This past Sunday I went for a run from one of the main popular trailheads here, and afterwards I went into the liquor store to get a Gatorade. The cashier asked me how far I’d run, so I said ‘about six miles.’ And he goes: Oh well, it’s better than nothing.

Welcome to Marin, bitch.

Now that I’m not flying out to Kona until the Monday of race week, should I also do Jan Frodeno’s new SGRAIL race here that is most definitely not a gravel triathlon, and report back? Many things to consider.

But first: Nice is almost here and it’s my favorite time of the year. It’s 70.3 Worlds time!

- Kelly

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The limit does not exist

Right now, there are roughly 3,000 women + 3,500 men registered for the 70.3 World Championships in Nice in 10 days. According to Ironman, when you add in the Foundation slots, partner slots, some athletes who have taken their spots but not registered yet, and then you factor in the likely DNS rate, they expect to end up with about ~6,500 athletes over the two days.

Seven years ago, I was at the last 70.3 Worlds in Nice because my husband raced and I covered it for Triathlete. There were 2,022 women + 3,690 men who checked in/started that race. And I re-enjoyed this line in the story I wrote at the time about how 70.3 Worlds had grown to what was then the biggest world championship race ever:

“Next year, the numbers will grow even more…the men’s championship race is largely at capacity. It’s the women’s event that has room to grow.”

That’s the kind of insight I bring you.

Obviously, that was the end of 2019 and then 2020 happened and things went sideways and numbers went all over the place doing what they did. But now, here we are back in Nice with roughly 800 more athletes. 800 more female athletes, broadly speaking. (And, yes, this is the highest number of female athletes at a World Champs, if you were wondering.)

Next year, they’re saying the total number of athletes could be up to 7,000.

We all know I’m on the low end of the ‘it’s too easy to qualify for Worlds’ worries spectrum. (ie. I don’t worry about it.) I think if these are the xx best women and the xx best men, then let them fight it out for world titles, and if they’re the best then it doesn’t matter what you think about how good they are or how many of them do triathlon in the world or how they compare to each other.

And yet, even I am starting to wonder: Is there a limit?

For the record, I personally think it should be roughly 1,500 men & 1,500 women in Kona, and ~2,500-2,700 men & 2,500-2,700 women at 70.3 Worlds. Give or take. If we just get to pick what we think is the ideal number for a fair championship-level race.

Sure, it’s possible to space out wave starts more for 70.3 Worlds than for 140.6 Worlds, because there’s more wiggle room. Sure, this is almost certainly why they’ve split transitions in Nice, so that they can check the men into T1 while the women are still utilizing T2. But, still, the roads can only hold so many. The towns can only hold so many. That descent in Nice was already a lot last time around. Guess it’s good 70.3 Worlds isn’t in Kona.

Who’s in, who’s out

Out: The big news is defending champ Lucy Charles-Barclay is out. She wants to focus on Kona instead. I don’t think you necessarily have skip Nice to do well at Kona, but I could see why Lucy would be nervous about that question after last year.

Sam Laidlow was never in. Ari Klau is out, Justin Riele is out.

In: The Norwegians have been training hard in St. Moritz and Gustav Iden debuted his Worlds’ hairdo. Hayden Wilde will be following up the big Supertri final this weekend with Nice next weekend. And Laura Philipp thinks winning Zell am-See 70.3 this past weekend actually works perfectly for racing Nice and then Kona; Mirinda Carfrae appears skeptical, but I think it makes sense for Laura.

Typically, Tri-Poll Athlete will start their tracking of who’s in/who’s out sometime this week. Previews next week here. Let the speculation begin.

This week’s other non-ball sports news: A UTMB review

Technically speaking, yes, the man who won the ~100-mile UTMB over the weekend (“the big loop” as the runners say) was second at UTMB last year. And, yes, the woman who won is now the second woman to win all three: CCC, OCC, and UTMB.

Technically speaking, neither Ben Dhiman nor Blandine L'Hirondel came out of nowhere. They’ve been here doing this for awhile. Yet, they weren’t the favorites, they weren’t the hyped names, they weren’t who the big bucks were betting on. And so it felt very much this year like the runners’ runners dominated, the journeymen workhouse athletes, the people who the people in the know are rooting for. Which is interesting, because that’s in sharp contrast to the other story out of UTMB — which was about all the brands and the activations and the hype hype hype and how much money/crowds/influence can truly “authentically” descend on a mountain race in a mountain town.

It’s almost as if once the hype is done and the money’s been spent, once the actual runners are out on the trails doing the actual running, “it’s still just running, eating, and a lot of walking too.”

Some other UTMB odds and ends:

• Retired triathletes dominated the 45-49 age-group in the 60km OCC: Beth McKenzie and Jan Frodeno

• If you missed the to-the-absolute-wire race at the front of OCC, it was the most watched of the weekend as Lauren Gregory moved from third to first in the last 15 minutes and then took the win by just three seconds

• This guy did all eight of the races over the week, which I don’t even understand the logistics of

• The first amputee to finish the big lap and this adaptive athlete

• Ben Dhiman’s Strava file of his win

• And, yes, the course was re-routed so the very fast times are semi-unofficial in so much as there are ever really official times in trail running

• Plus, there’s been some trail debate about whether or not amateur athletes are influenced by what shoes the fast runners wear (“I totally actually don’t even look at advertising”), but I know you all care about the fastest shoes

And let’s get to know Doug!

As part of our partnership with Mint & Honey Co. we’re highlighting some of their work and clients. Today: If you don’t know him, let’s meet Doug Guthrie 👋

Doug is a USAT Level 1, TrainingPeaks Level 2, and U.S. Masters certified coach who founded GU3 Training a decade ago to support athletes of all levels. He’s also been an expert source for media outlets likeTriathlete, Men’s Health, US News & World Report, Runner’s World, and Bicycling.

I (me, Kelly, hi!) met Doug when he guided Adrienne Bunn in Kona, an autistic athlete and the youngest female to finish the Ironman World Champs at the time.

Mint & Honey Co. has supported Doug through all of this with earned media, helping establish him as a trusted expert while also coordinating relationships with brands like ROKA—which led to increased visibility and credibility, attracted GU3 Training team sponsors, and brought in new coaching clients.

If you’re also looking to grow your visibility within the endurance sports community, be like Doug and reach out to Lynette.

From the races

Highlights from this past weekend and what to watch this upcoming weekend.

• Zell am-See 70.3: The last of the IM Pro Series non-championship races. Will Laura Philipp’s gamble pay off? Is Lasse Nygaard Priester now a favorite going into Nice? (IMO, yes on Laura, maybe on Lasse.)

  • In pros cheering on their significant others: Julia Lange won her AG.

• WTCS Weihai: Felt like a little bit of a WTCS bust? Not to say there wasn’t news out of China (there was!), but would someone please try something other than just hoping to outrun Cassandre.

  • Cassandre Beaugrand ran a personal WTCS 10km best, which was already very fast, and looks nearly unbeatable. Matt Hauser had looked unbeatable but crashed, and now it’ll be a tough but not impossible ask for him to take the series title over Vasco Vilaca. And Max Studer hadn’t raced a WTCS in almost a year and won, so there you go.

Results: Zell am-See 70.3, WTCS Weihai, Challenge Fortaleza, Poznan 70.3

Mark your calendar

• Supertri Final: Also known as “the biggest one-day prize purse in pro racing. this year” = $800K total, $100K to the winners. There’s some debate about whether this is one last big hurrah for Supertri pro racing or simply the new format style, but they have managed to line up a pretty solid start list for the big day: Matt Hauser v. Hayden Wilde v. Alex Yee. Cassandre v. Georgia TB. And a whole bunch of the up-and-comers who earned their spots in via the series

  • WATCH: Sunday @ 1 p.m. local time/8 a.m. ET/5 a.m. PT on their Youtube or TriathlonLive

The -ish

Some of the other things worth knowing about this week in our sports — or that I just think are interesting.

• Craig Alexander and Karen Smyers were announced as this year’s Ironman Hall of Fame inductees. I love Karen (Craig is great, too) and she always has a lot to say about how we got here; let’s see if I can grab her in Kona! (Slowtwitch)

• Alistair Brownlee is doing all the things he always wanted to do, and that includes getting back to off-road and XTERRA. (Triathlete)

• Eric Lagerstrom also made a nice Youtube about XTERRA Portland. In case you wanted to get in the XTERRA mood. (Youtube)

• There’s a whole controversy out of Embrunman (the popular long-course grassroots French race), which it took me a little while to decipher from French, so stay with me: It seems that the girl who got second didn’t get the prize money for second place because she wasn’t in the elite race. Which, OK, is a common rule. But then it turns out that in order to qualify for the elite field the race requires athletes to meet certain time standards and those times were the exact same for men and women, which is obviously a different standard of elite for men than it is for women. Plus, the prize money for primes only went to the first overall athletes, which also obviously are primarily men. These might have been just your standard terrible French race policies and garnered less attention, but I gather that when an athlete emailed to ask about it, the race director then wrote back saying something to the effect of: ‘There are the real elites, and then there is no question of giving money to the rest of you cattle; we could just make the race all men and avoid this controversy.’ I genuinely thought there must be something missed here in the translation, but Jeanne Collonge posted about it too and she certainly speaks fluent French, so. (Instagram/Youtube)

• Here’s your other ‘gee why don’t more women want to race’ item of the week: Evidently, at the European Gravel Championships, the race organizers started the elite women behind nearly all of the age-group men — ie. after the 60-74-year-old men — and that, shockingly, went badly. The race also enforced a time-of-day cutoff — ie. be off the course by 4:30 p.m. — so the age-group women (who then started after the elite women and after all of the men) had much less time to complete the course and many were then stopped at an intermediate point without being told they needed to clear that checkpoint by a certain time. Just the standard kind of stuff that pisses athletes off. (Instagram)

• Nina Derron had to have surgery after hurting her foot at Alpe d’Huez. And Rosie Wild broke her butt falling down the stairs—which is only a slightly funnier way to injure yourself than Sara Svensk’s breaking a rib throwing things in the recycling bin. (Instagram)

• Sam Appleton announced his retirement. (Instagram)

• Liis Kapten talked to Triathlete about her viral stumbling through the last 200m of Tallinn 70.3. (Triathlete)

• Would you want finisher hats or towels? I gather that Ironman is testing towels instead of hats — very popular in Oceania — and one of our readers wanted me to share that they’re collecting feedback. (For the record, she was very unhappy about the towels. But me, personally, I’d much rather a towel (not a tiny one, a normal-ish one) than a hat.)

• Supertri acquired another UK race, Brighton & Hove Triathlon. (Supertri)

• Tim went deep on whether or not Supertri is really selling out their races. (Triathlete)

• I’ve been admittedly, we all know, somewhat skeptical of the self-reported reports that numbers are up — though we acknowledge there’s an overall growth in “fitness” among “the youths.” To that end, the annual Sports & Fitness Industry Association released its yearly sports participation report, and activity levels overall are at an all-time high. And I had to Google “padel.” (SGB Media)

• Athlos announced they’re canceling their New York event because the calendar is oversaturated, which is somewhat fine but also somewhat late to be realizing how dates work. (The Athletic/Instagram)

• And the Sydney Marathon went from 5,000 runners to 41,000 since it’s become a Marathon Major. That’s come with some predictable growing pains, of course. (Canadian Running)

• This is the best story and explanation I’ve read about what the hell is going on with youth sports and how it happened. (New York Magazine)

• And it’s been big news here in the Bay but it’s just too damn funny: A guy pretended to be a player on the 49ers and scammed women out of millions of dollars — and it’s only funny because of how thoroughly he committed to the bit: posting videos running routes, working out in 49ers gear, throwing himself a “team” birthday party. Has anyone tried this yet with professional triathlon? (Defector)

One last thing

Sometimes I think that one of the main upsides of existing within our triathlon-ish universe is this: Whatever crazy thing you come up with, it’s never going to be the craziest thing someone you know has done. So that’s nice.

From a few weeks ago, laying down in a field at the end of 93 hours of running loops.

Presented by Mint & Honey Co.

You all, this is issue #200. Which means I’ve been doing this for almost four years, in ups and downs, and so I wanted to give a brief State of Triathlonish overview. Skip ahead if you don’t care and you just want this week’s news.

• When I left Triathlete about this time in 2022 there weren’t a ton of triathlon podcasts or newsletters; Triathlete still does good coverage (IMO) but the print magazine had been axed, and the number of English-language outlets really covering the sport was extremely limited. Furthermore (!), most triathlon media still tended to focus on beginner ‘how to get started’ content and inspirational profiles.

• I wanted to give our sport(s) the commentary and analysis that mainstream sports get, so I started this newsletter right before Mega Double Kona that year. Triathlonish then added the podcast; we added more original reporting and Q&As and monthly gear & training roundups; we added a Book Club. I never did much social, because honestly I didn’t want Triathlonish to get caught in the ‘what’s the hottest trend’ ‘must always stay current’ trap. I wanted us to keep this space for taking a beat and thinking about things.

• By late-2023 I was working with Feisty on content (and other things) and we soon merged the triathlon podcasts and killed the Triathlonish pod. By mid-2024, I was full-time with Feisty, with the goal to build out the women’s sports podcasts, newsletters, social, and events. Triathlon, by extension, became simply one of the sports we were covering — sometimes a lot and sometimes less so — and I folded a lot of the Triathlonish things we’d started into Feisty.

Today, we’re back here and we have a little over 2,300 people who get this newsletter every week. There was some loss in the transition of the list to Feisty and then the transitioning it back to here. (I believe that’s what is called ‘shrinkage’ in retail.) There was also some shrinkage in the open rate, especially as this transition settles, but it remains close to 60% and some of you all read it many many times (and share it many many times).

Our audience also remains heavy N. American + the UK, but is actually about split gender-wise. And it remains heavy on industry people: RDs, C-suites of most of the big tri companies, coaches, the hardcore dedicated tri fans, plus my mom.

In this time, though, the sport and market (and my life) have changed. There are many many people now talking about triathlon on Youtubes and podcasts and social media. (I do love a good meme account.) I like to think I helped wrought this transformation, but maybe I didn’t. Some of these outlets are very good, lots of them aren’t. Most of them are Dudes, a few of them aren’t. I also think triathlon has changed in this time; I haven’t decided yet if it’s changed for better or worse.

So, what can Triathlonish be here and now in this landscape?

I’d like to still do the reported analysis you’ve come to expect in the weekly newsletter. My husband says in a different life I’d have been an op-ed writer for a major newspaper. I like and care about doing the reporting and research to come up with the why and how to think about a thing. I still think there’s a space in our sports for slow takes — even in the era of fast content — where we don’t need to be first to tell you a thing, we can take a second and maybe tell you a more interesting thing instead.

I’d like to do more of the original triathlon stories and Q&As we did here to support that. We all know I love a good dive into the finances and business of sports. I might add some sections or weekly picks in the newsletter on the other non-ball stories worth paying attention to. And, I’m very much planning on bringing back the podcast in a slightly different form (more TK on that) because it’s a lot easier to go deep deep weeds on triathlon topics when talking — and, trust me, if we do a podcast it’ll be deep weeds. No ‘what to wear for your first triathlon’ here. (Not that that’s not a totally valid question. It is. It’s also just answered many other places.)

But, I also am trying to figure out how else to fill my time (and money) and what that job/portfolio/projects looks like.

In short: What do you think is missing from coverage and media? What would you like to see more of? What of those things could I actually deliver? Lots of you usually press reply and email me, but feel free to leave as comments below too 👇

And, now, back to triathlon(ish).

- Kelly

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The first of the lasts

Which is just another way of saying Champs Season is starting. We’ve got…

• The last IM Pro Series race before the World Championships: Zell am See 70.3. Which means the last chance to get Pro Series points before the World Champs. (Though World Champs, especially Kona, count for a LOT of points, so pros be trying to remember their maths.) Interesting names on the start list: Laura Philipp & Jelle Geens.

  • WATCH: This Sunday @ 11 a.m. local/5 a.m. ET/2 a.m. PT

• It’s also WTCS Weihai, which is the second-to-last (also known as the penultimate) race before the World Triathlon Championship Final. Interesting names: Beth Potter v. Cassandre Beaugrand v. Lisa Tertsch & Matt Hauser.

  • WATCH: This Saturday — men @ 9 a.m. local/9 p.m. the night before ET/6 p.m. PT & women @ three hours later (9 p.m. Friday PT/midnight ET)

• And T100 announced its penultimate event in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia Nov. 26-27. Pure coincidence it’s men’s only in Saudi Arabia this year.

An addendum: More more more on 70.3 Worlds next week — which is only 17 days away.

And speaking of other non-ball sports I’m super interested in: UTMB Week!

Many of the operations & production & brands & media crews coming over to Nice for 70.3 Worlds are actually in Chamonix right now. At UTMB. Along with everyone loosely connected to running long distances, Ironman CEO Scott is very much at UTMB, too. Partially because of the Ironman minority stake in UTMB, but also because he loves ultrarunning in a way I don’t think he’ll ever love triathlon. (I get it, first loves and everything.) And also mostly because UTMB Week is the Place to Be In Endurance Sports right now. Vuelta? Pshaw. TDS, OCC, MCC, CCC? Yes, please.

Confused by the acronyms? Full explanation of the different races here.

Also, UTMB included this acronym guide in their marketing email, which is handy and something other large events should probably consider:

There are race previews (so many previews) and a lot of athlete withdrawals (both UTMB defending champs are out). I don’t think it’s the most amazing field ever assembled for the race, but it’s solid and I’m curious how Rachel Entrekin will do. Really the thing I’m most interested in, though:

Is this the year the race finally breaks Chamonix? Possibly, probably. Accounts are the Mayor is not happy and the race organizers told brands to cut down on shakeout runs and yet there are still 40+ shakeout runs — which, honestly, duh.

From the races

• Leipzig 70.3: Shoutout to Caroline Pohl for the home win. And I just learned Rico Bogen’s wife is a very good AGer and won the amateur race.

• Allgäu Triathlon: Anne Reischmann is back racing postpartum.

• Tallinn 70.3: And OK, yes, we can all agree this is not a great way to end your first ever 70.3 that you were in the lead of — but, like, shit happens, we make mistakes, and she’s able to laugh about it now.

Results: Leipzig 70.3, Tallinn 70.3

And this week’s other big thing I’m paying attention to

Jenny Simpson is opening up about her sudden cardiac arrest back in June. CBS segment here and The Athletic story here. The doctors have said it was a rare genetic condition that caused her heart to stop, and does not necessarily have anything to do with her running career.

These stories are not uncommon though. Tim O’Donnell’s mid-race heart attack. A well-known ultrarunner had a heart attack during the TDS race at UTMB this week, and remains in a coma. (Both very different situations.)

There’s a lot we don’t know about the heart. And, certainly, a lot we don’t know about the effect years of intense exercise have on the heart — though I do think we’ve all calmed down a little with blaming everything on “athlete’s heart.” The research suggests that many of these sudden cardiac arrests in athletes are often the result of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a genetic mutation.

Here’s David Epstein, certainly one of the most-well-versed on the subject, on the problem. His video on what to know about it. And the original Sports Illustrated story.

The -ish

Some of the other things worth knowing about this week in our sports — or that I just think are interesting.

• Race Ranger is raising investment to scale up its business so they can have enough draft-detection units (900 units, says founder James) to serve amateur races. (Endurance Sportswire/Slowtwitch)

• A long time ago my sister told me that you’re supposed to punch an alligator in the eye if you’re being attacked, but I’ve never actually had reason to put that into practice. Well, turns out it works. At least according to this triathlon coach who was attacked while swimming in S. Carolina. This is also why I have a fear of swimming in bodies of water in the South. (WRDW)

• To help you out, Triathlete put together this list of craziest triathlon-related animal attacks. (Triathlete)

• Russian triathletes are officially back and allowed to compete under their flag again for World Tri races. (Inside the Games)

• Also, Collin Chartier is back(ish) after the doping ban and doing a 2,000-mile charity run that’s raised $100K for an addiction support and recovery nonprofit. Though this sentence is an interesting take on the facts: “In 2020, Chartier was fifth in Olympic qualifying, three spots short of qualifying to go to Tokyo.” (ARLnow)

• Laura Philipp has been making the podcast rounds post-IM Kalmar: She was on Jackie Hering’s The Women’s Race show and on Daniela Bleymehl’s show in German (if you speak German). (Youtube/Spotify)

• A few of the people on UTMB Week pods: Jan Frodeno went to talk pre-his OCC race, and Molly Seidel withdrew from OCC but I just find her interesting. Freetrail actually has a full line-up of shows and interviews, of course. (Youtube)

• I’m not a big Youtube person, but the Hoka vid about the effort to go sub-14 hours at Western States was solid. (Youtube)

• I also enjoyed Salomon’s behind-the-scenes on bringing an all-female video & photo team to UTMB last year. As someone who has stood elbow-deep in the photo/content pools behind finish lines, it 100% is always a LOT of dudes. (Youtubes)

• Also fully identified with the Vuelta riders seeking refuge in a hotel during a freak hailstorm. (Instagram)

• We’ve got a new half-marathon world record (56:51) and under 57 (!), because — if you remember, which you probably don’t — the previous sub-57 record was discounted after he ran too close to the pace car. (BBC/Athletics Illustrated)

• Here’s one for all the ‘my watch says the course was long’ people: The Edmonton Marathon actually was too long. (The Athletic)

• Speaking of knowing when to listen to your watch: I’ve had a lot of coaches tell me that athletes will insist their Whoop or Garmin score is low and they can’t do the workout — which, to me, is wild. If you can’t do the workout because you feel like death, then you shouldn’t need a watch to tell you that. And if you need a watch to tell you, then you’re probably fine and do the workout. But if you’re looking for more guidance: When to listen to your watch’s recovery score and when not to. (Triathlete)

• You can join the New Zealand Elite Selection Commission. Or, you can if you’re part of Tri NZ. (Facebook)

• I don’t know why I find this Zwim virtual swim training so funny, but I do. And also I had to doublecheck that it’s not a joke. (Instagram/Zwim)

• Public swimming in the Seine is fully open. More or less. (Financial Times)

One last thing

If you missed these videos of Max Alran winning the downhill mountain bike race in Les Gets, it makes anything you think about crowds in triathlon pale.

