olympics) to be considered. Part of the logic for that idea was we wanted to celebrate an athlete who “rose to the occasion” – was able to come through on the big day. I feel like Kat even got that – in Taupo there was no thought of “playing it safe” to ensure she took the IRONMAN Pro Series – she was going for the win, plain and simple.

Ryan: I hate the logic that you must have won a world title for consideration for this. You don’t vote for the year-end most valuable player in other sports based on their performance in the playoffs or a series (there’s usually one specifically for those events). It’s off of what they did in the entirety of the year.

Knibb would be my immediate pick for another award that we have coming. Her dominance is undeniable at 70.3 right now. But by that logic of having won a world title, I think we’d then throw Cassandre Beaugrand into the mix for Triathlete of the Year. To take Olympic and WTCS gold in the same year, IMO, is a bigger deal than Knibb’s display at 70.3/T100. She swept WTCS events. She finished second at eSports worlds. And that dominating display on home soil for gold is something else.

Ultimately, though, that’s why I think Matthews winds up the pick; she didn’t just do it at one distance. She does it at 70.3/T100 and at full iron-distance events. From the hilliest of course in Nice to pancake flat ones in Texas, she’s at the front of the field.

This might need to come down to some run-off voting.

Kevin: I totally see where you are coming from, and we argued long and hard over that criteria. In the end, though, we were looking to acknowledge the people who came up big at the major events. It’s funny that you mentioned Cassandre Beaugrand – I was going to suggest that if there was anyone who could arguably win the award not named Taylor Knibb, it would be her. To have won the Olympics in front of a home crowd was an incredible performance – I can’t imagine the pressure she was dealing with. She followed that up with her first world title, showing the consistency required of a world champion by winning the Grand Final to go along with WTCS wins in Cagliari and Hamburg. 

I do feel that there needs to be a level of consistency throughout the year to win the award. Taylor won middle-distance races from April to December – remember, she was unbeaten on that front all year. Cassandre’s only two “losses” in the World Triathlon realm this year came in March, a second at the Europe Triathlon Cup Quarteira, and April, a second at the E World Triathlon Championships in London. That’s why I would happily argue that either Taylor or Cassandre take the award over, say, Patrick Lange. While I would happily give Patrick the “performance of the year” for his incredible race in Kona, he wasn’t nearly as strong through the rest of 2024. I don’t think Patrick will be too worried about that, though – my guess is that even though he wasn’t as consistent, he’ll happily take his Kona win over Gregory Barnaby’s IRONMAN Pro Series title.

While I am not crazy about the coin flip idea, I am more than happy to let this be decided by votes – maybe through the forum?

Since I am the newbie editor here, I will leave that up to you, Ryan!

Ryan: I think that’s a very fair way of doing this.

Alright, Slowtwitchers: it’s now your choice. You can vote now in the forum thread for this article between our final three nominees.

The post 2024 Slowtwitch Awards: Triathlete of the Year first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

There’s no-doubt that the T100 Triathlon World Tour has added a lot of money to pro triathletes’ coffers (or, at least, the lucky 20 or so who have been able to compete). It is interesting, though, that even the top athletes from the series are still looking to keep the door open to be able to compete at IRONMAN races. Certainly the Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO), the folks behind the series, have been open to athletes competing at other races. It still has to smart for the PTO, though, that just a week after being crowned world champion at the T100 finale in Dubai, Belgium’s Marten Van Riel is on his way to race in Cozumel.

Van Riel will be competing in his first full-distance race. It would be silly to count him out. He’s only “lost” one long-distance race in his career – his runner-up finish to Jelle Geens at T100 Lake Las Vegas. In addition to his other T100 wins (San Francisco, Ibiza and Dubai), Van Riel won IRONMAN 70.3 Xiamen in 2019, Ironman Dubai in 2022 and 2023, and also won Ironman 70.3 Fortaleza last year.

Van Riel is looking to earn himself a slot for the IRONMAN World Championship in Nice next year. By nailing the spot this weekend, he’ll be able to grab that T100 contract and race that series without having to try and fit in an IRONMAN race along the way.

Of course we all know that there’s no guarantees with any IRONMAN race, let alone a first, but Van Riel won’t exactly have to rip things apart to get himself to Nice next September. As the Latin American Championship, the race offers five pro men’s and women’s spots for the 2025 world champs. And, while he’ll be taking on some seasoned IRONMAN types, including defending champion Leon Chevalier (FRA), who took fourth in Kona last month, American Chris Leiferman and Australian cyclist/ pro triathlete Cam Wurf, as long as Van Riel can remain patient and not push too hard too soon, one would think a top-five finish is quite realistic.