Support Triathlonish partners: Mint & Honey Co. is at the intersection of wellness and endurance. Reach out to Lynette to connect and talk about ways to find potential partners, create earned media, and build campaigns for and from athletes.

Presented by Mint & Honey Co.

_______________

You all, I’m back to doing all the sports these days. Hitting Crossfit 1x/week, went back to Masters a few times, testing out The Running Algorithm platform (which keeps telling me to run with more intention; stop running too slow most of the time and then too fast some of the time). I’m still pretty far off anything resembling fitness, but I do personally enjoy the short, fast, and hard more than the long, slow, and slog.

And in between maybe getting in shape again, I’m also gearing back up to do more covering triathlon. Reminder that this is your free weekly newsletter with commentary and analysis on all things triathlon-related. You can find a guide to all the different triathlon series and how to watch here. (Because it is confusing.) You can find past Q&As here. Feel free to make suggestions for future Q&As or in-depth stories. And maybe we’ll even re-start a podcast!

- Kelly

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A reminder: People care about what you tell them to care about — The Kona Edition

Did you know there was a time not so long ago when conventional wisdom suggested that triathletes just don’t really care about the pros.

Now here we are.

I like Kona. They have good poke. I swam with (a LOT of) dolphins two years ago. It’s fun to have so much of the sport in one place, concentrated in one isolated town. Triathlon’s still a place where you can randomly get drunk with world champions at the local bar after the race. I don’t know how much longer that’ll last. Kona is a fun week.

But I also think, if we objectively remove the hype from the facts, The Hype is its own self-perpetuating motion machine.

Which is to say (in case it was too subtle) people care about the pros now because we told them many times what and how and who to care about over multiple years. And they care about Kona because everyone tells them all the time to care about Kona. I mean I get it, but also you all know that you’re doing Ironman’s hype work for them for free, right.

Now that the Kona qualifier list is final post-IM Kalmar, a few things people are already hyping:

• The breakdown and early details

• Data on who wins and if you have to be a veteran

• Meme tiers of contenders

• And who’s already out: Leon Chevalier

One other random Kona note: I was at a party a couple of weeks ago and there was a woman in town visiting her parents, who lives in Kona and works for an excursion tour company there. So I asked her, just for another data point, what the perception was of “the Ironman.” Of course she said it was mixed and the quantity of video shoots for so many athletes now is too much. But then she was like: Splitting up the races has made it a lot better. And I was like: Well, I’ve got some news for you…

And a thing I just happen to think about sometimes

btw.

When people say they wish more women did triathlon, when Ironman says they’d love if more women wanted to do long-course triathlon, I think sometimes about last year’s Women’s Kona when they could have had more spots for the women. They could have had the same number of spots as they had for Men’s Nice, there was no space limitation argument against it. And don’t say women didn’t want to race — the numbers were lower for Nice for a number of well-documented reasons. Then Ironman simply didn’t give the women the choice for last year’s Kona: there were ~2,415 qualifying spots available for Men’s Nice and ~1,520 spots for Women’s Kona.

When given the opportunity, Ironman could have had more women in Kona and they chose not to.

And you can say whatever you want to about why and what the reasoning was, but a thing I think about sometimes is the simple reality that they didn’t want more women, they wanted more of the right type of women.

Whether or not you characterize the manufactured scarcity as not making it “too easy” to qualify for Kona, that’s just a different way of defining the type of woman you’re willing to let in.

There’s a mini-debate going on in trail running right now about if the culture of the sport is changing, is it booming for women, is it getting too bro-y and unwelcoming and commercial, or is the reality that for a certain group of people it has always been unwelcoming and for them it isn’t booming. We’re not going to have that debate in triathlon because the debate requires a level of introspection triathletes are not known for. But sometimes I think about the fact that the biggest self-created problem Ironman The Company won’t admit is: When 50-year-old Joe Triathlete brags at the office about doing an Ironman, they actually *don’t* want someone to say ‘oh didn’t Margie in sales do one of those, what, is it hard.’ Ironman could have had more women, but those weren’t the kind of women Ironman wanted.

From the races

• IM Kalmar: Many men’s national records set. And a women’s course record from Laura Philipp. But Robert Kallin couldn’t hold on after his fastest ever Ironman bike record and will miss Kona. Isn’t that how sports go: Triumph, heartbreak, onto the next.

  • Also, an update on the guy who ran his bike 35km after a mechanical.

• T100 Vancouver: Julie Derron and Kate Waugh are very very good at the 100km distance and format.

• Northern California 70.3: And Grace Alexander, Jason West continue to be excellent at U.S. 70.3s. But mostly I just wanted to note that it is rare for me to hear nothing but raves for an Ironman race, especially an inaugural one. The West Coast Ironman operations team is always very good, but it also seems like they really reached out to local businesses, worked with the Chamber (as mentioned before) to make sure businesses understood what would and wouldn’t sell, lots of businesses had deals for athletes and events; they worked with local influencers to hype the race. (People care about what you tell them to care about.) They lucked out a little bit too that Northern California had record low temperatures last week (something to do with the hurricane in Hawaii and pressure systems, etc) or it could have easily been 100+ degrees in Redding instead. But there’s a rumor going around they may move the event to May for that reason — and I, personally, wouldn’t be surprised if they make this a Pro Series or continental championship type event in 2027 or 2028.

Results: IM Kalmar, T100 Vancouver (and the series rankings now), Northern California 70.3, Hradec Kralov 70.3 (which is in Czechia, which many of us probably know as the Czech Republic)

Get to know the woman behind the magic

I’ve been excited to partner with Mint & Honey Co. this month and with Lynette Pettinicchi, the woman behind the boutique PR agency. Part of what’s great about Lynette is how much she lives our sports.

So let’s get to know her.

Lynette first started running after getting hit by a car 15 years ago. Once she was cleared to run post-walking boot, inspired by her sister, she immediately signed up for a 5K. Like so many of us, she was hooked. Six marathons. Countless half-marathons.

The run leg of a relay at The Beauty & The Beast Triathlon in St. Croix in 2021 got her into triathlon. And since that, she’s gone all-in on swim-bike-run: sprint triathlons, Olympic-distance, 70.3s — and all eyes now on Ironman Ottawa. Wish her luck at Jones Beach 70.3 next month and then CIM in December!

She teaches mat Pilates. She specializes in run courses for Race Awesome. And at Mint & Honey Co, she’s run PR campaigns for brands you know (like Body Glide) and helps connect athletes with partnerships.

She believes wellness should make you feel well. And she believes our sports are a key part of that. If you’re looking for expertise in running, health, wellness, or endurance sports, email Lynette.

The -ish

Some of the things worth knowing about this week in our sports — or that I just think are interesting.

• Ironman Leeds had to cancel the swim because of algae blooms due to the heat. And Western Massachusetts 70.3 has permanently been canceled (sorry “paused”) because the swim kept getting cut. Do you think everyone’s ready to finally acknowledge that climate change is going to change our sports? (BBC/MassLive)

• The big Supertri series finale will officialy have Alex Yee and Hayden Wilde facing off again. (Endurance Sportswire)

• Jeanne Collonge had a bad bike crash a few days before Kalmar and has been in the ICU partially paralyzed since then with a spinal injury (according to the translation of her update). Send her all the good thoughts. (Instagram)

• Rudy Von Berg and Simone Dailey (previously Simone Mitchell, if that’s more familiar) are having a baby. (Instagram)

• Cute story from pro golfer Bubba Watson who wandered into the Ironman in Kalmar and had the reaction most people have. (Instagram)

• Next week is UTMB week and it’s like Kona hype week but for trail runners. (iRunFar/Instagram)

• Katie Ledecky lost a major 800m race for the first time in 14 years, and how dominant do you have to be that losing a race at Pan-Pacs is a global headline. (To be clear, she still has 18 of the top 25 800m swim times ever and this was actually faster than three of her four gold medals in the event. It’s just that finally a couple of other people have caught up.) (The Athletic/NBC Olympics)

• The autopsy was released for the woman who died during Ironman Texas and it was ruled an accidental drowning — which just means it doesn’t appear that something else happened while she was in the water. I still think it sounds like SIPE contributed to the drowning. (Chron.com/Triathlete)

• Fin Tarling died after hitting an unauthorized car that’d been waved onto the course by spectators during a bike race. Does cycling need to come to terms with how it fails its riders? The GoFundMe for Tarling. (The Gaurdian/The Athletic/GoFundMe)

• Mountain bike world champ Kate Courtney’s move to the road has also been one of the most interesting choices within a women’s peloton (and a superteam) that is exploding. Will she be ready for LA28? (Escape Collective/Instagram)

• L.A. (the city) is still very concerned about potential cost overruns from the Olympics and reached a tentative deal. (LA Times)

• I’ll also say I went into my second LA28 ticket drop timeslot on Monday and literally the only tickets available in California were $200 for prelims of handball, baseball, or soccer (which I’d buy if I knew who was playing but), a few $1,000-2,000 tickets for track, or boxing finals. So, I’m gonna keep waiting. I keep assuming that it’ll operate the way Paris did and there’ll be a lot of cheaper tickets available later and a re-sale market, but I really hope I’m not wrong because right now all I have is tickets to the sprint canoe final. My husband says the only solution is to get really dedicated and follow the canoe athletes for the next two years. All in on sprint canoe!

• Why are people into Hyrox? Partially the low barrier to entry (you know how to literally do all the things), partially Hyrox has done a good job making it fun. But also the style of training (a mix of strength + cardio + high-intensity and a little endurance) is probably the best thing for you in a general sense. (Feisty/Triathlete)

• A really good website guide to the Marathon Majors (h/t ). (Marathon Ballot)

• Could you run a marathon with 20 wine stops? (Wall Street Journal)

• Apparently regular people are racing in briefs now. (Outside Run)

• And, I’m not sure if this is totally accurate, but Steve Magness isn’t wrong: How to tell if someone is doping. (Youtube)

• “Are the Patriot Games great? No. Are they fun to watch? Also no.” (The Atlantic)

One last thing

Sarah True once tried to explain to me that running with a dog attached to you is literally faster than running on your own. The dog pulls you along. Well, the SF Mile this past weekend added a dog mile.

Presented by Mint & Honey Co.

a unique endurance and wellness public relations and digital marketing firm where the founder is an active part of the same world as her clients. editors, influencers, and consumers are reaching out daily because of Mint & Honey’s consistent ability to deliver sources and stories that resonate with the people who really love and live this space.

You all, I’m headed home from L.A. right now as you read this, where I was at the Association of Women in Sports Media conference for the first half of the week. Learned some interesting things about ball sports coverage and got some good tips and tricks for investigative reporting should the story strike.

I also stayed downtown (where the conference was) at the L.A. Athletic Club, which I picked primarily because they remodeled the old athletic club to include hotel rooms now + a renovated full gym and pool. Swam next to a former world record holder yesterday — who it sounds like may be trying to un-retire with a hometown Games now on the horizon. Made me wonder: How many U.S. athletes are trying to un-retire ahead of LA28? I think the answer is a lot.

The other thing I was struck by at a conference where most of what they mean when they say sports is basketball, football, and baseball, how important it is to really have people who know your niche. AMA about triathlon, running, the Olympics, the business of fitness, women’s sports TV deals and sponsor negotiations, or the podcast landscape in 2026. But don’t ask me about baseball.

- Kelly

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Champs season has officially started

Maps for 70.3 Worlds are out. Start lists are out. This upcoming weekend is the last chance to qualify for 140.6 Worlds (as discussed last week) and people are already starting their how many days to go countdowns. We have two more WTCS races before the World Triathlon Championship Final at the end of September. And, oh yeah, T100, too.

The course

There are a few small changes to the Nice 70.3 Worlds course from what we’ve done before. Primarily, the swim is more of an L-shape — which could affect the wave/current/sun/sighting dynamics. But the bigger change is that they’ve split transitions slightly so T1 is where transition has always been — along the Promenade by the start/finish — but T2 is about one mile past that, past the ‘I Love Nice’ sign, over by the quay. (If you’ve never ventured to the docks in previous editions, it’s where all the mega yachts are anchored.)

Since the bike and run courses are otherwise the same, I’m going to guess that the transition split has more to do with getting men bike-checked in for the Sunday race while the women are still finishing on Saturday, especially with more people racing. This way they can have T1 cleared out earlier and turn it around. In 2019, the men’s check-in line on Saturday afternoon was long. Very long.

The start list

There will be some changes I’m sure, but full pro start lists are out here. Both lists are pretty stacked (I know we say that every year but); I think the women’s is slightly more 70.3 packed (Taylor, Lucy, Kat, Laura, Solveig, Marjolaine — I mean when Paula Findlay is bib F10 that says a lot), but it’s probably six of one, baker’s dozen of the other. Plus, for some reason, some of the Olympians who will inevitably be top five (top three?) are not being as hyped in the men’s race (Marten Van Riel, Hayden Wilde).

We’ll do more previewing closer, especially as we learn who is pulling out, but let’s all take the next few weeks to ponder this question:

Is this a boom?

Obviously with Championship Season officially about to kick off, the excitement always starts to build. But is it enough excitement to carry the sport, does the excitement extend beyond October.

This week, while I was at this conference, with so many sports reporters who cover the balls sports, I did a lot of explaining our no-balls sports, explaining super shoes, explaining if there’s an audience (is there an audience?), and someone asked me: How’s triathlon doing, is it growing or not growing or the same?

Good question.

Yesterday, I signed up for the L.A. Hyrox race coming in December. I got a pre-sale registration link from my gym and pre-sale opened at 10 a.m. I finally got through the 15,000-person queue at 10:25 a.m. A friend texted that he got into a different day, and when I went back to see what days were still open, all of the races (Thursday-Sunday) were sold out as of 10:45 a.m.

It doesn’t even go on sale to the public, who don’t have pre-sale links, for two more days.

Is triathlon booming? I don’t know. We’ve obviously talked about this a lot before.

Hyrox is booming. Running is booming. I was slow to believe this, because, well, because organizations always lie about their numbers. But the events are more than selling out, the lotteries and registrations are there, the spending on running/gym is very high. People are pumped about trail. People are pumped about gyms.

Is triathlon booming?

In some places, I think so. I think the market is very different in Europe than it is in the U.S. I think it’s doing much better over there than here. But even in Europe, the smaller races, the feeder events, seem to be struggling. I think everywhere people are signing up for bucket list things (Majors selling out, etc) and The Young People want experiences, YOLO, wellness, do the thing. But I don’t know yet if that will last after they check the box. I don’t think anyone actually knows if we’ll be able to get them to stick around. I don’t think they know yet; it probably depends on what we do next. So all that can be said is: Don’t fuck this up, triathlon. Be cool.

From the races

• World Cup Asucion: After I said last week that I had my picks for which of the many U.S. up-and-comers to keep your eye on ahead of L.A., of course different U.S. up-and-comers podiumed this week. Danielle Orie took her first World Cup win.

• Lapu Lapu 70.3: Natalie Van Coevorden won an all-Australian women’s race and Henri Schoeman won a less-Australian men’s race in what was evidently a wild swim.

• Alpe d’Huez: I couldn’t figure out why Alanis Siffert had to go all the way back to the start of T2 and run her bike back in again, but apparently it was because she ran down the wrong lane and then stepped over the transition spots into the right lane. And European officials are sometimes insane people. She still won by over nine minutes, so.

Results: World Cup Asucion, Lapu Lapu 70.3, Rio 70.3, XTERRA World Cup - Czech Republic, Alpe d’Huez Triathlon

(Fun fact: When we were in college and random money would pour into the U.S. College Club National Championships, one year a friend won a trip to the World University Championship, which is evidently still a thing that happened this past weekend.)

Mark your calendars

• T100 Vancouver: One of our two big ones this weekend, it's the women's turn back on the 100km circuit. You’ve got a who’s who: Julie Derron, Alanis Siffert trying out shorter things again, Georgia TB, Kate Waugh finally making a return, Taylor Spivey, Paula Findlay, Imogen Simmonds. A lot of women I talked to this year had been hoping to get a start here because of the course and location, so T100 actually has a pretty solid and full start list for this race.

  • WATCH: Saturday, Aug. 15 @ 11 a.m. PT/ 2 p.m. ET on Youtube or TriathlonLive

• IM Kalmar: As discussed last week, the last chance for some people who are still missing Kona spots. Some changes in the last week (interestingly, a few adds — come on, Fiona!). And I think some people who already have spots (Laura Phillip, for example) trying to get a good one in before the countdown really starts to Kona, test some things, shake out some demons.

  • WATCH: Aug 15 @ 12:30 a.m. ET/9:30 p.m. PT the day before on Youtube

• Northern California 70.3: You can’t watch it and it’s one of a few non-watchable 70.3s this weekend, but has an interesting start list because Lionel, etc.

The -ish

Some of the things worth knowing about this week in our sports — or that I just think are interesting.

• Because of the the timing of mornings at my house I missed a bunch of the first part of the Tour de France Femmes, but then tuned in for Mt. Ventoux and Kasia Niewiadoma’s absolutely insane ride. And then, obviously, I had to watch the days (and drama) after. Of course there’s something to the epic-ness of the three-week Tours, but there’s also a lot to be said for nine fast & furious days where every day is a GC day, there are no days to sit in or skip, and it all comes down to the final stage and just 15 seconds. Sometimes cycling can be confusing or (god forbid) boring for casual fans — but there’s something to be said for: See those two riders who have dropped everyone else and are just beating the shit out of each other, they’re separated by only seconds and it all comes down to this. Oh and also they’re the best in the game and they kinda hate each other. People will watch that. (Escape Collective/Instagram/New York Times/CyclingWeekly)

• Tadej Pogacar has a sense of humor. (Instagram)

• Ruth Astle has been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s, which follows Steph Clutterbuck’s diagnosis. Which follows quite a few other diagnoses within the endurance world. (Instagram/Maya Clinic)

• Maja Stage-Neilsen is retiring. (Instagram)

• Gustav Iden is raising money for Norway’s cancer charity with a raffle. (Kreftforeningen)

• Claire Danson is trying to become just the fifth woman to finish an Ironman in a wheelchair. (Instagram)

• The new stroller mile world record is 4:17. (The Athletic)

• The new world record for whatever this is (air time off a giant bouce house?) is five seconds. (Instagram)

• If you missed this epic RedBull bike obstacle course a few weeks ago, it’s worth watching. (Instagram)

• U.S. College Club National Champs will be back in Gulfport, Mississippi in 2027. (Instagram)

• Ironman S. Africa is moving to Mossel Bay. (Mossel Bay Advertiser)

• A petition has been started for Ironman to fix some of the problems at IM Frankfurt. (openPetition)

• This past weekend was USAT Age-Group Nationals and my understanding is they had to evacuate on the last day because of lightening and thunderstorms. The event will be in Des Moines, Iowa the next two years, so summer thunderstorms aren’t not an ongoing problem. (Facebook/USAT)

• This past weekend was also the biggest women’s only race in the U.S. in Minneapolis. (CBS)

• New York Road Runners changed their 9 + 1 program, which requires doing all 9 of the NYRR races and is how a lot of locals end up running the New York Marathon. It got too impacted and was pushing regular people out of the rest of the NYRR races, so they're putting a cap and lottery on how many people can enter the program. (Runner’s World)

• The U.S. Swimming CFO has been charged with embezzlement. (The Athletic)

• This college runner got a pro cycling contract instead, so now he just has to learn handling, group tactics, and race strategy. (Marathon Handbook)

• Men need better fitness role models. (New York Times)

One last thing

Accurate.

Presented by Mint & Honey Co.

a unique public relations and digital marketing firm where the founder is an active part of the same active industries as her clients

—

You all, apparently I had turned off my Triathlonish email when we merged with Feisty and my email responder (ie. if you pressed reply to this email) was all messed up the last two weeks, so a lot of you ended up in spam. Sorry, you’re not spam!

I’m 99% sure it’s fixed now and you can email me at kelly@triathlonish.com again, or at my regular email, or text me or WhatsApp me or comment or utilize the Substack Chat features or slide into my DMs. Basically, lots of ways to get ahold of me.

If you got ahold of me, I’d tell you that I’m booked for Kona — even though housing on the island is definitely more heavily impacted this year. (If you’re still looking, check out the hostel. Then let me know how it is.)

And, I am, also, excited to have Lynette at Mint & Honey Co. sponsoring the newsletter this month. I’ve worked with Lynette before on stories for some of the clients they represent and we’re going to be highlighting some of the athletes, races, and work the firm does over the next few weeks.

Now, your free weekly Wednesday newsletter…

- Kelly

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Last stop before Kona

Start lists are officially out for Ironman Kalmar — which is the very last qualifying race for Kona with three spots each for men and women. So we can now officially know who is making one last attempt to get their coin.

Here are the full lists of who has already Kona qualified: men and women.

Some key people making their final bid in Kalmar:

• Daniel Baekkegard

• Gregory Barnaby

• Jonas Hoffmann

• Pieter Heemeryck

• Robert Wilkowiecki

• Robert Kallin

• Jeanne Collonge

Some key people who will 100% be missing from the Big Island:

• Jelle Geens is not going to give the Ironman thing another try this year. Is all in on 3x 70.3 world title instead.

• Lionel Sanders is probably not a surprise at this point, but confirmed he won’t be back in Kona.

• Holly Lawrence, as mentioned, is too injured.

• And, obviously Lisa Norden is also too postpartum.

And the last stop to Nice: Maybe worth mentioning that Sam Laidlow has announced he’s missing 70.3 Worlds to focus on Kona (and will be doing some other Challenge race instead on Nice weekend). People are acting like this is shocking, but I don’t think Sam has ever done 70.3 Worlds and lots of long-course specialists skip the mid-distance champs and he’s probably gonna make more bank at Challenge. So is it really shocking.

Two more things about 2027 T-Whatever

T50, T100, what do we call the overall series now? Do we really still think it’s the *Professional* Triathletes Organization?

• OK, yes, one thing I didn’t say last week because I thought it had sorta already been covered: All the T-Whatever races for 2027 will also include age-group events alongside. That also means the Test Event in L.A. — which we can’t call the Test Event, btw, because LA28 doesn’t want to call it the Test Event — but does mean age-groupers will get to try some version of something similar to the Olympic course.

• And, a good question from PTN Kyle led me down this hole: The PTO/T50 will NOT produce para-tri races. The World Para Series races (which is para’s WTCS equivalent) will continue to be produced and run by World Triathlon. That includes the para races at the (not calling it) Test Event — which will have individual elite, para, and mixed relays. And, evidently, age-group. Except PTO/T50 doesn’t like to call it “age-group.”

So, there you go. That’s all we have about that today.

Are triathletes ready for mainstream viral attention if they get it?

Honestly, no.

Having covered Olympic sports and endurance sports and women’s sports for about 15 years, I’ve watched these things grow and I’ve watched what happens when a moment or incident achieves velocity and suddenly goes beyond the sport’s immediate networks. What happens is that these athletes are not prepared for that mainstream viral level of mega-attention. They think they’re prepared because Slowtwitch was mean to them once, but they’re not. Steph Curry, LeBron James, the Big Name Athletes have the money and security to manage the level of scrutiny they get; they have had years to build up their defenses and resources, to scrub their personal information from the internet. Alysia Liu, Ilona Maher, Caitlin Clark were thrust into this. They did not and do not have the same structural support.

This is part of the reason stalking (etc) is such a problem during this era of women’s sports exploding. Because the fandom and the platform have come so quickly (also because misogyny etc).

I was thinking about this after the Winter Olympics, when athletes in sports that look a lot like triathlon in terms of size and niche-ness suddenly found themselves in the center of political maelstroms. And I was thinking about it with the Tour de France Femmes, as some of these teams have more support and funding and figuring out how to manage it than others during this growth period. And I worry about some of our triathletes ahead of what are going to be a very tense and very attention-heavy L.A. Olympics. They should start getting prepared now.

Work with marketers who really live the industry

You don’t just want PR, you want a firm run by people who do the races, teach the classes, know the athletes.

Race awesome. Mint & Honey Co. works with Long Island-based Race Awesome to support their events.

Athletes and brands. They create earned media campaigns at the intersection of endurance sports and wellness.

Get strong. And founder Lynette Pettinicchi also teaches classical Pilates both in-person in New York and virtually.

Wellness is a trendy term right now — and so often it doesn’t actually seem that well. How can we help people get stronger, try new things, reduce their injury risk, and tell the stories that encourage them to dream big.

> See how Mint & Honey Co. can help your brand.

From the races

• World Cup - Rio: I didn’t know who Braxton Legg was until he achieved a top ten WTCS last fall, and now with his World Cup win in Rio I think he’s probably my top pick out of the many up-and-coming U.S. guys you could pick. And if I had to choose, Kelly Wetteland is probably the U.S. woman I’d be watching; she got another World Cup silver in Rio.

• Norseman: Alistair Brownlee was there, but a different Norwegian named Kristian won.

• Krakow 70.3: Congrats to Nikki Bartlett, who looked very very happy to be back on form.

Results: World Cup - Rio, Krakow 70.3, Norseman

The -ish

Some of the things worth knowing about this week in our sports — or that I just think are interesting.

• I love the photos from Ashley & Dominique at the Tour de France Femmes. And the post-race interview with Sigrid Haugset after her wild long (so long) breakaway win. Now broadcast the whole damn race. (Instagram/Youtube/CyclingWeekly)

• Obviously, the “bra-boosting” TDFF headlines are headlines. But, really, shoving stuff down the front of your jersey is a repeat of that year triathlon went through where all the pros kept swearing this just happened to be where they store their hydration. (Velo)

• If you were wondering why we didn’t talk about the Commonwealth Games, it’s not just because we’re still confused by the Commonwealth, it’s also because triathlon got booted out. (Triathlon Magazine)

• Slowtwitch finally got me to reset my forum password just so I could read what’s been said about me previously in the threads on podcasts. (For the record: If you’re looking for women-led tri pods right now, Jackie Hering is doing a good job in the pro interviews and pro race recaps category + Chelsea Burns does the best nuanced detailed conversations and she knows all gossip.) And what I learned in the forums is somehow these discussions always include something about me being kinda mean and also something about “the [40-year-old] boys being boys.” So I would just like to point out — because I’m not going to actually comment in a forum, don’t be nuts — that the reason people think I’m funny but a bitch, but think Jack or Mark are hilariously irreverent, is partially because you can get away with saying crazy shit if you have a British or Australian accent, but also it’s mostly because of the gendered thing. (Apple Podcasts)

• Kristian Blummenfelt and Gustav Iden are doing their post-Kona random race in Taiwan this year. (Instagram)

• Ironman allocated the spots from the canceled Nice races via a lottery that all athletes who had previously completed a 70.3 or full, respectively, were entered into.

• Russ Cox has done the math for what the new multiplier is for 2027 70.3 Worlds qualifying (which is the number you multiple your time by to find out your age-graded time). (Facebook)

• A fun story from Triathlete about illegal concept bikes. (Triathlete)

• Sophie Woods’ fastest overall known time around the Alps — mentioned a couple weeks ago — has gone relatively mainstream now. (Los Angeles Times)

• New course records were set at Badwater, but former triathlete Ashley Paulson was going for a sub-20 and passed out. (Instagram)

• Jeannie and Justin Metzler had their baby. (Instagram)

• And lots of love to the family, friends, and crew who were with triathlete/runner/swimmer Becky Thompson when she passed away from a cardiac event during her Catalina crossing. (Instagram)

• There’s definitely the possibility that the U.S. might finally be ready for short-course tri growth. It’s possible. Or it’s just that long-course here is dominated by Ironman and finally everyone is acknowledging that. (Triathlete)

• Bowlers are not happy about the Wall Street investment. (Wall Street Journal)

• Soccer was not happy about FIFA’s plan to sell off investment in a new spinoff. (The Athletic)

• And, if there was a competitive/recreational chance to try now the PACER test from high school gym class then, I would definitely do it. (New York Times)

One last thing

Weirdly, Nike has continued to post more outfits since this.

Thank you for all the notes last week in response to my news that Triathlonish is going independent again. I also appreciate that many of you want to support the newsletter. I actually turned off paid subscriptions back when I went full-time with Feisty since I didn’t have time anymore to do additional stories and the podcast had merged with Feisty Tri. I may ultimately bring back more reported stories and more different kinds of coverage, but for now: It’s just the FREE weekly Wednesday newsletter, and the best way you can support it is to share with other triathlon-ish friends.

For now, we’re just going to do what we do best: Get super in the weeds about triathlon.

- Kelly

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It’s like a World Tour but for triathlon, duh

Do you get it yet.

T100/PTO + World Triathlon did a big embargoed announcement event on Friday, in London naturally because you still can’t convince Brits that London isn’t the center of the universe. And for people outside of triathlon the announcement was: Wow, a World Tour, just like tennis! And for people inside of triathlon it was: Here is the promised list of dates and locations for 2027; prize money and the Tier B series dates (ie. World Cups for short-course + Challenger events for mid-course) to be announced in September at the Spain Grand Finale.

T50

• March 27-28: Abu Dhabi

• April 24-25: Samarkand, Uzbekistan

• May 15-16: Yokohama, Japan

• June 5-6: Rome

• July 16-18: Los Angeles » Yes, this is the Test Event

• Aug. 21-22: London

• Sept. 8-12: Hamburg — World Championship

• Sept. 25-26: Weihai, China

• Nov. 20-21: Tauranga, New Zealand

T100

• March 20-21: Gold Coast, Australia

• April 10-11: Singapore

• June 5-6: San Francisco, California

• Aug. 14-15: Vancouver, Canada

• Sept. 18-19: Marbella, Spain

• Nov. 26-27: Saudi Arabia

• Dec. 10-11: Qatar — World Championship

• Date TBD: French Riviera

Both genders will race at T50 races. T100 races will still alternate genders.

A quick reminder: The entire concept of the Triathlon World Tour is that the PTO (ie. T100 — ie. the 100km race brand) is merging with World Triathlon, and taking over the commercial arm of World Triathlon races (ie. WTCS and World Cup production, age-group races, and sponsorships. we think). This is meant to create a unified series with T50 replacing WTCS races and sitting alongside the top level of mid-course T100 races; there will then additionally be a tier below at each distance — which is where the Challenge acquisition comes in.

READ MORE: A Conversation with the World Tri President

AND MORE: A Chat with the T100 CEO: What is the World Tour?

Now back to the announcement…

What is the T50 distance?

Thank you for that question. It’s whatever they want it to be. It’s a state of being. It’s both Olympic distance and sprint distance races. For now.

Or as someone in a comment said: This is an awful lot of of work just to announce a partial rebranding of WTCS.

Back in June, I left my conversation with the PTO head with the distinct impression that they were going to shorten the Olympic distance to 50km (probably on the bike). Other people have also gotten that impression. I additionally got the impression that World Triathlon did not want them to shorten it and discussions were being had.

If T50 survives past LA28 (there’s a lot of letters and numbers for you), I fully expect it to standardize to 50km. They love their standardization. But that will not happen before the Olympics, because the Olympics doesn’t like it when you change things.

Why did they not combine race locations? Isn’t that the whole point of the “unified” World Tour?

I thought so. But “unified” is really in the branding and the selling, not in actually being unified. And, anyway, it probably turns out that putting on a global mass appeal commercial race series is harder than they thought. Who could have predicted.

Why are they keeping the genders split for some races but not others?

That brings us to: The Olympics doesn’t just let you change things, no matter how good you business talk.

Yes, the L.A. event on the calendar is the Test Event for the 2028 Olympics. Even if this is slightly confusing to me because generally speaking the Test Event is put on by the local organizing committee so that the organizers can also work through logistics. The Test Event also has specific requirements (like testing equivalent Paralympic races). So, maybe I’m being too in-the-weeds here, but I don’t fully understand how T50/the PTO is actually managing this race.

And, also, no, we don’t know the course for L.A. yet because options are still being debated with the city. I know some people think it’ll be modeled off the old L.A. Triathlon course, but that course 1. wasn’t that pretty on the bike and 2. went point-to-point across town. Personally, I expect something more loops and beach-like.

Back to: The Olympics doesn’t like it when you change things. There’s a whole multi-year process to change distances or events; events were literally just approved for the 2030 Winter Olympics. And the points qualification process for L.A. has already been approved, and supplying equal points opportunities for men and women at the same events is important. And World Tri actually does a good job showcasing both races and providing equal support. So, no, they could not have men at some Olympic points events and women at other ones.

Why keep alternating genders in T100 races then? Honestly, because they can’t fill double the number of fields yet, and they’re committed (to partners etc) to putting on xx number of races.

Race Ranger data from Roth

I’m still sort of split on whether or not making Race Ranger data public is good or bad or does anything other than create things for forums and podcasts to talk about.

But, if you want to, you can go through the report Challenge Roth put out with all the data. They’re maintaining that illegal draft time has gone down from last year (public shaming worked!), with a lot of caveats (they take out certain sections of the course, they do count yo-yo-ing).

So make of that what you want.

From the races

• Boise 70.3: Kirsten Kasper can run! I mean I know, obviously, that she can run, but she has not always been thought of as a runner and maybe that was all of our mistake. And Sam Long, more well-known, can bike. There is, of course, something to be said for domestic U.S. races playing out differently than European races, but I don’t think that’s necessarily harder or easier, it just suits different athletes.

  • Poor Blake Harris couldn’t find his T2 spot, which also happened to me in my first race ever and then never happened again. And I am sure it will never happen to him again.

  • And Ari Klau explained the whole shoe thing.

• WTCS London: Now, post-London I was left with just an idea, a thought: Maybe it’s time to try a different strategy than hoping to outrun Cassandre Beaugrand or Matt Hauser. To her credit, Taylor Knibb did try something different, and maybe if Tilly Anema hadn’t hit a cone and had stayed with Knibb they would have worked together for more of a gap, maybe. But, someone, please, try something.

• Supertri Toronto: Last race to earn a spot to the mega finals for some of these young names. And also for Tyler Mislawchuk.

Results: Boise 70.3, WTCS London, Supertri Toronto, Challenge Turku, Trumer Triathlon

The -ish

Some of the things worth knowing about this week in our sports — or that I just think are interesting.

• The Tour de France Hommes is over and what a three-week showcase of Tadej Pogačar it was. Apparently, the race organizers tried to come up with a race and a course that would not just be a showcase of Tadej Pogačar, but they mostly failed. (The Athletic/Escape Collective)

• And, yes, with all the records he broke, which were set during the doping era, it has led a lot of people to wonder if he is also doping. (Personally, it doesn’t seem to me like he’s emotionally dependent enough on cycling to cheat. Take it or leave it.) But, hence, this has led to the 2 a.m. anti-doping tests. About which all I can think is: Sure, if doping tests could happen at anytime, and there was no expectation of privacy, then yeah, that’d probably cut down on doping. Also, if we shot anyone who was caught doping, then that’d probably cut down on it too. But you gotta have a reasonable give-and-take. (Bike Radar/BBC)

• And speaking of doping, are you ready for some in-the-weeds ultrarunning insanity? A second Ultrarunner Dude On A Podcast has now admitted to using banned peptides, and ultrarunners are very split on how they feel about this — ranging from ‘anyone who violates the rules, even accidentally, should be banned from the sport forever’ to ‘who cares what amateurs do.’ Probably the reasonable interpretation is somewhere in between. (Instagram/Running Magazine/)

• If you’re wondering wtf are peptides exactly, I also had to have Selene explain them to me. (Feisty)

• This was an interesting addendum piece about trail running’s blind spots during its current boom. Which raised a good question: ‘What is one thing you are publicly celebrating that makes you nervous privately?’ And maybe sometime I’ll tell you what mine are for triathlon. ()

• Paralympian Mo Lahna will be finishing his Across America Triathlon today in L.A. And you can run the finish with him around 1 p.m. at Windward Plaza in Venice and then join him at the Venice Run Club in the evening. (Instagram)

• Apparently, the world record for the most super sprint triathlons in 24 hours is now 22 triathlons. (The Radavist)

• The CrossFit Games were here in the Bay — the Bay Area Host Committee really doing a job convincing all these sports events to come to San Jose — and we had a new women’s champ and a lot of local news stories explaining what CrossFit is. (Muscle & Fitness)

• I signed up for an off-brand Hyrox race (like a non-Ironman “half-iron-distance” triathlon) and Hyrox announced the first half of its expanded 2027 calendar with more races in the U.S. (Endurance.biz)

• And if you haven’t been to a gym recently, fyi, the kids are going to the gym. (CNN)

• Which brings us to: fitness as a luxury item. New but not exactly new. (LinkedIn/Culture Study)

• Ironman U is getting a reboot and the general consensus seems to be: Natasha Van der Merwe good, Ironman U mixed. (Instagram)

• Ahead of Northern California 70.3 — also quite the branding for the city of Redding, btw — there have been meetings with local businesses about how to prepare for athletes and what inventory/menu/hour adjustments to make for the event. And that means someone at Ironman actually took one of my idea suggestions (!) and is doing local business pre-race outreach. (The Shasta Scout)

• New 70.3 in Portugal and you can now sign up for the full Ironman Oman.(Ironman/Instagram)

• Weird outcome at the British AG Champs. (Instagram)

• Steph Clutterbuck is dealing with Hashimoto’s now. (Instagram)

• Meant to include this last week: Holly Lawrence is out with a run injury. (Youtube)

• And it’s the Tour de France Femmes, starting on Saturday, and it is an excellent route this year. (Escape Collective)

• We also did our last Feisty Tri podcast and had a super interesting interview with the woman swimming the whole 900-mile California coastline. (Apple Podcasts)

• I got fed this headline by Google about getting inside the deadly dangerous world of Ironman and then Triathlete did the hard work of taking the New York Post at face value, which no one gets paid enough to do, and explaining why that headline is wack. (New York Post/Triathlete)

One last thing

Someone is probably trying to shut this down, but isn’t it at least a little fun.

Hi all. You might have noticed this newsletter looks different and is back on the Substack platform. (Or, you didn’t notice, and you’re just like: This email shows up in my inbox, sometimes I read it sometimes I don’t. Which is a totally fine attitude too, but then you may want to skip ahead over the next part.)

Triathlonish is no longer under the Feisty umbrella. Decisions were made and the Feisty Tri podcast will be going on hiatus (we just recorded our last episode together), as will the other Feisty newsletters I wrote. I’m wrapping up the rest of the behind-the-scenes work I do/did for Feisty by the end of the month, and have taken Triathlonish back for myself.

From a logistical perspective for you this means: The email list is back with me, but if I messed up something in the exporting and importing and re-exporting, sorry. If you’re one of the handful of people who wanted to unsubscribe in this last 10-month period and I have now messed that up by reverting to old settings, you can still just unsubscribe by clicking the button at the bottom of this email (but please don’t everyone unsubscribe or it’ll make me sad). And the Triathlonish site is live again, but nothing’s been updated since it migrated back in the fall and there are some definite quirks. Bear with me; it’ll get sorted out over time.

From a personal perspective this means: I’m figuring out what’s next (besides using my free time to get fit), and I’m figuring out how I want to start building Triathlonish back out, too.

And, if you want to sponsor the newsletter now, well, press reply and let me know.

Other than that: Nothing will change for you. You’ll get your weekly triathlon-ish email. You can now leave comments on the newsletter or share it again (please do). I’ll probably have more insight about triathlon again, too, as I dive into things. But mostly it’ll still just be the newsletter you’ve come to know over the last 195 weeks.

So what else is going on?

- Kelly

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You never know how Ironman will go

For both pros and age-groupers, the last 10km of an Ironman is almost always an open question. You just don’t really know what will happen until it happens.

And I’d argue that despite a lot more words being said these days, there’s actually no more really knowing how a top athlete is going to do in an Ironman until they do it. Sometimes the best Olympians in history are then just OK at the 140.6 distance, they never really reach the same level (see: Alistair); sometimes perfectly fine short-course racers turn out to be exceptional when they go long and really excel at hour eight (see: Solveig). As we’ve had more athletes cross-over between distances, I think it’s become even more obvious that it’s almost impossible, unless you’re inner circle (and even then), to predict.

Well. Paula Findlay turns out to be very very good at the Ironman distance.

When the prime minister tweets about your IM Lake Placid victory, either it was really impressive or Canada just needs some good news these days.

Of course Paula was always going to be decent. She’s been training for this for 20 years. But a new bike course record at Placid and on overall course record pace until that epitomal last 10km is more than decent. And, I think what brought most people along with her was that she also just seemed to be enjoying it — a rare thing after that many years in the sport.

Plus. Marten Van Riel — there’s another short-course athlete who has also been quite good at long course — ran a 2:34! for a 7:41:57 course record! Is every Ironman fast now! (That course is not fast, fwiw.)

And, a cute post from Ben Kanute. And, a validation from Chelsea Sodaro — who, despite what People On The Internet say, I would not count out. And last year’s overall age-group Kona winner grabbed the last pro Kona spot for this fall.

There’s one last race now for pros to get their IM World Champs spots: three men’s + three women’s at IM Kalmar. Full list of everyone who has qualified to date here.

An update on women

Speaking of qualifying for Kona. Normally, I’d probably have a lot more to say about this, especially since I’m sure this is the last time we’ll ever talk about how many women “deserve” to be at Kona. (Kidding, the one-sided conversation will never end. Proportionality is a zombie that refuses to die.)

But. Here it is: Ironman published a June 30 update on the Kona 2026 slot allocations. There have now been 1,726 slots handed out and, after the December updated system, 30% of those total slots have now gone to women.

No update on how many slots went to which age groups — the other obvious distortion from the “performance” algorithm.

If you’re also wondering how we’re only at 1,726 Kona slots through the end of June, good question. There are still 295 more slots to be handed out. But, yes, that will still be well shy of the ~2,500-2,700 total spots that Ironman says it expects in Kona this fall.

So, crazy idea: If we were really that worried about who “deserves” to be there and performance quality, then maybe we wouldn’t hand out ~600 spots to sponsors and lottery. Or, better yet, maybe we’d admit to ourselves that “deserves” is just a marketing concept and Ironman’s business model needs us to buy into this principle of scarcity or their whole velvet rope system collapses.

But, anyway, I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts some other time.

From the races

• World Cup - Edmonton: Taylor Knibb won her first World Cup apparently. And there was a four-man sprint in the men’s race. (But did the prime minister tweet about that? No.)

Results: IM Lake Placid, World Cup - Edmonton, Gdynia 70.3, European Triathlon Middle Distance Championships

Mark your calendars

• WTCS London: Packed start lists (men & women), though Hayden Wilde is out. Someone also asked me today if it was the old London course through Hyde Park and I wasn’t 100% sure but I am sure now: It is not. It’s more tied to last year’s T100 London race, which they bought from the London Triathlon (and is one of those ones they’re kinda saying is a joint World Tri-T100 venture). So, anyway, it goes by the docks.

  • WATCH: Saturday - women @ 9:30 a.m. ET/6:30 a.m. PT, men @ 11:15 a.m. ET/8:15 a.m. PT on TriathlonLive and apparently on BBC in the UK

• Boise 70.3: Pro Series heads to Idaho. Pronounced BOYS-ee, fyi for the internationals. Lots of Americans, and then also Vince Luis and Hannah Berry.