Kona for Knibb?

Women’s T100 world champ Taylor Knibb will be going after her third straight IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship in Taupo next month. The American has long had a “do it all” approach to her racing – she followed her Olympic-qualifying race at the Paris Test Event in 2023 with her second 70.3 world title and then her first IRONMAN in Kona, where she finished fourth. In Kona last year she made it abundantly clear that the goal was to get experience on the course in order to come back in 2025 and go after the win.

There’s no arguing that the T100 racing this year has offered some big names, lots of prize money and very expensive live coverage. The organization has been outspending its incoming revenue at an alarming rate. Which is why one would imagine, at some point, we’ll see the PTO try to put some pressure on athletes to race exclusively at their events. Especially if the first thing its world champions are doing after they win the titles is to get ready for an IRONMAN World Championship.

The post T100 Champ Marten Van Riel Sets His Sights on IRONMAN first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

The inaugural season of T100 racing is reaching its conclusion, with the Dubai T100 Final this weekend. It should shape up to be the exact kind of spectacle that the Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO) and World Triathlon envisioned when they announced “the official World Championship tour of long course triathlon” in January.

It hasn’t exactly gone to plan over the course of 2024. Primarily, Dubai was never supposed to be the series ender, with one more race originally supposed to be serving as the final. But there have also been major retirements of contracted athletes (Daniela Ryf), athletes who initially avoided the allure of IRONMAN racing but opted late to try their hand at it (e.g., Lucy Charles-Barclay), and athlete injuries whittling start lists (the latest: Sam Laidlow, who with a hamstring tear will miss this weekend’s racing). Not to mention, a lot of other athletes are calling it a season, like Chelsea Sodaro:

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And Daniel Baekkegard:

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DANIEL BÆKKEGÅRD (@danielbaekkegard) • Instagram photos and videos

Still, there is much for triathlon fans to be excited for. Point values for this weekend’s race are inflated, with 55 points (20 more than a normal race) available to the winner. It means that Marten Van Riel, despite a 19 point advantage over Magnus Ditlev, could finish as well as fourth and still wind up losing out on the initial series title. The women’s series crown should come down to a battle of Taylor Knibb and Ashleigh Gentle, with Knibb holding a 13 point margin at the start.

But there’s battles throughout the field for series placement. Crucially, contracts and guaranteed starts for the 2025 series are on the line. Athletes need to finish in the top 10 of the PTO standings in order to earn their automatic contracts for next year. With Charles-Barclay not racing, she’s in a precarious position in the standings and will likely miss out on this round (although her world ranking should get her in; the six best in the PTO World Rankings who didn’t get auto-slots from T100 racing also earn contracts). On the men’s side it’s near anyone’s ballgame — anyone on the start list could, in theory, make enough of a jump in the standings to earn a contract. That’s particularly valuable for someone like Jason West, Aaron Royle, or Leon Chevalier — they’re in range on the points standings, but their PTO World Rankings may see them miss out on a contract if they don’t have an excellent finish this weekend.

What Will 2025 Look Like?

Dubai will give us another opportunity to view what T100’s business model for 2025 will look like. There is, of course, the headlining professional races. Those are also being broadcast across a wide-variety of traditional media channels or streaming services, in addition to the PTO’s unique PTO+ platform and YouTube. It’s a more robust streaming package than that of IRONMAN and its Pro Series. There’s significant age-group racing here, too, with the unique 100 kilometer distance and a sprint-distance race. There’s also The Music Run, which happens on Saturday night. In total, the PTO estimates roughly 10,000 participants across the weekend.

The calendar for 2025 is also firming up far earlier than the PTO has previously been able to confirm. Seven events are already locked into the calendar for next year:

• Singapore: April 12-13
• French Riviera: May 16-18
• San Francisco: May 31-June 1
• London: August 2-3
• Ibiza: September 27-28
• Las Vegas: October 25-26
• Dubai: November

The French Riviera event had significant detail announced this week. In addition to the headline 100 kilometer triathlon, the port towns of Fréjus and St. Raphaël will also host age group super sprint racing, an open-water swim, bike and run events, and a three-day festival. It doubles down on the type of atmosphere that made the original couple of PTO Tour events in Ibiza and Milwaukee interesting, as they were partnered with existing large-scale events (World Triathlon age group championships and USA Triathlon Nationals, respectively).