  • WATCH: Saturday @ 8:30 a.m. ET/5:30 a.m. PT on Ironman’s Youtube

• Start lists are also out for T100 Vancouver, and there’s some new names + some classics.

The -ish

Some of the things worth knowing about this week in our sports — or that I just think are interesting.

• Josh Kerr broke the mile world record. Which, also fyi for the internationals, is an extra 109m big deal. And my favorite part of this post-race interview is when he’s like ‘yeah, I lose my hearing sometimes in training if I push too hard, so it wasn’t that weird when I temporarily went deaf in the race, too.’ OK! (Youtube/The Athletic)

• The Triathlon World Tour made the Associated Press, which also had some of the same details from our chat with World Tri President and our chat with T100 CEO. Including that next year’s schedule should have been announced by now… (Associated Press/Triathlonish)

• Garmin bought TrainingPeaks. (DC Rainmaker)

• The Boston Marathon announced a second chance lottery for qualifiers who don’t make the time cut-off. (Runner’s World)

• I read the details a few weeks ago of this study from 2023 Kona about motivations for women racing, but there’s more now from one of the authors. I’m sure Ironman will take from it whatever they want to hear, except definitely take from it that ‘losing weight’ is not a motivation. (European Society of Medicine/Triathlete)

• Triathlete also had an interesting profile of the next high-level coach and method everyone is talking about: Glenn Poleunis. (Triathlete)

• This guy is believed to be the only one to ever do all of the Seven Summits + the Seven Swims. And I just learned there are Seven Swims. (Outside)

• At 91, this guy’s hiking the Appalachian Trail. (New York Times)

• And this woman is doing a 2,000km record route through the Alps. (Instagram)

• Heather Jackson stopped her Tour Divide attempt. (Instagram)

• The 2 a.m. anti-doping tests at the Tour are really taking the surprise element of anti-doping to a new level. (The Athletic)

• If you missed the new Canyon Speedmax at Roth, well, how did you miss it. (Slowtwitch)

• Apparently, the new Chamonix mayor is also not thrilled about UTMB and wants to scale it back — but is less insane than the Nice mayor. So I return to a previous point: Is France just a no-go for races. (TrailMix)

• And one of my media beliefs is that we’re two to three years away from short-form online video becoming so completely swamp-like that you can no longer reliably sort the truth from the swill and, in turn, people will simply opt out and stop believing almost everything. We’ll over-correct. Until then, however, the cess pool is filling, and computer-generated wellness influencers are selling you supplements. (New York Times)

• Is ‘trackflation’ a real thing? (WIRED)

One last thing

Granted I may be a little strung out, but this story about a bike mechanic coming to an athlete’s aid at Roth was heartwarming. (And then the comments criticizing the girl for not knowing more about her bike were annoying. Classic internet circle.)

All-sporters, we’ll be shifting to the Feisty email system next week. There might (probably) be a few kinks, but hopefully not too many — and you all should get an email from me welcoming you to the new family as we become an official part of Feisty. But other than that, you’ll just keep getting your regular Thursday morning email on triathlon and triathlon-related things. And, of course, the -ish.

- Kelly

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If only someone could have warned us

I’ve had quite a few people message me or email or reach out wanting to know what I think about how the 2026 Kona new qualification is going — in light of the fact that the last couple of N. American Ironman races have resulted in just *one* spot out of the performance pool going to a woman, which means basically only winners of the women’s age-groups are getting through to 2026, which is simply flat-out discouraging (if you’re sitting there in the awards ceremony, thinking you did really well, you’re second in your AG, and then 50-year-old man after man gets called up and no women — like, that’s just demoralizing, period), which is not the bag of goods many people thought they were sold about performance-based qualification.

Here’s an actual report showing you that’s what’s happening so far. If somehow you don’t believe your own eyes, or me. (EDIT: The spreadsheet of qualification is from Phil, and the link is also in his bio if it’s being buggy.)

So, what do I think about how this is shaking out?

Well, what I actually think is probably not something I should write here. Because the way to win people eloquently over to your side isn’t to yell at them I TOLD YOU SO, but I’ve lost a lot of faith in the power of words lately, so I dunno, here’s my best shot:

I told you the premise was flawed, that algorithms are not how you qualify people to a world championship no matter how great you think the algorithms are. I told you I didn’t accept the assumption anyway that men and women should be compared against each other when they do not compete in the same race against each other, that we were pitting them for no reason other than that we used to. That finite resources are not actually unique to Kona, nor have they ever been an excuse for inequitable distribution of those resources. That if we had always simply sent the best 1,000 women and the best 1,000 men in the world to compete amongst themselves to determine who was best, and then we suddenly announced we’d now be sending fewer women because our algorithm said the women weren’t as good as the men, you all would have thought that was insane, because it would have seemed insane. It’s all a matter of perspective.

And my perspective is: I didn’t think this was going to go well, but it seems to be going even worse than I expected, not sure if I should feel good or bad about that. Probably doesn’t matter how I, specifically, feel. But it will matter how all the women feel, the potential and repeat triathletes, because that’s what Ironman should be worried about.

One last time, relax, have a drink with me

And, speaking of, here we go, my flight is in a week: Back to the island, for one last all-women’s Ironman World Championship.

And it is a big one **explosion emoji, etc**

The official start list is out and there’s only a couple of scratches. (Notably, Sarah True seems to be off, which was probably expected after Placid. We love you Sarah!) The list includes: Three Ironman world champs. Three 70.3 world champs. Olympic medalists. 1/3 of the field debuting. I was in the ‘Kat’s the one to beat’ camp, but now I’m eyeing Lucy CB’s run and Chelsea seems in a good place when we chatted for tomorrow’s Feisty Tri pod and the fact that we haven’t heard from Taylor may mean she’s just stacking block after block and Solveig obviously has some role models to follow coming out of Nice and Laura is in Maui training and and and and and.

Last chance to order your Kona merch is today — or you’ll just have to find us at Feisty HQ the Kona Canoe Club any morning during race week. We’ll also have a schedule next week of shakeout runs and brunch and live pods.

From the other races

• T100 Spain: Should we talk about penalties? Probably not. Let’s just say the T100 hasn’t gotten it quite right yet. And Hayden hasn’t quite figured out how to follow all the rest of the rules either. But! Lucy Charles-Barclay jumped in and won on the run and looked so strong coming off a big Kona block. And Hayden Wilde beat Jelle Geens again, but I dunno I think Jelle can come back at some point here.

• Supertri Jersey: I hope Jeanne Lehair is earning quite a bit of money for her Supertri year here. And, if you had no idea, Podium Racing is still winning the team competition.

• IM Wales: Rosie Wild just made me laugh with this post.

Results: Supertri Jersey, T100 - Spain, IM Wales, Sao Paulo 70.3, Emilia Romagna 70.3, Cozumel 70.3, Challenge San Remo

Mark your calendar

• Xterra World Champs: In Italy for the last year! Thursday is the short-course final World Cup race, and then Saturday is the big World Championship race. I’m rooting for Solenne Billouin to win her fourth because four is a lot — but Alanis Siffert is also coming off the road to try and beat her. And the race on the men’s side is very tight between Arthur Serrières and Félix Forissier, but I’m rooting for Sullivan Middaugh.

  • WATCH: Saturday at 1 a.m. PT/4 a.m. ET on XTERRA’s Youtube

• WTCS Wehai: Another WTCS? So soon?! What is happening. (Yeah, the calendars this year are wild. Let it go.) It doesn’t have huge start lists just because of that timing and travel, but Beth Potter is racing and I’m rooting for Morgan Pearson.

  • WATCH: Men today at 5:45 p.m. PT/8:45 p.m. ET and women at 8:30 p.m. PT/11:30 p.m. ET on TriathlonLive

The -ish

Some of the things worth knowing about this week in our sports — or that I just think are interesting.

• It was hard to follow the track & field world champs just because of the time zones. (I love sports, but I’m probably not watching sports at 4 a.m.) But what I did follow was excellent. The rain on the last day didn’t seem that bad on TV, but then the photos make it clear how crazy it really was. Picks from the week: Holy shit, they DQ Cole Hocker from his Olympic gold medal event so he just goes and wins the 5,000m instead, Sydney McLaughlin (!) running her “B” event and going 47.7 in the 400m, the 100m-200m-4x100m triple from Melissa Jefferson-Wooden. (Twitter/Instagram/Youtube)

• Also, always enjoy a little warm-up track drama. (Instagram)

• The thing I did not enjoy: The headlines and breathless social media posts out of the one-day sports science summit at the world champs that said a presentation was made showing that 50-60 females athletes in finals over the last 23 years wouldn’t have passed sex tests — which is maybe true, but you can’t tell from the way it was reported because it raised more questions than answers. And you can’t find the original sources because it wasn’t a paper, it was just a comment in a keynote speech that wasn’t videotaped and isn’t available (as far as I can tell). My questions, for example: Saying those athletes went through male puberty is simply not the same thing as saying those athletes had differences in sex development (DSD) — yet the articles reported both things in the same breath as if they were the same thing (they’re not!); DSD athletes are athletes who have one of the rare variations on sex development that we’ve talked about before, but that’s not the same as someone who transitions nor does it mean at all that they “went through male puberty” or are male athletes or necessarily have any kind of advantage or even know they have a genetic variation. Secondly, I wondered how officials would have even known any of this since track wasn’t implementing sex tests during that time. The answer is it turns out those numbers were extrapolated based on testosterone levels from anti-doping tests. Which raises the third question: If the last time we had sex tests in track & field was in 1999 and those kinds of numbers were NOT found, and then these reported numbers are from 2000-2023, that means things would have had to have changed suddenly and drastically. All things which are possible, but which raise many questions. (The Guardian)

• A related but different good essay on what it was like for an athlete going through the new sex testing process. (Good Sport Magazine)

• The Boston Marathon released its acceptance numbers for 2026 and you had to run 4 minutes, 34 seconds faster than your qualifying standard. I guess the rumors are true: it really does seem like these bucket list marathons are exploding. (Twitter)

• Speaking of: Video of the start of the 55,000 people who ran the Berlin Marathon. One of whom was Harry Styles (who ran sub-3). (Instagram/The Athletic)

• And a guy ran a baby stroller mile world record in 4:26 and people apparently freaked out because his baby was only two months not six, and I dunno he was running on a smooth track for four minutes with his baby in a laying down position not on a trail for an hour with the kid bouncing around. Maybe everyone can just calm down. (Instagram/Runner’s World)

• I meant to include this last week: RIP to legendary coach Jack Daniels. (Runner’s World)

• World Triathlon is considering “cautioning” the Danish federation president for his criticisms of the whole scandal thing. Even though I was meh on the “scandal,” I am more not thrilled about trying to silence anyone criticizing the scandal. (The Inquisitor/Triathlonish)

• Ironman has some more new races: A 70.3 in Italy, a full in Vietnam. Maybe the strategy is just to announce so many events that we’re overwhelmed and impressed by the sheer number of events. (Ironman/Vietnam+)

• The UCI Road Cycling World Champs are also right now in Rwanda — making them in Africa for the first time. And bringing up a lot of questions about sportswashing in the country. (Cycling Weekly/Global Peloton)

• I’m not sure about a bunch of the stats cited in this LinkedIn post on the value of investing in niche lifestyle sports (ie. triathlon), but it’s interesting to see investors considering the value of triathlon as not just a sports play but also a health and culture move. (LinkedIn)

• Interesting story with Parker Spencer (who runs the Project Podium for USAT) on the financial costs of trying to make it as a young athlete. (Triathlon Magazine)

• And Arild Tveiten, the mind behind the Norwegians, was on The Triathlon Hour. (Spotify)

• Skye Moench’s episode of The Feed by Talbot’s docuseries is out. Worth a watch. I understand Skye’s postpartum fitness much more than some of the pros (though she’s still four hours faster than me or, like, seven hours faster). (Youtube)

• This is an absolutely wild story about college recruiters setting up time trials in rural Kenya. I don’t even know if this is good or bad; I think it’s just a natural outcome of where things have taken us. (Washington Post)

• And another crazy story about CBP holding Giant bikes and parts at the border. The feds say it’s because of indications of forced labor, but these days it’s hard to know if that’s true or if it’s just something that’s being said. (Slowtwitch)

• Plus, your check-in from Outside Inc: Outside Just Fired Me Because of My Politics. (Wes Siler)

• The best thing I read this week, which has almost nothing to do with sports except that it has everything to do with how the world sees and treats women. (The Lamp)

One last thing

Watch the video of this annual “triathlon” in Italy.

This week’s newletter is brought to you by:

All-sporters, a reader reached to me about a new sports tech startup she’s launching to help coaches navigate all the technology in this modern coaching era, so that technology can help (not replace) them. And I agreed to a small sponsorship from augo and to share this survey they’re conducting of triathlon coaches so they can better understand coaches’ day-to-day challenges.

Tri coaches: You can win a 200CHF gift card to On Running for completing the survey. It takes about six minutes, it’s anonymous, it’s open until the end of September, and mostly I agreed to share it because I also think coaches are getting overwhelmed with all the platforms and data and gadgets, and I’m curious how they can be helped without having more and more things they have to do.

Other than that: Keep an eye out next week for some more news in terms of moving this newsletter to a new platform. And scroll down for the latest from Feisty.

- Kelly

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A few last things from France

It is hard to overemphasize how wild it is the Norwegians went 1-2-3. The other countries that have gone 1-2-3: The U.S. (back when basically no other countries did this shit), and Germany in 2016. [There have also been a few reports that a sweep has never happened in the women’s race, but that’s not totally true. The U.S. women also swept it back in the years when there were basically only Americans doing it.]

It’s also hard to overemphasize how fast the race has gotten. Chris, at Triathlete, tried to quantify it. Let’s just say: It’s wild. Probably some of that increase in performance is technology (but accounts are that still doesn’t account for the last 20 minutes). But a lot of it is just athletes push athletes.

READ: Our Man in France — Tim’s report from Nice

Many people have said a lot of other words about how the race played out, so I’ll just share a few things I enjoyed:

• Personally, I subscribe to the school of thought that says the Norwegian Method is just find some other training partners who also have fun but work hard — and this clip of Gustav Iden giving Casper Stornes a hard time earlier this year (“just win something already”) is excellent

• Oof, the cramping from Kristian Blummenfelt (even in the chute) looked painful

• Santara also put out a post-race pod episode with “the boys” as their agent once called them to me

• The bike count from Nice and the fastest shoes

• A graphical representation of how it all went down

• And a photo montage-y representation of how fast it goes

• I still think it’s wild that Ironman has to basically turn the descent into a slalom — but age-groupers, this is what you’ve made them do!

• And. The DNF Files are a lot less fun when all the answers to ‘why did he DNF’ are “just didn’t have it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”

Full results here. Kudos to Dr. Matt on being the first American.

Now for your regular reminder: People will care about what you tell them to care about

Of course, the other question coming out of Men’s Nice II: Did the hype for a new world champs, a different course, the whole men’s & women’s race experiment come too late?

I mean, yes. Obviously. But. Sometimes it’s still nice to point out when you were right; even if it’s too late after the fact. (Let’s hope I’m not as right about a bunch of other things over the next few years.)

The general consensus coming out of Nice The Second Edition seems to be that it’s an awesome exciting course that creates conditions for great racing, the racing lived up to those expectations, the vibes were high, the travel and city is easy, the crowds were bigger, fans and media can then really be invested in one race without interference or split attention. And, oh, oops, maybe we should have given this whole thing a few more years.

[See: For example, the comments on this Triathlete IG post asking whether we’ll miss the split world champs locations — which, yes, include a few ‘no, Kona is king’ diehards, but also a whole lot of comments like this one: “I started off as a detractor, but I have to admit that the split solution gives both males and females the stage they deserve…plus a course hard enough to test everyone.” Or this one: “Moving back to Kona only looks like a huge strategic mistake. Catering for US tri-customers is short-sighted.”]

Some of this shift in tone and perspective might be because there were so many more short-course athletes who moved into Ironman this year, and short-course athletes are used to rotating championship locations, it makes no sense to them to always crown a world title in the same conditions. They also simply aren’t as emotionally tied to Kona as the be-all of triathlon.

But some of the shift is just because anything new takes time.

Or as my husband said: You mean the thing that’s only three years old didn’t already have decades of history to draw on? Did no one tell them transition years were going to be transitional?

Get your shirts

Speaking of hype. Now that then men are done, the hype is building for the women’s race. And Feisty is the official partner with Here For The Women’s Race to bring these limited edition shirts to Kona — with all profits going to their Women’s Trailrunning Fund.

You can check out the full Kona collection. Orders close Sept. 25. After that, you’ll just have to come find us at Feisty HQ at the Kona Canoe Club any morning during race week.

From the other races

• WTCS Karlovy Vary!! - If you took a break from watching Ironman to go watch the rainy, wild racing in the Czech Republic, then you saw some exciting triathlon-ing on the other end of the spectrum. Having a hard bike really does change the race. Who knew. I felt all the feelings for Beth Potter on her win, though I also really did think/hope Taylor Spivey was going to hold her off for the lead. We had Taylor on the Feisty Tri podcast coming out tomorrow and talked all about how race dynamics change with different courses, and how you decide to just go for it.

Results: WTCS Karlovy Vary, Sunshine Coast 70.3, Challenge Almere

Mark your calendars

• T100 Spain: Really got the short-end of the stick here crammed between Men’s Nice & Women’s Kona, in between WTCS Karlovy Vary and WTCS Weihai. But it’s apparently this weekend! And it actually does have a very solid start list: Jelle Geens, Hayden Wilde, Ashleigh Gentle, Lucy CB.

  • Start list here. WATCH: Men - Friday at 11:45 p.m. PT/Saturday at 2:45 a.m. ET & women - 1:10 a.m. PT/4:10 a.m. ET

• Supertri Jersey: Also this weekend!

The -ish

Some of the things worth knowing about this week in our sports — or that I just think are interesting.

• When Ironman first teased “something interesting” coming from Oman, I thought to myself that the only really interesting thing would be if 70.3 Worlds was there. So, kudos to them! They have actually impressed me! After making it first seem like it was just another new race announcement, Oman is in fact hosting 2029 70.3 Worlds — which will be the first Ironman-brand world champs in the Middle East. Personally, I am hesitant to make any plans based on what global geopolitics will look like in four years, but. It’s cool they’ve expanded into the region. (Ironman)

• They also announced the schedule for the 2026 IM Pro Series, funded by Oman, with a few new locations and some old staples. (Ironman)

• However, I actually can’t quite figure out what’s going on with Ironman race location announcements. By that I mean that I can’t figure out yet what the strategy is (though I have a couple of guesses). Other than individual contracts and one-off reasons. They announced this week a new full Ironman (and a 5150, a brand that apparently still exists) in Argentina at the same time that they announced the end of IM Arizona after 21 years. (Ironman)

• Supertri bought the New Jersey State Triathlon (which was most recently a Challenge franchise) and the Blenheim Palace Triathlon (which is one of the biggest in the UK). (Endurance.biz)

• The new version of the Malibu Triathlon — now the Zuma Beach Triathlon — finally went off and raised $150,000 for CAF and L.A. wildfire relief. (KRON 4)

• T100 has put their Race Ranger data up on their site. (T100)

• Hayden Wilde, reportedly, has offered to DQ himself for racing in the illegal shoes. And I suggested to someone that Asics pay his prize money for all the publicity he’s gotten their shoes. Now, though, we’re worked up about his bottle position instead. And honestly I sometimes miss the old days of triathlon journalism. (Instagram)

• Track & Field World Champs have been excellent. Usually, the marathon is kinda the sad forgotten stepchild of track, but man, the 26.2s have delivered the moments in Tokyo. Look at this sprint photo finish. And then the women’s race — which was also a sprint finish, but pshaw was decided by a whole two seconds — had the heartwarming moment of the champs so far with the third place finisher who had no idea she was in third when she crossed the line. A good point also is that if she’d still been competing for the UK (where she moved when she was two) she would have been left off the team, because Brit Track is notorious for leaving off athletes who they think aren’t medal contenders. (Facebook/Instagram)

• One of my pet peeves about track, though, is how persnickety they can be. It’s like they’re trying to ruin their perfectly interesting sport. Like go ahead and tell me how this is a DQ for Cole Hocker. (Twitter)

• And an excellent post from Nike in honor of Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce — who raced her first Olympics in 2008 and her last World Champs in 2025, and who, fun fact I had to doublecheck, was the first Jamaican woman to ever win gold in the 100m. (Instagram)

• Eric Lagerstrom won the Otillo Orca Islands Swimrun solo race (and I believe did it starting behind the field and raising money for every athlete he passed). (Instagram)

• Georgia Taylor-Brown tried to solo to the win at the British Gravel Cycling Championships, but ended up with silver. (Instagram)

• Cycling World Championships start in Rwanda on Sunday. It really is one world champs after another after another right now. (Velo)

• Zwift canceled all elite racing. (Escape Collective)

• Fred Kerley is not just the first track athlete to join The Enhanced Games (the Olympics with doping, which may or may not actually ever get off the ground) and the first American man. He’s also the first active current athlete to sign on. Which is…unfortunate. (The Athletic/Triathlonish)

• And in case you thought cheating was specific to our sports: Scandal rocks world stone skimming championships. (BBC)

One last thing

What a picture after the 1500m finish line.

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And yes, 100%, it was absolutely a wild race. That kind of five-way run battle is what creates sports history — though the video shot riding alongside them makes it look like a much slower pace, hah! All you need is a scooter. And Norway winning all three medals is unheard of. They have a population of 5.5 million! That’s basically the population of S. Carolina. Can you imagine if the three best long-course triathletes in the world all came from S. Carolina?

Reminder: We talked to Brad last year about his book, The Norwegian Method. Which seems apropos right now. Though I’m still not convinced the method isn’t just find a good group of people, do some reasonably smart things, have some fun to make it sustainable, and give the goal your steady and consistent year-over-year all. Boom, a method.

We’ll be back to our regular Thursday morning weekly newsletters on, well, Thursday. Now, for Tim’s report from France.

- Kelly

So, Kelly messaged me: “Since you were there last year too, I’m curious how it compares. Feels bigger, but that’s also because you’ve got the Norwegians and all the big names.”

Right. On both counts. It does feel bigger than last year. But Nice is still Nice, and while it continues to offer a warm baguette and embrace for endurance types, it has the size and attitude to ensure it never becomes all-consuming.

So in my view, it was bigger simply by being a factor of having more people racing. (I have 2,270 age-group men on the tracker this year versus 1,101 women last year.) Multiply that by the athlete support crews, and yes, bigger.

Of course, as Kelly has argued many times, if you’re simply going to say a straight comparison between a standalone women’s Ironman Worlds with a standalone men’s Ironman Worlds is fair after two years of evolution, your logic is flawed or you’re probably willfully missing the point. But, let’s not go down that road today.

What we can squarely compare is yesterday to Men’s Nice 2023—the first and also penultimate men-only contest here—and the main differences were that Jan Frodeno was on a mic not on his bike, and the Norwegians, absent two years ago, lobbed a grenade into the mix.

In 2023, Sam Laidlow was flanked by Patrick Lange and Magnus Ditlev on the podium. Dump in the Norwegians (Stornes, Iden, Blummenfelt) and some recent short-course converts (Riddle, Schomburg, Van Riel) and you just blow the whole thing up. And, boy, did it blow up.

• Laidlow suffers adductor issues in the swim and breaks his own bike record getting back in touch. Before breaking again—if one considers a 2:42:23 marathon and going three minutes faster than his 2023 time is breaking.

• Lange runs a 2:31 marathon—his fastest of a host of super fast times in Ironman world championship marathons—but it only gets him ninth place.

• And Ditlev drops back on the bike before dropping out of the marathon altogether.

Not so much the Norwegian Method or “the Norwegian hype train,” but by the time we’d got to the business end of the race it was the Norwegian stranglehold on the Promenade des Anglais.

It does show what they can do with a singular focus and ignoring shiny new things over here (T100 contracts) and shiny old things that have passed (the Paris Olympics).

Gustav Iden is now on the upswing following the death of his mother, the grieving process, and a couple of years of injuries (struggles he’s been refreshingly public about). And the positivity is rubbing off on the whole group.

“We build each other up” Stornes said, having parted with his former coach, Gustav’s brother, Mikal, and becoming part of the “uncoached” squad in January. They haven’t looked back, but the efforts of mentors Arild Tveiten and Olav Aleksander Bu have left their mark, too.

Records tumbled again yesterday, but how much faster can we continue to go? I asked the new champ at the post-race press conference and he didn’t really know, but thought Iden’s Kona run record of 2:36:14 was within reach.

You sense if the Norwegians are able to rinse and repeat this formula in 2026—keep it simple, don’t be distracted, don’t (in Iden’s words) “think too much”—then we could see all this and more in Hawaii next year.

Another Norwegian sweep? They predicted it this time and not many believed them. They’ll no doubt predict it again, and maybe we will.

A few things noticed in Nice.

• Perhaps it’s the relaxing rattle of the pebbles shifting to the tide, but whatever the reason Nice moves to its own beat. I flew in on what was labelled “Bloquons Tout” (Let’s Block Everything) day, expecting disruption due to protests of the French proposed removal of national holidays and pension reforms. Yet, while there were some minor flight delays and action in other locations around the country, once at the Nice airport my tram rumbled into town with familiarity and little fuss.

• The average age of Ironman competitors was 49 years old. Tell me you need a lot of money (too much money) to take part in this sport without telling me.

• Stornes was wearing the now-legal Asics Metaspeed Rays. The “earned media” for these shoes over the past few weeks has been off the charts.

• Outside of the podium triumvirate there were another two Norwegians, four Danes, and one Finn qualified. Ten Scandinavians v. six U.S. male pros and three Aussies. Yes, the venue being Nice would have skewed it, but we’re seeing real strength in depth from northern Europe.

• Ironman made a late decision to bar media motos that take photographers from a “20-minute bubble” at the front of the race. Several disgruntled snappers had to change plans, but while Ironman no doubt made the decision with safety in mind for the narrow and twisting course, how much did it help clean up the front of the race, too? While the Norwegians sat in at 12 meters, did those who were driving the pace—Laidlow, Van Riel, Schomburg, and Riddle—lose an unspoken advantage? Correlation does not equal causation, but it’s a thought.

• Remember Anne Haug’s ripped tire here coming out of transition last year? Race-day is as much about dodging the bullets as it is about executing the perfect race. Sickness was a key one here: Sam Laidlow, Magnus Ditlev, Patrick Lange, Kieran Lindars all reported feeling under the weather to greater or lesser extent. No doubt there were more. It’s a lesson on a) not overdoing training and b) being lucky.

• Sad that this is the last full-distance Ironman World Championship in Nice? Next year’s two-day 70.3 Worlds promises an equal if not better atmosphere because of the number of athletes who will be in attendance. And racing on the French Riviera isn’t going anywhere. Ironman France and Ironman 70.3 France take place here on June 28 next year. Plus T100 is just up the coast, too.

Nice, you’ve been nice.

I think it’s been a tough time for a lot of people lately. A lot of things are going badly. And a lot of the triathlon world was heartbroken last week for Lucy Byram when news came out that her boyfriend, Sam O’Shea, had been hit and killed during a bike ride. I don’t know either of them personally, but it’s a small community and that particular group of friends had already gone through a tragedy earlier this year when Jack, a popular photographer in the sport, also lost his wife. Sam & Jack were two of the three friends behind The 1x Podcast. It’s probably worth listening to their final episode.

I’ve had some really rough bad years, but nothing like what they all must be going through. And I’ve found people are always tempted, in these times, to try to say something wise or deep or meaningful or optimistic, but there really isn’t anything to say. There’s a space where words don’t reach.

I’m sorry you all have to go through that. I’m sorry so many people are going through so many things right now. I hope you survive it, I hope you have each other. And one day you can tell other people how to survive it.

- Kelly

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Did you know Men’s Nice is happening?

OK, on to triathlon.

Oh, you did know Men’s Nice is happening. And you don’t need another preview? Weird.

Turns out if you actually hand out spots and tell people it’s legit, 2,500 athletes will go to France to race a world championship! Crazy, who knew. Plus, all four of the previous world champions and a whole bunch more podium finishers in the pro field. I dunno, just a thought, but maybe all that hand-wringing about Nice v. Kona and slots rolling down too far (etc etc etc) wasn’t really about any of those things but was just about giving something new a little bit of time to grow. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Oh well, too late now.

For your Ironman World Championship Men’s Edition consumption:

• Triathlete has a live blog going from the ground (which lol in the year of our lord 2025) and a good preview and a spectator’s crib sheet.

• ProTriNews will have daily pods and, oddly, a wind prediction forecast because we have taken triathlete-ing to a new level of triathlete-ness. (EDIT: It’s Triathlon Hour that’s doing daily podcasts; ProTriNews has a live show)

• Thorsten has his super detailed World Championship data report.

• I thought it was kind of fun to have Marten Van Riel doing a full super real (riel?) preview.

• And then of course there’s your standard gear stuff: Prototype bike pics, Norwegian hole-y trisuits. The usual.

My picks?

I saw someone’s “take” today that: It could be Laidlow but also Blummenfelt is very good. And, you know, touche there on that biting analysis.

• On paper, Kristian Blummenfelt is the favorite. Hands down. BUT. Word is he failed one of his last key sessions last weekend (gasp!) — which I don’t really know if it matters (may mean he’s ready as much as it means he’s not), but it did absolutely kill me in terms of how gossip-y the pros are.

• Personally, I kinda think Magnus Ditlev is my pick. After 3rd, 2nd, I think he knows where and how he overcooked here in 2023. And I think the tough bike is good for him (even if he’s a “bigger” athlete). Someone pointed out on our (kinda) preview show last week, though, that he’s either been super quiet lately because things are going really well or because they’re going really not well.

• If you want the safe bet, then duh, Patrick Lange is a championship day racer. I’m hesitant to pick him, because I think everyone—Sam, Magnus, Rudy Von Berg (don’t forget about him!), Kristian—is going to work hard together to drop him before the run. But what do I know, I was hesitant to pick him last year and boy was I wrong.

• Sam Laidlow’s a wild card. In every respect of the word. I don’t think it’s his year. I think he’s right, though, that it’ll take a sub-8 this year.

• I will also always root for Gustav Iden, but it seems like it’s probably a top 10 year? A rebuilding year as they say?

• And then you have Marten Van Riel, who I wouldn’t count out even with the ankle injury — and a billion other guys (Kristian Hogenhaug, Leon Chevalier, Dr. Matt).

Start list. WATCH: Sunday, Sept. 14 at 7 a.m. in France/1 a.m. ET on Outside Watch in N. America, Ironman’s Youtube, DAZN globally

I tried to come up with a clever subtitle for this section and landed on: Siiiiiigh.

This is just your reminder that Ironman handed out ~40% fewer spots for Women’s Kona this year than for Men’s Nice. Which no one seems to realize. So when we get to the Big Island in October and everyone’s all ‘why is it so much smaller, gee women just don’t want to do it, there aren’t enough competitive women,’ I want you to remember this is the product of specific and deliberate choices.

This past weekend was the first N. American Ironman with the new world champs qualification system. And I got a message from a reader who said only 11 of the 40 spots at IM Wisconsin went to women — with only one of the “performance pool” spots going to a woman. (They also said it was really discouraging, whether you think it’s fair or not, to sit there and wait for the performance spots to be called and have it be man after man after man after man after man.)

Reminder: The way the qualification system works is that each age-group winner gets a spot; that spot can roll down to 2nd or 3rd but no farther. Then, after those podium spots are given out, the rest of the spots are handed out by going down the rankings of age-graded results.

I am reminding you all of this, because it became clear that the Slowtwitch forum-ers have a lot of opinions about whether the system is working, with many completely incorrect understandings of how the system works.

You can see the IM Wisconsin age-graded rankings here. When I previously calculated the results of the new system, I assumed no rolldowns because I couldn’t know if a rolldown had happened and because that would still give us a rough understanding of how it played out with the age-grading. It does sound, though, like there were at least a couple of rolldowns in Wisconsin.

Still, it gets you to 27% women out of Wisconsin. Which is surprising because if you ran last year’s IM Wisconsin results through the new system, World Champs spots were closer to 45% women. Given that 1. when people put previous race data through the new system, the U.S. races were generally more like 40-50% female spots and 2. there’s no outside reason I’m aware of to explain why 2025’s Wisconsin would vary drastically from 2024, then we have to ask what is different about the fields this year from last year.

My guess: N. American women are doing Kona this year. We know Kona leans N. American — and way (!) more so for the women. We know there’s a defined number of women who can/will do multiple Ironmans in a year right now (because of many factors). We also know that when the timing of 2024 qualifying races were scheduled right around 2023 Kona it ended up limiting a lot of the women’s numbers.

We could just know all of this. But I bet Ironman polls people instead.

I read this Bloomberg story with Ironman CEO Scott (even paid for a trial subscription) because I thought it would illuminate some new information, and I read Triathlete’s annual World Champs sitdown with him with the same hope. I suppose it’s possible to glean some nuggets out from between the lines, but mostly it’s the same things it’s been. He’s polling, he’s listening, etc etc etc.

It’s really all in the branding, though, isn’t it. Because *all* CEOs go to their own events and talk to their customers. All CEOs conduct market surveys. All CEOs mingle with the CEOs of other brands and try to learn from competitors. All of them say things about customer experience. This is not unique. But CEO Scott has really sold this as his thing. And part of me keeps thinking: Maybe you wouldn’t need to ask so many athletes whether they want their nutrition bars wrapped or unwrapped at aid stations if you were an athlete. Maybe that’s mean, but if you’ve done a triathlon (or hundreds of them), then you know the answers to some of these questions without needing to put an outsized value on the random input of the specific triathletes you happen to surround yourself with.

One nugget in the Triathlete interview: So far the new qualification system has broken down to about 27% women. Yet, only 22% of the accepted slots are going to women. Which is literally worse than the old system. So, naturally, they’re planning to poll women to find out why they’re turning down slots and don’t want to do Kona or another Ironman or what the issues and barriers are. Which would be a completely reasonable action to take. If we didn’t already have dozens of organizations and groups and decades of years of people who already know the answer to that question.

Eventually, dude’s gonna poll himself right out of a job.

Mark your calendars

• The other big race this weekend: WTCS Karlovy Vary! Everyone’s been raving about this course since it was moved up from a World Cup to a Championship Series race — primarily because it has legit hills and technical descents, and so could play out differently than we’ve seen the majority of WTCSs play out so far this year. Of course, Matt Hauser will probably still win. But still! It’s unlikely we see a pure run race on the women’s side, so that’s something.

  • Start lists here. WATCH: Sunday - Women at 3:45 a.m. ET & the men at 8:45 a.m. ET on TriathlonLive

Results: Santa Cruz 70.3, Poznan 70.3, Knokke-Heist 70.3, Gerardmer XL, World Triathlon Para Cup - Alhandra, World Triathlon Duathlon Long Course World Champs

The -ish

Some of the things worth knowing about this week in our sports — or that I just think are interesting.

• RIP Valerie Silk, who took Ironman to a global level back in the 1980s. This is an interesting interview with her from Tinley on his triathlon history site. (Triathlete/Tri-history)

• Track & Field World Championships also start this weekend in Tokyo. (Technically, Friday evening in the U.S.) And Citius is previewing every single event, because. (NBC/Citius)

• SwimRun World Champs were also last weekend: women’s winners, men’s, mixed. And this is an event I still really want to do. On my list of events. (Instagram)

• Best story of the Vuelta is the return of Egan Bernal after his headfirst crash into a bus in 2022. (Roleur)

• Hayden Wilde responded to the shoe controversy. In short, he says he mixed up shoes. Sure. (Instagram/Triathlonish)

• CEO Scott teased that “something exciting” was coming from Oman. And turns out it’s what you thought it would be: A 70.3 and full. (Muscat Daily)

• There’s also a new Ironman Jacksonville, which is supposed to attract all the Ironman Florida athletes who were bored of doing that same course but now will do a new nearby course. (Endurance.biz)

• Also in Florida: Endurance Exchange in January. (USAT)

• Speaking of things I’m having a hard time getting super excited about: A six-part docuseries with Jan Frodeno and Gordon Ramsay. I am sure they’re very cool guys who have done more cool things in their lives than I ever will, and Florida is fine (I went to Kindergarten and 1st grade there), but I dunno, it doesn’t feel new or fun? (Ironman)

• Challenge Roth did 65 doping blood spot tests of age-groupers, and they were all negative. fyi. (NADA)

• Joyline Chepngeno, who just won the OCC race two weeks ago, received a two-year doping ban dating back to Sierre-Zinal in August — which invalidates the win at OCC. Which is a super shame, because her win was very emotional. Her coach/manager apparently is now also banned from Sierre-Zinal because he had previous athletes who got popped for doping. Which really makes it seem like a systemic problem, not an individual problem. (iRunFar)

• An 85-year-old became the oldest man to bike across the U.S. It took him 44 days. And a 102-year-old became the oldest person to climb Mt. Fuji. (Guinness World Record/CNN)

• This is a kind of wild story from Zoe about a shortcut on an FKT attempt that led to a court trial. (iRunFar)

• And a good read from a small running shop owner about how the tariffs are playing out. Hint: Not great. (Running Wylder)

One last thing

Kinda wanna run on this track.

Ah, oops, it seems like moving to a new newsletter day threw some of you off. Sorry! Reminder: The weekly newsletter now comes to you early Thursday mornings. More changes coming soon, too. Stay tuned.

And today’s a short one. I’d tell you why but I don’t feel like it. We've got a bunch of quick hits, results, and gearing up before championships go on forever and ever and ever.

- Kelly

“The biggest weekend in triathlon history”

Lol.

Obviously the combined WTCS and T100 was not the biggest weekend in triathlon history. But it was something. It happened! Races were won!

Word is the T100 French Riviera bike course was actually one of the best out there. All the pros have been raving. And somehow the PTO was able to really close down the French Riviera roads — which, if you’ve ever ridden there, you know is no joke. There are so many little towns and roads and driveways, whew. Getting that all sorted evidently involved very very many course marshals and police pre-riding ahead of the athletes. So kudos on that. And thank goodness, because it was whoa enough without cars.

However, as might have been obvious if also you’ve been to mass participation events before, it was simply not possible to continue this level of closure for the extended time period necessary for the age-groupers, so the age-groupers’ race was changed to a condensed multi-lap route. But, you know, learn some lose some. And, as best I can tell, there were about 1,000 age-groupers across the 100km, Olympic, and sprint.

(The WTCS was looped similar but different.)

Now, a short summary of the French pro races: The T100 was a podium of women everyone roots for. I mean who wasn’t happy to see Ashleigh Gentle back on top or Paula Findlay and Indie Lee with a good race. Also makes for a different winner for every single women’s T100 so far this year. Which is either really interesting or really not.

I was also rooting for Hayden Wilde to pull off the double win, but he won the T100 and went 11th the next day in the WTCS. So close.

The WTCS then, reportedly from people there, had bigger spectator crowds — partially because looped course probably, partially because French women winning in France (or going three of the top four, plus Jeanne Lehair who really does train a lot in France, so). Cassandre Beaugrand is quite the celebrity I gather.

T100

WOMEN

1. Ashleigh Gentle

2. Paula Findlay

3. Indie Lee

4. Lucy Byram

5. Ellie Salthouse

MEN

1. Hayden Wilde

2. Jelle Geens

3. Samuel Dickinson

4. Mathis Margirier

5. Rico Bogen

WTCS

WOMEN

1. Cassandre Beaugrand

2. Jeanne Lehair

3. Leonie Periault

4. Emma Lombardi

5. Beth Potter

MEN

1. Matthew Hauser (yes, again!)

2. Vasco Vilaca

3. Miguel Hidalgo

4. Dorian Coninx

5. Tom Richard

Do I *have* to care about shoe rules??

Because I’d really rather not. Yet, here we are again.

Imma sum up real quick: There are shoes that are illegal under World Triathlon rules because World Triathlon adheres to World Athletics shoe rules. (Ironman also sorta does, too.) World Athletics says you can’t wear shoes with more than 40mm stack height, and you can’t wear prototype shoes. Here is the full list of approved shoes.

For amateurs, honestly, I mean you could get caught with one of the pairs of market-available technically illegal shoes, yeah, especially if the refs at Kona (for example) do random checks. But in a mega marathon like New York? No, no one cares. And also you’re coming in 1,238th place solely for your own personal fulfillment, so what’s the saying: The only person you’re cheating is yourself.

But for pros the bigger issue becomes prototype shoes. Because lots of pros test prototype gear. And triathlon has a long history of prototyping gear. But, blahblah shoes have to be on the market and widely available for xx days in order to be legal. (This is to stop unfair advantages — like back when some athletes had access to the first Nike supershoes and other athletes didn’t.)

OK. Follow so far? Stopped caring already? Me, too.

The reason this is an issue again is because it appears that Hayden Wilde was wearing a pair of prototype Asics when he won this past weekend, which will not yet be legal for another week or so. And if he didn’t know that’s kinda too bad it happens. But, there’s a clip after the finish where he appears to clearly know they’re not legal, and seems to be saying that no one’s checking but he’ll take them off anyway. (Which lol to the idea that posting that clip is no shade at Hayden. I mean, I personally find it mostly entertaining and think he’s riding the line like so many athletes do, but it is definitely shade.)

So now the question is: Should T100 or World Tri check shoes in transition? All shoes or just random checks? Should athletes be DQ’d or penalized if it becomes clear the shoes weren’t legal after the fact? Or is it more: play has to be called on the field? Should we just stop caring and let people wear whatever shoes they want?

Discuss.

From the races

• Zell am See 70.3: On paper, Kat Matthews is having an absolutely unbeatable season. Add to her win that we all know (because everyone follows everyone’s socials don’t they) she’s deep in a Kona training block and still won handily. There are those athletes who are quiet, you don’t see many results during the year, and then bam they deliver on championship days. Kat, though, is not going to sneak up on anyone; she’s got results and results and results.

Results: WTCS - French Riviera, T100 - French Riviera, Zell am See 70.3, Challenge Fortaleza

The -ish

Some of the things worth knowing about this week in our sports — or that I just think are interesting.

• Oh, and poor T100, they just can’t escape controversy. It sounds like a number of age-groupers didn’t finish the bike course within the cut-off but were then allowed to continue to the run. This included pro boxer, Tommy Fury. Which is fine whatever it happens. But, T100 originally blasted his finish all over their social and the results (and his social) claimed he had done the whole race. And while I have a long history of disliking Marathon Investigations because I mostly think piling on random age-groupers for the high crime of banditing a race or cutting a course is, like, just not worth it — but if you’re a celebrity then you probably should know that people are going to notice if you say you did something that you didn’t do all the way. (Instagram/WIRED)

• I also didn’t realize the CEO who stole an autographed hat from a kid at the U.S. Open was wearing an Ironman hat, so the triathlon socials really are just delivering this week. (ABC/Instagram)

• Next week, we’ll do a real Men’s Nice preview — which is an absolute total banger of a world championship start list. Though when recording the Feisty Tri podcast yesterday with Fenella Langridge and Hannah Berry I was primarily focused on: Where is the official afterparty location in Nice? Have we established a regular spot yet? (Ironman/Feisty Tri)

• Sophie Coldwell’s husband won UTMB. It was an absolute chaos of weather with rain turning to snow overnight and race organizers cutting out the high point because we don’t want people to die. Both Ruth Croft (who won) and Tom Evans (who won) have the same coach – so maybe he just gave them really good weather advice. (Instagram)

• Oh and UTMB shoes. And did you know there’s a volunteer race to the pub afterwards. (Outside Run/Instagram)

• It was the debut of the Sydney Marathon as a World Marathons Major. (The Guardian)

• The Vuelta has had a lot of pro-Palestinian protestors over the Israel-Premier Tech team. And I get that protesting while people are biking is really unsafe — do not cause crashes! — but I think, from a pure definitional standpoint, there’s an argument that the sports world should be excluding Israel in the same way they’ve cut out Russia after the Ukraine invasion. (The Athletic/Sports Politika)

• And poor Michael Johnson. He was just trying to save track and field. He failed spectacularly — as is outlined in this deep dive investigations — but isn’t that a shame. (The Athletic)

• I have also heard the argument that the PTO is really a data company, and invested in a live data tech company. But, you know, there still has to be a market for the data you want to sell. (Endurance Sportswire)

• Pros are always going on about how we need the 20m drafting rule, but dying they can’t even spot how far 20 meters is. (Instagram)

• Plus, in case you were curious, the gene sex testing that was due by Sept. 1 for track athletes is going so great, no problems or chaos, or unnecessary expenses and massive headaches. 🙄 (CBC)

• And while there have been a lot of stories about the Instagram-wellness-anti-birth control-TikTok trends, this one really is wild. (New York Time)

One last thing

It is though.