There is also a return to Canada next June in the works; permits have been approved, and it is all but waiting official announcement.

There are two potential wildcards entering 2025. The first will be the impact of the twelve-year partnership agreement between the PTO and World Triathlon, which cements world champion status to the T100 Tour champion. We’ve seen greater alignment on professional rules and start list procedure between the two organizations. And Wild Card entries to T100 events have increasingly gone towards athletes who are coming from a World Triathlon Championship Series background; look no further than Julie Derron, who will likely earn a full contract for 2025. But we’ve also seen names like Matthew McElroy, Sophie Coldwell, and Henri Schoeman filling out fields.

The second is the cost of the investments that the series is said to be making in its age group experiences. Putting on a weekend festival of events is notoriously difficult. There’s a reason why I’ve said for years that the easiest way to make a small fortune in race directing is to start with a large one. Ultimately, that investment in age group racing means there has to be offset somewhere else. Will it come at the expense of the size of the contracts awarded to T100 athletes? Will it be on the prize purse side? Or somewhere else? In the end either the revanue must go up or the bleeding has to stop.

But, for arguably the first time, the series appears to be maturing into its final form: a weekend festival of racing that, while having professional athletes at the center of it, provides a strong experience for all athletes. It makes for what should be some potential competition for age group dollars next year. And it should also make for another good earning year for professionals.

The post With Grand Final Looming, Where Does T100 Go From Here? first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

This week’s sizable announcement between World Triathlon and the Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO) is a landscape shifter. The twelve-year agreement covers a wide variety of key items, with the headline one being the exclusive rights to the World Championship Long-Distance Triathlon Tour.

What it also indicates is that World Triathlon is no longer willing to cede long-course triathlon to IRONMAN or Challenge. Why there even is that split can be traced back through our sport’s history.

The History Behind the Split

IRONMAN, up until roughly 20 years ago, sat underneath the then-ITU (now World Triathlon) umbrella. The ITU was set up for one main purpose: to bring triathlon to the Olympic Games. Les McDonald was the spearhead of that effort. And he was ruthless in his pursuit of doing so. National governing bodies popped up across the world, as it was another requirement in order to become an Olympic sport. The ITU also began awarding a world championship in 1989.

It’s that series of two words that got the lawyers involved: “world championship.” The ITU took IRONMAN to court twice over the use of “world championship” to describe certain IRONMAN events. They lost. And then McDonald, together with national governing bodies, voted to toss IRONMAN, Life Time, and any other quasi-series out from underneath the ITU umbrella in 2004.

If you’re wondering why IRONMAN needs to have its own anti-doping program, or its own relationships with the various national federations it has events in, or its own rulebook: this is what it comes back to. And it can also explain why IRONMAN, occasionally, can feel like a bull stampeding in its actions: because it happened to them.

The Present Day

Between IRONMAN, World Triathlon, and PTO/T100, there are a total of nine world championships on offer in triathlon (I’m not getting into duathlon, aquathlon, etc. here).

• IRONMAN 70.3
• IRONMAN
• World Triathlon Championship Series
• Arena Games / eSports
• Cross Triathlon
• Winter Triathlon
• Long Distance Triathlon
• Triathlon Mixed Relay
• T100 Long Distance Triathlon Tour World Championship

And that’s before we start to factor in other production companies or race series and their crowns; Xterra, Challenge, what have you. It’s a fractured landscape at best.

It also results in some of the challenges that the PTO, or IRONMAN, have had in trying to create some of these so called “season long” narratives for their respective series. We have seen some athletes, like Kat Matthews, who have raced eight times this season between PTO and IRONMAN branded events. We’ve seen others, like Lucy Charles-Barclay, who had committed to T100 earlier in the year and then mid-season opted to defend her IRONMAN World Championship. It’s been a lot of back and forth.

That’s not the case with World Triathlon’s Championship Series. (Their biggest problem has been event cancellation or modification, but that’s a story for another time.) The biggest names in Olympic-distance racing race each time WTCS comes together. Alex Yee, Leo Bergere, and Hayden Wilde are all in prime position to potentially take the WTCS world title later this month for men, whereas Cassandre Beaugrand, Beth Potter, and Lisa Tertsch have the inside edge for women. The narrative exists.