Welcome to the first Triathlonish newsletter coming out on Thursday. I’m not sure if it made my Monday-Wednesday less hectic or if it just spread out the hectic-ness at a different pace. (We covered all things UTMB on the Feist podcast.)

Though the hectic-ness in my life might also be related to 30-hour trip to Chicago over the weekend for the Supertri race and Chicago Triathlon. Which was also (!) my first “race” back postpartum. So I may or may not have fallen asleep on the couch the last two afternoons.

- Kelly

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A few takeaways from the Chicago Triathlon “by Supertri”

1. The age-group race seemed mostly back

I have been notably skeptical that triathlon, as a whole, is experiencing any kind of a boom. (Probably just depends on what year you start counting the numbers from.) And while there have certainly been races I’ve been at in the last couple of years that were robust and fun and community-driven (Boston Tri, Women’s Kona, USAT Age-Group Nationals the year it was all combined in Milwaukee, I love Escape from Alcatraz), I’ve been unsure about the overall picture.

When I was coming up in tri and the sport really was booming, the Chicago Triathlon was one of the pinnacle races I did. I grew up in Chicago. It was, at one point, a massive event (8-10K athletes) and it used to have all the feel and hooplah of the big city short-course races that have mostly gone away.

It was, then, genuinely good to see it back to almost what it used to be. Across all the races over the weekend, there were ~6,700 finishers. (I think race orgs always announce bigger numbers because they count registrations, not finishers.) As I Uber’d from the airport, there was a bank billboard welcoming the “triathalon.” There were spectators literally the whole run course and actual race-size crowds post-finish. I haven’t seen this size of successful tri in a long time, outside of a championship or Ironman-brand event — and those tend to not be super welcoming or beginner-friendly, etc.

2. Heading to a triathlon with just a backpack is amazing

Because I was only coming in for 30 hours, and because I was keeping my postpartum expectations low, I had *zero* desire to fly with a bike. Travis, at Triathlete, did the Supersprint race on Saturday on a Divvy city bike — and told me it was amazing. (Divvy is Chicago’s city bikeshare program and there’s a special wave for people who want to just do the Supersprint on a Divvy.) But because I was flying in Saturday, I opted instead to do the regular Sprint race on Sunday and rent a bike out of transition.

[An aside: Doing the main races on Sunday — the Sprint and Olympic had about 5,800 of the 6,700 athletes — let me really get the full feel of the thing, too.]

And while it took me 20 minutes to figure this out, it turned out the partner rental bike tent was literally inside transition. You could just roll up and roll your bike straight to your rack.

It seems they’ve done a pretty good job re-building this race as welcoming. (I actually had to keep remembering, like, ‘on your left’ might make some of these new athletes veer left. 😬) Apparently, one-third of the athletes were first-timers; there was a first-timers program and wave and a tent by the start for them. These things are not unique — other local community-driven races do lots of stuff like this, too; Boston did when I was there last year — but these are not things you always see at big races. The Sprint was half women. The Kids Race on Saturday had 700 kids in it. Something there is working.

My only note: They should add back an elite-amateur wave, because there are also very fast age-groupers who probably should not be mixed in with those of us on rental bikes.

3. There is — at least — the possibility that Supertri’s plan will work. It very well may fail, but it has the best chance of the chances.

Look, there are a lot of people who have tried to make money in triathlon. And a lot of people who are trying to make money right now. Most of them have made a small fortune only by starting with a large fortune.

Supertri’s plan, on its surface, might look a lot like a lot of the other plans, but I think there are some key differences that matter.

• Their mass participation play is largely building off existing races

• They’re focusing on short-course and grassroots and bringing new people into the sport — which is the only place there’s a gap in the market; there is not a long-course gap

• The pro races are then added to the AG events and integrated where it makes sense

• The pro races are also structured in a way that the teams can fund themselves and franchise — I don’t totally understand this, but I understand it enough to know it brings money in, not out

• The biggest challenge is going to be (100%) getting people to understand this style of pro racing — Supertri struggled to figure out where to put the Supertri event in Chicago, with the AG finish and transition about a mile apart they ended up stranded in the middle, and it’s simply a hard format to explain to Americans — but once people see it, they like it; it is fun to watch

I’m still skeptical triathlon is going through a boom or that any of these plans to revolutionize the sport will ultimately succeed. But this is the best approach I’ve heard and seen so far.

This big weekend of racing kicks off the big time of year

Alright! We’re officially entering championship season. Which means it’s one big week of racing after another — or, it’s a couple of big weeks with some breaks in between while all the athletes go into their training caves to prepare for the big weeks.

First up: This weekend is the T100 & WTCS in the French Riviera. And the final IM Pro Series race before the championship races. Where is Frejus in the French Riviera you ask? How do you pronounce Frejus? Good question.

T100 Frejus (also known as: The French Riviera)

It sounds like it’s actually quite an interesting French Riviera style course — which made me slightly nervous (because the age-group Ironman events there don’t close the roads), but I gather the roads will be closed. That feels very Hayden Wilde-esque, but who knows. Can he win both??

Start lists: Men & women.

WATCH: Saturday at 7 a.m. local (women go seven minutes after the men)/1 a.m. ET/10 p.m. PT on Friday on T100 Youtube/HBO Max/Eurosport/TriathlonLive

WTCS French Riviera (interestingly, they’ve gone with the Riviera branding)

Taylor Spivey has pulled out of the T100 (but is still doing the WTCS), which means the only people doubling Saturday-Sunday now are Morgan Pearson and Hayden Wilde. (Morgan also did the Supertri in Chicago; as did Georgia TB, who is racing the T100 among her seven races in seven weekends.)

It’s a brand new WTCS course. And we do have a huge number of the top-ranked athletes, with the WTCS season getting slow to really get going. So, should be a good one.

Start lists: Men & women

WATCH: Sunday the men go at 8:45 a.m. ET/5:45 PT and the women at 10:15 a.m. ET/7:15 a.m. PT on TriathlonLive.tv

Zell-am See 70.3

And. Joanne doubted me on the Feisty Tri podcast coming out tomorrow, but Zell am-See did have a 70.3 World Champs back in 2015! It’s unclear if this course is different from that one or the same!

Either way, it’s the last of the IM Pro Series races before the championships (Men’s Nice, Women’s Kona, Marbella 70.3), so there’s a good number of big names (especially the female athletes) looking to line up points in a last hit before the big races.

Start lists: Men & women

WATCH: Sunday at 5 a.m. ET/2 a.m. PT on Outside Watch in N. America

From the races

Other than that, we had the U.S. winning Junior Pan-Am Games, the first pro spots for Kona 2026, and a sprint in Tallinn.

Results: Supertri, Tallinn 70.3, Junior PanAm Games, IM Switzerland, Challenge Samarkland

The -ish

Some of the things worth knowing about this week in our sports — or that I just think are interesting.

• It’s UTMB week! (If somehow your Instagram is not full of videos of people running around Chamonix.) We went deep on all of the UTMB acronyms on the Feist podcast and the first American ever won TDS yesterday. So things are off to a start. (Outside Run/Spotify/Instagram)

• It’s also the Diamond League Final, which they’ve set up just two weeks before the Track & Field World Champs. In case you were wondering if championship season is limited to triathlon. (Citius Mag)

• Michael Johnson was removed from BBC coverage for those world championships, because of the ongoing payments owed by his Grand Slam Track. Which is certainly a different approach than tri takes. (The Independent/Facebook)

• The PTO CEO went on The Triathlon Hour and said ‘oh, the PTO almost went out of business last year, things were really financially bad, but now we’re good.’ And, I just want to point out that some of us have said this many times over the last year, that the PTO’s financials did not make sense and they were on the brink of going out of business—and we were told explicitly this wasn’t true and we were being haters. But math can’t be a hater, it doesn’t have feelings. And math can’t go on a friendly podcast now and say ‘I was lying before about how everything was great, but now I’m not lying, things really are great.’ 😑 (Apple Podcasts)

• A new Spain location was announced for the T100 race. (World Triathlon)

• A whole bunch of Ironman news: A 70.3 is returning to Sri Lanka. Vichy is bringing back the full-distance and Vittoria is adding a 70.3 to its full race date. Happy Valley 70.3 is also going to host the N. American champs next year (and my sense is the area’s visitor bureau has been going hard). (Ironman/WTAJ)

• The rebranded Malibu Triathlon — now Zuma Beach Triathlon — is in two weeks. Gonna finally happen!

• The course maps for 70.3 Worlds have been released. And it has been pointed out to me that there is 5,800ft of elevation gain on the bike course. Which is a lot. (Ironman)

• Talbot is releasing 12 series of deep dive doc-style videos for The Feed over the next 12 weeks, but it wouldn’t be Talbot if we didn’t start with Lionel. (Youtube)

• It was also gravel tri nationals this past weekend and Gravel Worlds (which is not the same as the UCI Gravel World Championships, in case you were confused). (Slowtwitch)

• And the mountain bike world championships are starting, which are this super interesting two-week event where they’re bringing together eight disciplines. And there’s basically no information anywhere about it. (Valais 2025)

• Nike has renamed its trail team the All Conditions Racing Department and is going to make all its airflow hole apparel available to all. Also a trail supershoe. (iRunFar/Believe in the Run)

• Outdoor recreation is up, according to a report from the outdoor industry. (Outside)

• This whole ‘does running cause colon cancer’ thing really took on a life of its own. We spent Tuesday tracking down the different studies and reports. (New York Times/Outside/Instagram)

One last thing

He makes a whole bike out of chocolate.

OK, it is decided, starting next week this newsletter will hit your inbox early Thursday mornings instead of Wednesday afternoons. This is largely because our Feist women’s sports podcast and newsletter are shifting to Wednesday mornings, and so my week has to get rearranged.

I’m also doing a sprint triathlon this Sunday! Surprise! I’m not even back up to running 5K without walk breaks (and even that is a stretch) and I’m not bringing a bike (I just rented a random one and am gonna show up and roll it straight into transition), so there’s a good chance this race will take me 30 minutes longer than the last time I did a sprint tri. Which is a lot longer.

It’s because I’m flying out to the Chicago Triathlon early Saturday for a quick 36 hours to check out the Supertri race and to see how Supertri’s mass participation expansion is going. I last did the Chicago Triathlon when I was coming up in the sport (like 15 years ago) and it was then the largest Olympic-distance race in the world. So very curious to see how it is now. And also super excited to spend my weekend not catching up on sleep 🤦‍♀️

- Kelly

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The final & the first of Kona

This past weekend was the final qualifying races for Men’s Nice & Women’s Kona: Here are the full list of qualifiers men & women. (Gotta love Zach Cooper grabbing the very very last World Champs’ spot when Jesper Svensson declined in Copenhagen.) And the fields are quite stacked, as they tend to be. I will say it’s almost as if when you add more spots to a field, more people make the race more exciting and deeper and wilder. Weird.

I’m sure we’ll have much much more to say in the previews in the lead-up, but, in short:

WOMEN: Kat Matthews is certainly tired of being second at World Champs and aims to rectify that. Laura Philipp is defending champ (and even if we say Kona isn’t as much her course, she’s still been on the podium multiple times). Lucy Charles-Barclay is clearly back on form; is it 2023 Kona form? Chelsea Sodaro validated in a tough day at Kalmar, but I would never doubt that she’ll be ready come Oct. 11. Taylor Knibb has made it clear this is a focus (and watch out for a focused Taylor). Solveig Løvseth is Kona debuting and has only done two Ironmans but in both of them she ran 2:46, so. Also debuting: Julie Derron (interesting!), Holly Lawrence, Tamara Jewett (and 15 other women).

MEN: Patrick Lange has won three of the six World Championships he’s finished, which gives him a 50% win rate. Kristian Blummenfelt and Gustav Iden have each only won one, but I’d say Gustav is in much better form than the DNF in Kona last year and Blummenfelt seems to have re-rallied after whatever went south(ish) post-Paris last summer (ie. there was no Olympics this summer, so). Sam Laidlow has won one too — and we know he comes to perform when the performing is in France. Rudy Von Berg hasn’t won yet, but has been oh so close and I like his odds better in Nice (where he grew up) than in Hawaii. Magnus Ditlev would also like to move up a spot or two, and will probably have some weird bike tricks up his sleeve to do it. Marten Van Riel is injured but don’t cross him off your ‘debuts to watch’ list yet. Also debuting: Jason West. Not debuting: Leon Chevalier.

It was also the first weekend of races with the new age-graded ranking qualification system for 2026 Kona: You can see the age-graded ranked list for IM Copenhagen here and for IM Kalmar here.

By my math — if you go through and allocate slots to all the AG winners, and then hand out the rest of the “performance” spots going down the age-graded list (with no rolldowns assumed, partially because it’s not possible for me to know if/who rolled down and partially because as the first 2026 qualifying races it’s unlikely there was much rolldown) — here’s what you get:

• Kalmar: Qualifying spots split 70% men & 30% women — with a heavy representation in the men 50-54; in fact, after the winners of every AG got their spot, only two of the “performance” spots went to women ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  

• Copenhagen: Split 60% men & 40% women — it was the 30-34 women who did a lot of that shift and who took most of the women’s “performance” spots (after the AG winner allocation).

  
  Out of all the “performance” spots across both races, only two went to anyone over 65 (and those were both to the 2nd place man in the 65-69). Scrolling down to find the AG winners in the older age-groups, I would say a rough takeaway is the algorithm does not adequately reflect the 65+ efforts right now.

«This will obviously be different depending on the location & demographics; we’ll likely see the biggest change in future N. American races. But it gives you a rough idea of how the new system played out on its first weekend.»

This week’s Kona thought: It is confirmed: The algorithm that determines the age-graded rankings (and, thus, determines who gets to go to Kona 2026) is currently based on age-grouper Kona performances from 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2022. This will roll forward each year in the future. At first, I just thought it seemed kinda generally dumb to be basing qualification on things from a decade earlier — because I think we can all agree (whatever we think about how that breaks) that the sport looks very different than it did in 2016.

But the more I thought about it, the more this simply doesn’t pass a basic logic test.

Think about it this way: The algorithm is based on the top 20% of people in Kona, which mean it looks at people who already qualified under whatever system was used that year. Now, there was one system of qualifying pre-2020 and a different system post-2020. So if your argument is that the old pre-2020 system was not fair (largely to under-participated groups — women + older age-groups) and thus we needed a new system (which, take it or leave it, this is essentially what was said and why the new system was rolled out), but then you use who qualified UNDER THE OLD SYSTEM (2016-2019) to establish the math that CREATES THE NEW SYSTEM — then all you’re really doing is locking in the old model. ie. If someone had to be disproportionality good as a woman or 60+ athlete to qualify under the old system (because of participation-based proportional qualification), and then those disproportionally good athletes are now being used to establish the new benchmark… Do you see what I’m saying? It’s fundamentally statistically different than pulling from the entire pool of Ironman athletes to determine who should qualify out of that pool.

I mostly feel a third-party observer’s anthropological disinterest in how this plays out. But, I think there’s a larger point to be made — which I am not disinterested in — about how systems are created. Because they are not created in a vacuum; they reflect back the history and views of those who create them. And too often we then act as if these systems are agnostic arbiters, but they’re not. Like ‘oh well the algorithm says you’re not good enough what is there to do.’

LOL: On the Feisty Tri podcast, when we were talking about what we’re looking forward to, I said that no one wants to hear more of my thoughts on what’s happening with Kona — and Chelsea Burns said to just give her the short version. So, maybe it’s because I was getting sick, but if you want 90 unfiltered seconds of what I actually think and would tell you over drinks, then you can hear that just after the hour mark in the episode.

From the races

• IM Kalmar: Chelsea Sodaro got her validation, but it looked like a tough marathon. Katrine Græsbøll Christensen picked up her first Ironman win with a course record.

• IM Copenhagen: Finn Große-Freese also set a course record in Copenhagen, and I feel like we’re starting to get to the point where if you don’t set a course record what are we even doing. (Also, I had to copy those names to get the right types of letters.)

• XTERRA Euro Champs: Apparently the second largest XTERRA event in the world. Major shoutout to Solenne Billouin (the 3x world champ), who has moved to 70.3 racing but jumped into this race and won. Though Marta Menditto locked down the World Cup overall title because of her consistency ahead of next month’s world champs.

  • Also, apparently Tim O’Donnell raced the new XTERRA course in Ruidoso, New Mexico as an age-grouper and took fifth overall.

• Louisville 70.3: Yay Jackie Hering! Jason West! Both with fastest runs of the day.

Results: IM Kalmar, IM Copenhagen, XTERRA European Championship, Louisville 70.3, World Games — Duathlon, Challenge Gunsan, Hradec Kralove 70.3

Mark your calendars

• T100 French Riviera: Start lists are out for next weekend, and like we said there are a few athletes trying to do the T100 and the WTCS. Hayden Wilde has even said he’s going to try to win the world titles in both.

• Zell am See 70.3: And the next IM Pro Series race will have Kat Matthews and Solveig Løvseth.

The -ish

Some of the things worth knowing about this week in our sports — or that I just think are interesting.

• I don’t know why the Santara Group decided they needed to create their own triathlon world ranking system. (I mean, presumably, because they felt their athletes were not being treated fairly by the PTO’s ranking system.) But they did and it exists. (Triathlon World Rankings/Instagram)

• If you didn’t hear, USAT had to cancel the second day of the Age-Group National Championship because of massive flooding in Milwaukee. And, I get it, a championship race being canceled is rough, but it makes me lol when people have comments about whether it was the right call or not. As if USAT had any say in the matter and wasn’t told by the city/police that there was a zero percent the event was happening. (USAT/Wisconsin Examiner)

• Also been hearing more and more about what it takes to put on races (and every event has some kind of break-even number of registrations needed and for the events with more fancy overhead *cough* the break-even number is bigger). Triathlete talked to a few RDs about challenges right now. (Triathlete)

• And it sounds like there’s some dispute over why the Valencia World Cup & T100 got canceled, but now the organizer is saying it was financial (not construction-related). And I have to say it’s getting very tough for World Triathlon to find host cities that can afford to put on races (which is probably why they’re weighing a variety of ways to hand off that obligation). (Inside the Games)

• Precision is officially the title sponsor of 70.3 Worlds now (and they made a cute video to announce it). I haven’t been planning to go to Marbella but people keep trying to sell me on it. (Instagram)

• Justus Nieschlag has a kinking in his femoral arteries and is trying to decide what to do about it. (Instagram)

• Lisa Norden’s been going through IVF. (Instagram)

• Tara Dower just broke another overall FKT — beating the men’s and women’s fastest known time on the Long Trail. (Runner’s World)

• Both the men’s and women’s course records were set at the Leadville 100 (running) this weekend. David Roche broke his own, and Anne Flower took down a 31-year-old record in her first-ever 100-miler (and took second overall behind David). Given that last year David broke a 20-year-old Leadville record, I have to wonder if people are finally figuring Leadville out? (Twitter/Runner’s World)

• The One Water Race is 39 hours in as I write this and there are four teams left. Two years ago, I wrote about why it’s the hardest race you haven’t heard of. (One Water/Triathlonish)

• UTMB week is next week, and there’s some interesting tension between UTMB and the World Championships in Spain in September. (Mile & Stone)

• The formatting on Outside websites has gotten insane, but if you can get past that this article about how one woman trained for triathlon while in Antartica was interesting. (Triathlete)

• Six bikes were stolen from T1 at Ironman Copenhagen. Which, unfortunately, does happen rarely (though I feel like usually the things stolen are computers or watches). (TV2 Kosmopol)

• The L.A. Olympics are selling naming rights for venues. (Los Angeles Times)

• TrainingPeaks is adding a calculated oxidation rate for fueling insights to workouts. Which I’m super curious to test. (Training Peaks)

• First generation Wahoo computer units are having massive problems — which seems to have to do with the fact that the computers hit the number of data packets they could hold and simply reset. And, according to the email I got from Wahoo this morning, it’s not resolved yet. (DC Rainmaker)

• A multi-part series on the rise of stalking in sports. (The Athletic)

One last thing

This might be very niche, but my god people with the weighted vests. (Like maybe instead of doing banded pull-ups with a weighted vest (???) just build up to doing a non-banded pull-up without a vest. Logic.)

- Kelly

Who is qualified and who isn’t

This upcoming weekend is the final qualifier for Women’s Kona and Men’s Nice. There is one — JUST ONE! — spot up for grabs at IM Kalmar (pro women) and IM Copenhagen (pro men).

This actually makes for the kind of high stakes that leads to exciting racing, but no one seems super excited about it, oddly. Other than individual athletes. I guess we’ll see. And, as far as I know, you won’t be able to watch — so by “see” I mean scroll social media after the finish.