That’s also helped by World Triathlon’s content distribution platform. TriathlonLive provides best-in-class streaming, whether live or on-demand, for $40 annually. It’s a steal compared to Outside TV’s $90 a year service, which has proven buggy whenever high demand events are live. (To be fair, you can only get Outside TV’s premium tier with a full Outside+ membership, which comes with other benefits. You can also watch events live for free, but on-demand requires a membership.) It makes it easy for World Triathlon to create stories, and tell them cohesively, in their race formats.

So Why the Agreement?

As mentioned at the start: this is World Triathlon deciding that they’re not going to cede long-distance triathlon to IRONMAN. As WTCS stars have cycled out of Olympic distance racing and into longer events, they’ve chased the money and prestige of IRONMAN branded events. A few names from recent history: Jan Frodeno, Daniela Ryf, Gustav Iden, Lisa Norden, Kristian Blummenfelt — all former WTCS athletes who have found great success at IRONMAN racing.

Now, with the agreement between World Triathlon and T100, it appears that pipeline will instead flow more directly from Continental Cups to World Cups to WTCS and then, when the time comes, onward to T100 racing. The beneficiaries of that appear, to my eye, the athletes currently in development cycles. In theory this addresses some of the issues PTO/T100 have had with athlete start lists and getting contracted racers to their events, as the federations have more sway over nominating athletes to T100 starts.

It will also likely reduce overall operating costs for T100 branded events. Many of these races in 2024 have been stand-alone races, which creates a higher financial burden on the organization — effectively, you’re trying to play IRONMAN’s game, and when you try to play their game, you lose. Instead the release announcing the agreement talks about the potential to use existing WTCS or World Cup venues to produce T100 events. It’s a far smarter way to operate; consider, for instance, the outstanding atmosphere at the original PTO Tour event in Ibiza that coincided with Age Group Worlds. Speaking of: it would not shock me if, in the future, the Long Distance World Championship is awarded solely at the T100 Grand Final event, in an attempt to also create more buzz, more attendees, around that race.

Lastly, this should also solve for the PTO’s greatest ambition, which has been on media and broadcasting rights. There’s now a ready-made platform to distribute content over to an audience that is hungry for more triathlon race coverage. And, well, it works. Factor with World Triathlon’s existing list of more than 25 different traditional broadcast partners and it should significantly increase T100’s media footprint.

There are still plenty of questions. Namely — will this actually last the full twelve years? Or is it a pipe dream? Will we see the elimination of series contracts as a result of deepening relationships with governing bodies? Or does this potentially change endemic sponsor behavior, and where they choose to focus their dollars and athlete contracts? Or will athletes in this newer framework be more tied to federation-based sponsorship and contracts?

One thing, though, is for certain: it feels like the divide between IRONMAN and World Triathlon could be as wide as it has been since 2004. And the last time that happened, IRONMAN grew into the company we know it as today.

Photo: World Triathlon

The post World Triathlon, T100 Tie-Up Brings Us Full Circle first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

World Triathlon and the Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO) will be tied at the hip for the next twelve years, reaching a strategic agreement to “grow the sport” together through 2036.

The agreement includes the sole and exclusive rights to produce “the Official World Championship Tour of Long Distance Triathlon,” as well as a framework to potentially produce shorter-distance events alongside T100 Tour races. There are also provisions regarding collaborative anti-doping efforts, rights management (including media and broadcast rights), and sponsorship.

World Triathlon president Marisol Casado said in a release, “We believe that it is both ours and PTO’s responsibility to double down on the good work that we’ve already started and use the great exposure our sport enjoys at the moment as a catalyst to grow deeper engagement with the sport’s committed fan. We also want to find a way to promote our sport to the broader sports fan. We believe we’re already starting to answer part of that question through our partnership with the PTO around the new T100 Triathlon World Tour and want to ensure we provide it with the right support and solid foundation to go from strength to strength.”

Casado also specifically pointed out athletes progressing from the World Triathlon Championship Series to T100 as a future pipeline for talent development.

PTO Chief Executive Office Sam Renouf added, “We have had a very productive relationship with World Triathlon since our first event, including hosting the World Long Distance Championships alongside the Collins Cup in 2021. In working closely through the formation and then launch of the new T100 Triathlon World Tour – quickly becoming the pinnacle of long distance racing – one of the by-products has been the discussion and identification of other opportunities where we can grow the sport. By forming a 12-year partnership, both sides have the opportunity to invest together in the longer-term development of the sport.”

The next T100 race is October 19-20, 2024, in Lake Las Vegas.

The post World Triathlon Doubles Down on T100 first appeared on Slowtwitch News.