Kalmar

Chelsea Sodaro just needs to validate (so that doesn’t count against the one spot up for grabs). I feel like odds are the spot goes to Nikki Barlett or Marlene de Boer, but really anyone could grab it, right?

Copenhagen

There are 50 (mostly European) guys going for this one — and I know Cody Beals turned down his spot before and probably still will turn down the spot, but I’m rooting for him to have a good race anyway.

Where are things at this point in the year?

• Full Kona & Nice qualification lists to-date are at the bottom of Ironman’s pro athlete page — but TriRating has more detail

• IM Pro Series rankings are a mix right now of who has how many races — so it’ll change drastically as people get down to the end of the season and clock their five events

• And Julie Derron & Mika Noodt are currently leading the T100 standings, but those are also a bit of a mix of who has raced and who hasn’t yet (and I’m sure athletes are trying to figure out their schedules, with the last couple T100s a bit at odds with the IM & 70.3 world champs, and two of the T100s the day before WTCSs — though I understand there are at least three athletes who are going to do both the T100 and the WTCS race in the French Riviera)

3,900 age-group athletes in London

At least according to my counting of the results from the sprint, super sprint, 100km, and Olympic-distance: it was just under 4,000 amateurs across the T100 races in London this past weekend. And I really hope that’s enough to be profitable; I mean it should be. If it’s not, then there are other issues.

Plus, with the PTO based in London, they got the celebrities out in force. Or at least some of them. And, looking at the tracker over the weekend, it looked like every race organizer (Challenge, Ironman, T100, Supertri) had a relay team in the game. So that’s cute. For the record: It appears Team Supertri won.

On the pro side: the comebacks!

Lucy CB was incredibly emotional at the finish. It has to be extra special to win in front of lots of friends and family. And even though last week I said something like ‘never count Lucy out, but this isn’t really her distance,’ well. I think for everyone wondering if she’s healthy and fully returned, it’s not just that she won, it’s that she also had the fastest run time — and in a field full of good runners.

(I think it’s also a fair question if the game has risen to Taylor Knibb or if she’s in the midst of prepping for Kona and dealing with some niggles and all of that. Probably both.)

And then there’s Hayden Wilde’s return after his terrible crash earlier this year. He’s a genuinely interesting guy, who I think we’re all rooting for.

But, my absolute favorite thing out of the race was Jess Learmonth & Georgia TB’s recap.

From the rest of the races

• XTERRA Czech: I recently learned that the Xterra World Cup series has a “no jokers” rule, so every World Cup counts to your series rankings. Which is tough. But that’s partially why you get repeat winners and battles (like the Forissier brothers — with Felix pulling ahead of Arthur in the standings) and why you get the occasional one-off big names coming into individual events (like Barbara Riveros winning the women’s race). Weird fact: I also learned on last week’s podcast that the French federation wouldn’t give the 3x XTERRA world champ a pro license for the road and made her do a 70.3 as an age-grouper first.

• Lapu Lapu 70.3: There’s been some talk about drafting off the lead moto, but like I am so bored of this ongoing conversation. Like, wtf do you all want athletes to do.

• And I just learned about The World Games. Which are a REAL THING. Held every four years (right now in China) and ~4,000 athletes compete in all the sports that are not currently contested in the Olympics. This includes things that are going to make their Olympic debut (flag football), but also things that are not on the Olympic agenda (tug of war, which Taiwan is the 6x champions in) — both sports and disciplines. And under the World Tri banner, we are contesting….duathlon!

Results: T100 - London, Lapu Lapu 70.3, Rio de Janeiero 70.3, XTERRA Czech World Cup

The -ish

The rest of the news you should know about from our sports this week.

• Marten Van Riel is officially on the injured reserve list now. (Instagram)

• Jan Frodeno was going to do the OCC at UTMB, but then found out you have to, like, qualify — though I’m sure someone would have given him a spot — and now he’s gonna do it next year. (Instagram)

• No idea why a man doing a triathlon in jean shorts is the story that’s gone viral out of our sport this week, but there you are. (New York Post)

• And. This guy used his phone to film himself while racing IM Leeds (for a marketing reel for his business), and then was, I dunno, surprised to get DQ’d. (Instagram)

• And in other Instagram Ironman kerfuffles I wish I didn’t know about, people are evidently giving this woman a hard time for getting a M-dot tattoo after doing a 70.3 — which is, so very obviously, not a thing worth giving someone a hard time about. Is getting a M-dot tattoo after a full or a half something I would do? No. But there are lots of tattoos I wouldn’t get and it doesn’t matter because I’m not the one getting them. (Instagram)

• Kate Courtney broke the course record at Leadville 100 mountain bike race, and it was all over my IG. Because she came back from wrist surgery eight weeks ago, because the top two women both broke the 10-year-old record even on what was supposed to be a slow day, and because it was live streamed for the first time. And also because Kate is very very popular — which made me think of the story I wrote about her right before she won her world title, and how she told me then that she wasn’t sure sometimes why she put so much effort into Instagram. But then she would see it reach some little girl and get that girl out on bikes or make her feel like she could do stuff too. So. Instagram isn’t all terrible. Sometimes. (Instagram/espnW)

• In the world of in-the-weeds gravel stuff: There was also a lot of debate about putting drop bars on mountain bikes for the race. Which I’m just going to trust Ben about when he says it’s dumb. (Youtube)

• Also the power analysis of Pauline’s Tour de France Femmes win. (Velo)

• This is a thoroughly depressing story about how the anti-doping process failed pro cyclist Lizzy Banks — not speaking to whether it was contamination, like she says, or not; but speaking to the fact that even with a UK ruling that it was contamination, the WADA appeals and tribunal system simply does not adequately provide athletes with a fair process. I think, in short, many people just don’t realize the system errs on the side of assumed guilt and your ability to fight that assumption is almost non-existent. And, while this might not be a huge problem, it is a problem if athletes start to feel that the system has failed them. Because when people feel a system has failed, they go two directions: They either try to fix the system, or they fuck all and burn the system to the ground and you don’t know what will fill that vacuum. (See also: The world right now.) (Lizzy Banks)

• And hey: Breaking down barriers. The first woman to sign with the pro-doping Enhance Games. See: Our Q&A with the Enhanced Games founder. (SwimSwam/Triathlonish)

• An interesting survey on the state of trail running right now. ( )

• Kilian Jornet’s new project is to summit all the 14,000ft peaks in the continental U.S. (Outside Run)

• The research being conducted at Norseman continues to be cutting-edge, though I suppose it has to be. (Slowtwitch)

• The Brownlee Fitness coaching platform is now in the U.S., which I think means there’s now a U.S.-based coach (Sid) and potentially U.S. camps down the road. (Brownlee Fitness)

• U.S. Track & Field Nationals got 1.2 million viewers on NBC, and it consistently gets around those numbers on NBC—with track meets getting much much lower numbers on other platforms. And, I will never stop making this point: For all that people are super dismissive of broadcast TV, it is still the main way people watch sports. (The Sports Examiner)

• Rowdy Gaines is doubling down on the criticism of USA Swimming (leadership, not athletes). (Instagram)

• An episode worth listening to on the 1x podcast. (Spotify)

One last thing

😭 Watch the video.

We’re halfway through the season. I think probably officially. So, how’s it going? Some amazing races, some OK ones, some same problems we had at the start of the season. I’d say a solid B?

I was “off” a bunch of the last week, which was somehow not exactly relaxing, and am just catching up now. And by catching up I mean am still very behind. Solid B.

Today’s newsletter is a quick hitter, and we may be adjusting the schedule of when these hit your inbox soon (to sync better with some other things I’m working on, like our weekly women’s sports podcast), but for now, it’s still a Wednesday! B+

- Kelly

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London’s burning (for 100km)

First off: I’m pretty sure the swim is on. There’s been a lot of talk about the algae bloom at the docks closing the swim area, but it sounds like it’s been tested a bunch, reopened, and T100 sent an email out to all athletes saying things look good (enough).

Second: Word is there’s ~6,000 age-group athletes signed up for the variety of events available (100km, Olympic, sprint, super sprint, open water). I still don’t think mass participation events are a money-maker at scale, but at least people are signing up again!

Third: It really is quite the start list for the pro race, isn’t it. There have been different winners for every T100 race so far this year (Kate Waugh, Julie Derron, Taylor Knibb & Hayden Wilde, Rico Bogen, Jelle Geens) and, as of right now, all of them are racing in London.

Plus, athletes like Ashleigh Gentle, Lucy CB, Indie Lee, Mika Noodt, Sam Long & the wildcards/hot shots/contenders/whatever we’re calling them now (Leo Bergere, Jamie Riddle). And I feel like there’s an entire GB contingent stacking the start line (Jess Learmonth, Georgia TB, Holly Lawrence).

Triathlete has a pretty fully in-depth preview if you really want to go deep.

WATCH: Women go Saturday at noon in London/7 a.m. ET/4 a.m. PT & men are three hours later on HBO Max, Eurosport, Discovery+, PTO Youtube

I guess, fourth thing: Hey, the PTO is paying athletes out their year-end 2024 bonuses now. (Told you that’s what they needed to spend the new money on first.) The fact that this was breaking news made me lol, but it was pointed out to me that if it was news whenever orgs paid their invoices then it would quickly publicly sort out who pays and who doesn’t. So that’s an option.

From the races

• Norseman: Julia Skala broke the women’s course record.

• Alpe d’Huez: It looks like Alanis Siffert is quietly building a solid resume for herself, winning over Nina Derron & Jeanne Collonge. Both of these races are really about the experience though, aren’t they. And I also learned this week that Huez is an actual town in France.

Results: Norseman, Alpe d’Huez, Krakow 70.3

Mark your calendars

• We’ve had a bit of a lull and then obviously this weekend is all about T100 London and then it starts building back into big race after big race. The start lists are out for IM Kalmar (pro women only) & IM Copenhagen (pro men only) next weekend. Both have just one world champs spot up for grabs and it’s the last chance. «For age-groupers, they’re the last races for 2025 qualification and also the first races for 2026 Kona qualification. Which means it’s also the first races we’ll see the age-graded women/men breakdown in action. Shrug emoji»

The -ish

The rest of the news you should know about from our sports this week.

• Yes, a few people have messaged me about the Ironman-TriDot breakup, but I was out last week so I don’t have a lot more insight than the Slowtwitch article (which I thought did a decent job laying out the likely underlying issues and tensions between coaches & AI coaches). (Slowtwitch)

• Speaking of: I do not think AI training plans are going to be the way Strava brings in the revenue, but the CEO disagrees with me. Personally, I don’t know why Strava doesn’t market its mapping features more to its loyal users; its route mapping is the best mapping for actual running, biking, hiking, etc. (Wall Street Journal)

• USAT Age-Group Nationals is this weekend, back in Milwaukee. And along with that the inductees into this year’s USAT Hall of Fame class. (Instagram)

• It was a very weird U.S. Track & Field National Championships: A pre-meet arrest & detainment, shoving after the 200m, Shelby Houlihan back and winning her first post-burrito national title, a 16-year-old running 1:42 in the 800m to surprise win, and then a whole bunch of other upsets. Truly a mystery why they can’t make track a mainstream pro sport. (Citius Mag/New York Times/The Guardian/Runner’s World/Running Magazine Canada)

• Speaking of: Where did all the pro track meets in America go? (Letsrun)

• It was also a slightly weird Swimming World Championship, only mostly in the sense that Michael Phelps & Ryan Lochte started sharing memes about the death of U.S. Swimming. (Washington Post)

• Tour de France Femmes was epic, too. Just in case you somehow missed the fact that France went crazy and Pauline Ferrand-Prevot won the Tour, Paris-Roubaix, and Olympic mountain bike gold all in one year. (The Guardian)

• BTW, Maya Kingma was racing in the TDFF — a nice break (?) from the World Tri circuit — and says it was/is wildly different from being a pro triathlete. Just fyi. (Tri247)

• Gwen Jorgensen had surgery on her foot. (Instagram)

• This is a cute clip of the U.S. Olympic relay team athletes thanking their coaches a year ago in Paris. (Instagram)

• Triathlon Denmark sent an official letter about the World Triathlon election corruption stuff. (The Inquisitor/Triathlonish)

• New Zealand will host the 2028 World Triathlon champs. In case you weren’t keeping track: 2025 is Wollogong, Australia; 2026 is Pontevedra, Spain; and bidding is still open for 2027 — it wasn’t just my imagination that we skipped a year there. (World Triathlon)

• Alistair Brownlee & Ruth Astle are opening a youth triathlon academy. And, honestly, our Feisty Tri episode with Ruth (which didn’t touch on this topic) was one of my favorites so far this year. (BBC/Spotify)

• And this question came up on this week’s Feisty Tri pod (coming out Friday): Do you name your bikes? Joanne Murphy does; Katie Zaferes & I do not. (Triathlete)

• This is an interesting review on female (mostly Masters) Ironman triathletes. (Frontiers in Sports & Active Living)

• And this essay best summed up nearly all of my issues with sex testing in sports: “World Athletics’ mandatory genetic test for women athletes is misguided. I should know – I discovered the relevant gene in 1990.” Over the weekend, I was thinking about how all these scientists who worked on gene testing spoke out the last time the IOC instituted sex testing for female athletes and launched a campaign to explain that’s not how sex differences or genetics work and to get it overturned, and I was thinking ‘are those scientists who worked on those tests still alive, maybe that’s why they couldn’t stop it this time, because that was 30 years ago and they’ve died.’ And then I saw this essay and I realized nope, they’re just back fighting the same battles they thought were over again. (The Conversation)

One last thing

Been all about Dominique’s photos and Crew Diaries from France.

All, I am off for the next few days, so sending this out and then closing the computer (more or less). Been spending lots and lots of my brain and time on sports lately. Women’s sports! Ball sports! All the sports! And if you want one of our ‘it’s not a moment, it’s a movement’ shirts, they’re 40% off right now in honor of the Femmes.

- Kelly

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The PTO’s got (more?) money

Every now and then I think about this sentence in my original article about the PTO’s launch way back in 2019:

“The space is littered with carcasses of people who threw just a little bit of money at it,” Adamo said.

But this time is for real, he said. Because this time — and this is a big difference — they have a lot of money.

And that was roughly $100 million ago.

The PTO announced this week that they have closed another round of investment funding (a Series C, evidently), led by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund. We mentioned this was in the works a few weeks ago, but it sounds like it ultimately was even more money than originally rumored: Coming in around $50 million. That, as best I can tell, would put the total amount of money people have given them at ~$100-110 million.

What they say they’re going to spend this new money on: “continued international growth, innovation in race formats, and long-term athlete and fan engagement.”

What they’re going to have to first spend the new money on: paying existing debts — as of a week ago, athletes still had not been paid out 2024 year-end bonuses.

This is, fundamentally, one of the simple math problems with taking on more and more and more investment. It’s not that investment can’t help fuel massive growth. Afterall, most of us don’t have the money to just fund a new global business venture out of our own pockets. But, if you aren’t able to then generate enough cash flow through your own profitability and revenue, then you don’t have control over what the money is already committed to. Your obligations start to outpace your income. And then taking on more and more investor rounds to meet those obligations means you carry those liabilities over to your next round of funding and to the next, and then it becomes a kind of pyramid scheme (meant in the nicest way possible!) that you just have to keep getting new rounds of funding for in order to pay all the people you previously promised returns to.

Plus, I think Grand Slam Track is learning right now just how rough it can be when you’ve already spent the money before the check actually hits your bank account.

When I wrote before about what exactly “athlete-owned” meant for the PTO and the back-of-the-napkin math of their balance sheets, I deliberately lowball estimated their yearly expenses at $10-12 million/yr. At the time, someone texted me in response to say that the investor pitch decks the PTO was using actually listed their burn rate at closer to $17 million/yr. And, well, $50 million also disappears real fast if you’re spending $17 million every year.

I like the PTO. I like watching the races. I like what they’re doing to push the pro side of the sport forward. I think it’s an absolutely wild time to be a professional triathlete right now.

But that doesn’t mean the math adds up.

(For the record: I’m not just a hater on all race companies. I think the Supertri business model, while very similar and aiming for a similar valuation ultimately, has some fundamental key differences. And I think the Supertri bid to raise a first round of capital right now and grow to ~20 mass participation events in N. America makes a lot more sense within the confines of what they’re trying to do (ie. already making tri exciting to watch) and how they’re structured (ie. already tying the pro races to existing participation bases). Now are there 20 events worth buying in N. America? Even the Supertri CEO will tell you ‘no.’ So, what they do next and with that money will probably make or break their growth plans.)

From the races

• Supertri Toronto: Sure, sure, no one was surprised when Alex Yee won, but we did all have to learn who Jolien Vermeylen is, because she managed to beat some big names in the women’s field. A new race and new venue too, as part of the above discussed plan.

• IM Leeds: Sam Laidlow didn’t just validate did he. Guess that means he’s really back in form.

• Boise 70.3: Paula Findlay looked good, and everyone was happy for Jodie Stimpson. And also this is the second race in a row people are really noticing that having men mix in with the front of the women’s race is not awesome (though I do have to say that a lot of us noticed this a lot of times before, too).

Results: Supertri Toronto, IM Leeds, Boise 70.3

Not much racing coming up this weekend — a bit of a lull before it really heats up — but there is the historic Alpe d’Huez Triathlon and Krakow 70.3.

The -ish

The rest of the news you should know about from our sports this week.

• I have a lot of thoughts about the dad who was arrested during IM Lake Placid for leaving his 9-year-old in VIP while he raced. Mostly, I don’t think he should have been arrested — like, OK, make him stop, sure, but arrests are a big deal and ‘child endangerment’ is a charge that follows you and has long-lasting repercussions. Secondly, I thought it just didn’t make sense that someone from New York didn’t have anybody there he knew and could say ‘hey, can you just check in on my kid during the day.’ And, turns out — while a lot of this interview with the dad sounds like every argument you’ve ever had with your partner where you keep saying ‘you did WHAT exactly??’ — there was definitely just some misunderstandings and volunteers not knowing what other volunteers were doing. (Adirondack Daily Enterprise/Youtube)

• Speaking of: I’d love to see childcare at Ironmans. Yes, I know it requires contracting or partnering with a licensed childcare provider, but: Anything is possible.

• Chelsea Sodaro is also putting on a re-imagined fundraising event for For All Mothers+ to do things like provide childcare and lactation support and grants. (Unlocking Yes)

• There’s a new 70.3 in Omaha. To go with the new one in Dallas and Mexico, and Boise returning. (Endurance Sportswire)

• On the Road HP, which I thought was just a content producer, appears to be signing sponsorship deals with some of the LA2028 up-and-coming hopefuls. (Instagram)

• DT Swiss is issuing a recall for a number of their wheels. (Cycling Weekly)

• Triathlete shared the data from a reader survey last month, which was kind of interesting because the people who read Triathlete are definitely not the same as all people who do a triathlon. (Triathlete)

• This upcoming weekend is, in no particular order: Tour de France Femmes, U.S. Track & Field National Champs, Katie Ledecky v. Summer McIntosh in the 800m at the world championships, and also the CrossFit Games. (Escape Collective/Citius Mag/The Guardian/CrossFit)

• You know I’m all about the BTS Crew Diaries at the Tour and the fits, of course. (Instagram)

• And this past weekend was, evidently, the Lumberjack World Championships. Which sent me down a hole, which culminated in watching videos of how people train for log rolling. (NPR/Instagram)

• There is a marathon being held in a zinc mine, 4,300 feet below the Earth’s surface. (Outside)

• A 70-year-old woman ran a 6:33 mile for the age-group world record. And a 60-year-old ran a 5:18. And an 80-year-old man ran a 6:38, which was just a UK record not a world record, so pshaw. (Athletics Weekly/Twitter)

• Should the L.A. Olympics be canceled? (San Francisco Chronicle)

• And sigh, I’m not even going to get into it today, because I’ve written about it a lot before, but the US Olympic & Paralympic Committee banning trans athletes is not even how sports policy works — ie. it generally works at a sport level, not a country or President decides random shit level. And World Athletics re-instituting genetic sex testing for women also wasn’t a good idea when we did it from 1968-1999 and it isn’t a good idea now and there was a reason even the scientists who created the test they used before were like ‘whoa, no, this is not how genetics testing works.’ And, ugh, a dead rat fell from the sky into my backyard the other day and it’s hard not to see things as just very goddamn bleak. (Triathlonish/NBC/BBC/Scientific American)

One last thing

People say they want relatable content.

We’ve got a whole bunch of things today — and this might be the most full-on Kelly newsletter in awhile. (Like sometimes I tone it down for you all, not today!) And, yes, there was a typo in the subject line of last week’s email, but you can’t fix it once it goes out, so that’s a shame. On the upside, it made you look.

I will also say we talk about a bunch of these topics on this upcoming Friday’s Feisty Tri podcast with Ruth Astle. Who agrees with me on quite a few points.

- Kelly

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Lessons from Lake Placid

• I saw someone ask which performance was more impressive: Dr. Matt’s win or Solveig’s? And, like, look objectively the answer is Solveig’s. She broke the course record there — which was no joke, Sarah True had it before — by 17 MINUTES. And as much as Dr. Matt is one of my mom’s favorites, and he’s very good and a lovely human, Solveig has also clearly established herself as a top tier world champs contender now in just her second Ironman ever (though Kona will be very different conditions). So, come on, don’t ask stupid questions.

• I’d also like to point out the only women’s run faster than her 2:46 — and it is a not fast course at Placid — was Tamara Jewett’s 2:40 (which was only 13 seconds slower than Dr. Matt ran and so would have been nice to see some of on the broadcast but whatareyagonnado).

• My understanding is the top four in both the men’s and women’s races broke the previous course records?

• We also really shouldn’t have pro men mixing in with the front of the women’s field…

• Dr. Matt is going to have to figure out his cramping out of the swim issue eventually. Obviously, it didn’t hold him back here or in Cairns, but will at a world level — so fingers crossed for him.

• And I adored Trevor Foley going out of T2 at try-or-die speed down that first hill. It turned out to be almost die, but sometimes you have to try.

• Overall, very very rainy (which 1000% messes with your ability to fuel and stay warm, in my experience at Placid). And lots of solid debuts (Jason West, Holly Lawrence). And the women’s spots rolled deep — like we mentioned they would last week — not because “omg anyone can get a spot,” as it sounds like some of the attitude was, but because so many of the best women are racing so frequently now. If I wanted to, I could reframe that in a way that makes it sound like the only reason the spots didn’t roll deep in the men’s field is because there were a bunch of men who weren’t good enough to have a spot already. I’m not saying I would say that, I’m just saying I could because it’s all in how you look at it.

Is Anne Haug’s retirement announcement the most German announcement ever

Ahhhh, speaking of contenders.

Anne Haug has finally come out to explain her DNF at IM Vitoria. And her explanation is: She’s retiring.

If you read the interview she gave in Germany about it (and maybe something is lost in translation) she basically says that once she didn’t have it mentally anymore, she had promised herself she would quit the sport. If she quit a race, then it was all over because she was done and there was no going back.

Which is, in some ways, brutal. And also probably one of many reasons I was never going to be a world champion or world record holder.

Race Ranger data is public….now what?

And. I still feel deeply ambivalent about this, but here it is, it’s out there, you can pour through the Roth Race Ranger data if you want.

The reason I feel ambivalent is because everyone keeps saying it’ll make the sport fairer and all I can think is: How?

The only end result of making data public is that people can then publicly have opinions about which athletes did or didn’t draft, and how much. Which, OK, sure. But those opinions may or may not be accurate — there’s a whole bunch of stuff about how the data can show zones or areas where it might pick up riders being lapped or accordion-ing on turns or a whole bunch of other circumstances — and even if those opinions are accurate, what’s the end goal? Draft policing via Slowtwitch forum? Public shaming? How does that make racing fairer? By deterring potential drafters through the use of internet pile-ons? As far as I can tell leaving policing to the internet hasn’t gone great so far, generally speaking.

In which I try to explain the World Tri scandal as simply as possible

Lastly. Some background to start.

tl;dr: Last World Tri election, in the fall, this one presidential candidate (or at least his representative. allegedly.) (who was kinda the pre-ordained pick of the previous President, I think) basically went around and told the other candidates “drop out and support me and I’ll make you a VP.” They also then told everyone: Here’s who we would like you to vote for — and wrote it down on a list, which some less smart World Tri reps physically printed up (?) and took with them to the vote.

A couple of those candidates didn’t take the deal. And one of them instead filed a complaint. She had WhatsApp messages and stuff documenting all of this — you can read them in this long-ish explanation of the whole thing.

And then there were complaints filed and counter-complaints. And this week the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled that the one guy who orchestrated all this should get a warning. (It was originally going to be a suspension.)

It’s all definitely shady, but also not that shady, because here are my questions about the whole thing:

• It’s not illegal to tell people who you want them to vote for. That’s literally what election slates are. The Republican Party can be like: Here’s our endorsed slate of candidates. Hell, I could make a Kelly Thinks You Should Vote For These People Or She’ll Be Upset slate or coalition. (Of course, this is why votes shouldn’t be public, because then people can vote the slate or not, up to them.)

• It’s also not illegal to change out committees and VPs once you come into power. That’s kinda standard, based on what you want to do/happen/priorities/etc.

• It’s also not illegal to make coalitions or groups in an election or organization.

Obviously, there comes a point where a line is crossed, if it’s explicitly quid pro quo for votes, or if you clear out all the competent people and all the people in non-political roles, or if you threaten, and so on.

But. I keep thinking: Well if the other candidates didn’t want to drop out and take the deal for vice president, then they could have instead formed their own coalition. They could have fielded a counter Presidential candidate and gone around and told everyone ‘look, we’ve got the votes, we can take out the establishment, vote with us.’ That’s how that works. But they didn’t.

So now the dude in power can put who he wants on committees. Because you all didn’t organize or negotiate effectively. And whose fault is that really.

There’s a reason the saying is ‘if you come for the king you best not miss’ and not ‘if you come for the king, it’s cool, he’ll still totally put you on his committees.’

From the races

• World Triathlon Para Series - Montreal: Lauren Parker just keeps winning in the WC division, the French men swept the PTS4, and Canadian Stefan Daniel won at home.

• Americas Cup: Interestingly, Morgan Pearson raced the Americas Cup in Montreal and took second.

Results: IM Lake Placid, Ecuador 70.3, World Tri Para Series - Montreal, World Tri Americas Cup - Montreal

Mark your calendars

• IM Leeds: Sam Laidlow has to validate this weekend. Full start list here.

• Boise 70.3: (pronounced “boys-ee” for the Europeans) Paula Findlay, Jeannie Metzler, Jackson Laundry, plus Trevor Foley trying to make the turnaround. Full start lists here.

• T100 London lists are out. (Give Lydia Russell a wildcard!)

The -ish

Some of the things worth knowing about this week in our sports — or that I just think are interesting.

• There’s a new El Salvador 70.3 and one in Dallas. (Ironman)

• Vince Luis tore his calf at Roth. Gotta stay on top of the injured reserve list. (Instagram)

• Fun story about Solveig Loevseth’s shoelaces at Placid and the Norwegian optimization. (Triathlete)

• And the kind of fun stories I enjoy out of the Tour: How do the leaders get custom yellow bikes overnight? (Velo)

• It was the fastest time up Mont Ventoux. Alaphilippe dislocated his shoulder and popped it back in. Van der Poel had pneumonia (oops!). And people keep trying to convince me I just don’t understand how not boring the Grand Tours are, and, well, you know how I know it’s boring because I used to watch every single day and I did a lot of fast-forwarding, so. (Instagram/Cycling Weekly/NBS)

• How hard is it for an amateur to ride the entire route? (Escape Collective)

• And the calories burned and consumed in a 100-mile running race. (Outside)

• The Tour de France Femmes starts on Saturday and Demi Vollering is still not happy about how last year went down. (Escape Collective/Facebook)

• Ruth Chepngetich, the world record holder in the marathon, tested positive for Hydrochlorothiazide (a diuretic used as a masking agent) and I don’t have a lot to add but I think Alison covered it all at . (Fast Women)

• The Swimming World Championships are happening right now, but you want to mark Aug. 2 for the Summer McIntosh v. Katie Ledecky in the 800m. (SwimSwam)

• A good Hoka ad — with Grace Norman in it. (Youtube)

• The Crossfit Games champ raced this Youtube influencer (who is doing a whole series of tackling physical challenges in his 40s) at a 70.3. And I just enjoy that Ironman commented on the Youtube video. (Youtube)

• Do dads know how to RSVP? I mean, you do, so if you’re not it’s not because you don’t know how. Here’s a good test of mental load: When you leave the house, do you have to unload a whole bunch of information on your partner that they don’t have and need to know or do you just…leave? How about when they leave the house, do they have to tell you a whole bunch of details about things? There’s your answer. ()

• “I followed a life coach on Instagram and now my algorithm thinks I’m a men’s rights activist with a juicing problem.” ( )

One last thing

Bet you never thought about the podium beer shower prep that goes in.

All-sporters, I have been gradually working my way back from movement to exercise to almost workouts. It’s not that the TrainingPeaks & Strava charts aren’t going in the correct upwards direction and at the correct (steady non-injury-inducing) rate; it’s just that they’re working out of a very deep hole and it’s a long long way from here to where I want to be. I think all the vaguely generic bullshit people toss in the direction of pregnancy masked how deep a fitness hole I had dug. Oops.

Thank goodness for my unfounded self-confidence, without it I can see how people struggle.

Also back at home for a few weeks right now before more events later this summer — sign up for the women’s performance workshop at USAT Age-Group Nationals. Which means I have more time right now to not train and spend on tri gossip. You’re welcome.

- Kelly

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This week’s random (100% not going to happen) rumor: A 100km triathlon at the Olympics

Back when I was a local news reporter I had an often-used rule: Whenever someone was saying stuff that contradicted all available evidence, you had to ask: Are they lying to you or are they lying to themselves? Because if someone is lying to themselves there’s really not much you can do about it.

To that end, I can’t speak to whether or not the T100 executives really believe they’re going to bring a 100km triathlon to the Olympics. But I can say the chances of it happening are slim to none.

I’m not just randomly saying this on Instagram, I actually asked around to people who are involved at that Olympic level. And the responses were all: “… what?!”

That’s because:

• There’s a 10,500 athlete cap for the Olympics > this is why they’ve been adding more medal events for TV (relays, team competitions) without adding athletes

• Adding additional events also requires a process by which the Olympic Programme Commission makes recommendations > the current goals of that programme are to attract youth, stay cost-effective and relevant, etc — which, generally, means shorter things not longer things

• T100 thinks they’re aiming for 2032 in Australia, and the local organizers do get some sway and ability to pick a couple of sports themselves — hence, breakdancing in Paris and flag football in L.A. — but this infers that the T100 will still be around and funding this by 2032

There is something to the idea that another goal of the IOC right now is more mass participation events, like the marathon organizers held in Paris, and so there’s been a talking point about how adding a 100km triathlon would add that participation element. But, well: If you wanted to make a mass participation triathlon in conjunction with the Olympics, you could just do it at the already well-known and established existing Olympic distance…

I think the bigger question here is: Why is World Triathlon entertaining this almost certainly pretend idea? And my guess is the answer is money.

Here’s what is worth reading out of these meetings: The World Triathlon report from Deloitte on the financial challenges and opportunities for triathlon, and what World Tri needs to focus on strategy-wise in the coming years. (Which, I’m guessing, is where they ended up at the “strategic partnerships” point.)

A sample blurb from the section about the U.S. market:

The U.S. is home to one of the few major national federations that operates on a fully sustainable business model based entirely on private funding. While this model offers flexibility and independence, it also means that USA Triathlon tends to avoid hosting elite-level races. These events are often not profitable, and the high standards and logistical requirements make them a significant financial undertaking. As a result, the sport’s full potential remains underutilised—particularly in the lead-up to LA28, where key opportunities to harness global momentum and engage a commercially powerful market have been missed. The U.S. remains a strategic market not only for its demographic and cultural relevance but also for its advanced stage of commercialisation.

And age-grading is going...OK?

We’ve now had two weekend of 70.3s using the new age-graded qualifying system for 2026 70.3 Worlds. (Remember: 70.3 Worlds spots are evenly split into two separate pools for men and women.)

You can now see the age-graded times and rankings in the Ironman app. When you go to look at the results for a race, there’s an option now for the age-graded men’s rankings and age-graded women’s (after the race is over).

For an example, here: Musselman 70.3 women & men + Jonkoping 70.3 women & men

To figure out how the spots actually got awarded: You have to count out all the 1st places in their age groups, and then see how many spots are left after that, and then count down that many spots on the list (outside of the age-group winners). This, however, assumes no rolldown on the podium spots (just to understand a baseline). At the actual award ceremony, I believe they do all the age-group winners and podium rolldowns first, and then call out the remaining “performance pool” spots going down the rankings.

If you go through those steps — just to see how it shakes out now — you’ll see that at Musselman, for example, it went to 7th in the 30-34 women’s age-group and 6th in the 35-39 & 40-44. At Jonkoping, it went deep on the 55-59 and 60-64 men. No idea why.

Word is: It’s kinda fun at the actual awards ceremony because it jumps all over the age groups as the spots go down the list, and there are at least some athletes who had no idea they’d get a spot.

The first race for 2026 Kona: For age-groupers is Ironman Kalmar on Aug. 16 and Copenhagen on Aug. 17 (even though yes, those are also the last 2025 qualifying races). Fun fact: At Kalmar, there are 65 spots for 2025 Men’s Nice and 20 spots for 2025 Women’s Kona + 40 total spots for 2026 Men & Women’s Kona. So, yeah, guess which of those things is going to be “easiest” to get.

Validation still TK

With Anne Haug pulling out of IM Vitoria this past weekend 10km into the run, that now leaves three previous world champions who still need to validate for World Champs this fall:

• Anne Haug - presumably going for Kalmar now

• Chelsea Sodaro - going for Kalmar now after a run injury

• Sam Laidlow - now on the list for Leeds next weekend

As always: Trirating has the complete list of who’s qualified for world champs. Another fun fact: 14 of the women lined up for IM Lake Placid this weekend already have their Kona spot + there are still four Kona spots up for grabs.

From the races

• WTCS Hamburg: Is Matt Hauser peaking a year too late or right on time? I bet he’s spending a lot of time thinking about that. Between his win (which now makes all firsts and seconds at WTCSs this year) and then his totally nutty final leg on the relay (to win over the French team) it looks like the Australians are back on top. I will also never not think it’s crazy that Sophie Linn additionally has, like, a regular full-time product job for Hammerhead. I also will never stop feeling like it’s just one French athlete after another — this week it was Leonie Periault.

• IM Vitoria: I think was the other surprise but not a surprise of the weekend. Julie Derron won by 38 minutes in her full-distance debut — though Anne Haug dropped out 10km into the run (no word yet as to why, though we presume it was the run niggle she had earlier this year), Julie was ahead of Anne by over ten minutes at T2

• Swansea 70.3: And completely not a surprise? Kat Matthews and Harry Palmer repeated their wins. And Kat is back on the top of the IM Pro Series. (Jackie Hering could jump back ahead after Placid this weekend, but Kat’s definitely playing a long game here.)

Results: Swansea 70.3, IM Vitoria, WTCS Hamburg, World Tri Mixed Relay World Championship, XTERRA World Cup - Quebec

Mark your calendars

• IM Lake Placid: My pick’s are Sarah True (always) and either Leon Chevalier or Dr. Matt. But the start list has a lot of interesting names. Jackie and Danielle Lewis will meet up again. So will Trevor Foley and Dr. Matt and Matt Hanson. I know everyone is curious about Holly Lawrence’s full-Ironman debut and Kona bid, and curious if Solveig Lovseth is actually going to start. And if Braden Currie is back. We’re also all curious if Cam Wurf has finally called a break (since he withdrew).

  • WATCH: Sunday 6 a.m. ET/3 a.m. PT on Outside Watch in N. America and Ironman Youtube or proseries.ironman.com everywhere else

The -ish

Some of the things worth knowing about this week in our sports — or that I just think are interesting.

• Slowtwitch is doing a whole series about being a pro, starting with the endless debate of ‘is it too easy to get a pro license.’ To which David Tilbury-Davis had the most correct response: “Out of curiosity… why does it matter?” (For the record, any issues are not about the ease or difficulty with which one gets an elite license, but are rather about the lack of tiered racing at the long-course elite level. And also USAT added an additional criteria option for elite qualification during the pandemic, which involves scoring tables and an algorithm — and which made sense during the pandemic, but is now the only criteria that’s significantly easier to achieve than the other criteria IMO.) (Slowtwitch/USAT)

• T100’s new Australia 100km age-group race is sold out at 1,500 entries. You can still enter the Olympic-distance.

• If you had been wondering what Chris McCormack was up to these days, the answer is leading global strategy for the One Hundred Endurance Trail World Championships. Which is, as I have now learned, a race organizer seeking to crown “the undisputed world champion of ultrarunning” by creating another world series of ultrarunning to add to the disputes. (MACCA/One Hundred)

• I think it’s hard to argue against Katie Schide being the undisputed best in the world right now, after taking down *another* major course record at Hardrock. (Outside Run)

• An 80-year-old became the oldest finisher of Badwater 135. (GearJunkie)

• A 60-year-old woman died six miles into Hardrock; it’s not known yet what happened. A man died during the swim portion of Muncie 70.3. And a runner was hit by a car and killed during the Ragnar, overnight running relay, outside of Seattle. (Detroit Free Press/MSN/Slowtwitch)

• Gordon Ramsay did Luxembourg 70.3 in just under seven hours. (Endurance Sportswire)

• This is a reasonably well-thought-through discussion on the good and bad of the growth of trail running. (UltraSignup)

• Tour de France Hommes has been kinda chaotic, right. And good for Ben Healy and his dog. (The Gaurdian/Cycling Weekly/Instagram)

• The Aquatic World Championships are currently happening right now, too, in Singapore — which includes diving and water polo, as well as swimming. But the open water event has already been rescheduled twice because of water quality. (SwimSwam)

• Front Office Sports did a good pretty comprehensive dive into all the money problems the new track leagues are having. My favorite detail: Gabby Thomas’ comment on a Grand Slam Track Tiktok: ‘that’s dope, please pay me.’ (Front Office Sports)

• The L.A. Olympics schedule was announced and women’s triathlon will be the first medal of the Games. (LA Times/World Triathlon)

• Marion Jones was on the Hit Play Not Pause podcast. Lauren Brandon came on the Feisty Tri pod and told us all about the joy of retirement. And we went deep last week on The Feist women’s sports pod about Ironman qualification (and boxing) and we talk all about all the new women’s sports leagues on tomorrow’s episode. (Spotify/Apple Podcasts/Youtube)

• Youth sports are a $40 billion industry, even though we all agree the industry is total bullshit, right. I also once read that the cardboard box industry is bigger than the movie industry in terms of revenue (and it’s true, I looked it up), and I can never stop thinking about that. (New York Times)

One last thing

Ashley Gruber’s photos from the Tour are my favorite thing about the Tour.

Three years ago, I raced Challenge Roth. I had decided to do it as part of coverage for Triathlete and then by the time the race rolled around I was pretty sure I was going to quit my job. But I thought, I dunno, doing an iron-distance race would help me decide?? And when I got to Solarer Berg and the crowds were screaming about how amazing I was, I started to cry. “I *am* amazing.” I took three more solo vacation days in Munich (which was an odd choice), but I think the quitting decision was probably done at that point.

It’s a weird summer right now. Things are bad here, in the U.S., in California, in Texas. Really bad. They’re going to get worse. Just factually. If they aren’t bad for you yet, personally, on an individual level, they will be. Sorry. And there’s only so many times you can look for the helpers and see the positives. So, I’m glad people had fun in Roth and at races and life goes on. But it’s a weird summer and not in a good way.

- Kelly

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A record-less Roth

For the first time in a few years, there were no world records set in Roth. But aren’t you really there for the vibes anyway.

For the first time ever, Roth was non-wetsuit. (Crazy, because the water is plenty warm already during all the other years when they manage to drag the thermometer around to find a cold spot.) That has to have had an effect on times. I would argue Race Ranger data also had an effect; the whole spectacle thing about releasing the pro data had to have athletes hesitate just a little bit before pushing the edges of the draft zone. Even if just subconsciously. Mostly, though, probably the fields were slightly down from the last few years, and that had an effect on the final times.

Not that it matters much. Laura Philipp and Sam Laidlow still won. Grace Thek took second in her first iron-distance. Vincent Luis took fourth in his debut. Matt Hanson ran a 2:28:03. Good for them.

Sid still had a massive sendoff. People cried.

And we still didn’t get that pro athlete Race Ranger data released, despite the staged — it was staged, right? — announcement during the pro meeting. Turns out they maybe hadn’t thought through the obvious answers to the question ‘why wouldn’t you release the data.’ For example: What do you do about the inevitable internet pile-on to the worst offenders, without context? Do you retract names, some or all? Did every pro agree, are there privacy issues, was it in their contract? Maybe Roth will release it eventually, maybe not, I’m not actually super worked up about it either way, I just think it’s funny.

Two more questions people on the internets had:

Why did the winners at Challenge Roth have a higher PTO score in the rankings than those from Ironman Frankfurt? Because Roth is a “platinum” race in the PTO scoring system, and Frankfurt was only a “gold” race — per an agreement reached with the PTO about the points system.

Why was the Ironman CEO at Roth? Because these guys go to lots of these events. That’s part of the job. I saw Michael d’Hulst (the Supertri head) at the Olympic test event; I see Sam Renouf (the PTO head) at almost everything. The UTMB owner was at Western States last week. In the VIP room at Nice I picked up a left-behind nametag from a sheikh from one of the major Middle East funds. That’s how this work. And to Scott DeRue’s credit, he’s also been on a ‘getting to understand triathlon’ tour for the last year. Now why did you hear about this one? Because they wanted you to. For the Slowtwitchers, who think they figured out some massive conspiracy because investor Jesse Du Bey was also there, I’d like to point out: The only reason you know this is because of a photo Scott posted to HIS OWN INSTAGRAM. Like, I don’t think he’s the most forward-thinking businessman in the world, but he’s not an idiot. If he didn’t want you to know he was in Roth, he wouldn’t have posted it to social media. He wants you to know he was there. Duh.

This week’s thought about Kona (qualification)

And now that triathletes have gotten out their calculators and started being triathletes about the new Ironman world champs qualification system, a few people have messaged me shocked (SHOCKED!) to realize that a few more women than men would have qualified at IM Texas last year under this system and IM Wisconsin would have ~43% women’s spots.

Can you believe it?!

Yes, I can. We told you that would happen. Bianca’s analysis showed that would happen. So did others’ analysis. That was part of the whole point about how participation-based qualification sucked balls for American women.

And, also, no, this is not shocking. Or wild. This is a direct result of Title IX and a larger cohort of competitive women in N. America. It’s not that they’re automatically the best on an individual case-by-case basis — that’d probably be German or British women — but there’s a lot of them and they’re competitive enough, so they will fill out a performance-based algorithm. That also combines with a larger quantity of OK guys in the U.S. who sign up for triathlon in bigger numbers, in line with the attitude of mass marathon completion here. There’s a reason N. American women were so pissed about “proportionality.” They were being doubly penalized.

We told you that.

Here’s the thing: I know mostly everyone was very excited about how much better this system is, and it is better to award world championship spots by performance than by participation. And it will result in about ~7% more women in Kona and a few dozen more older athletes, and a few fewer 40-something men. But. It’s not going result in that many differences in the end (others agree) because if you accept the premise of how it’s constructed then they mostly got it right before and they’ll mostly get it right now.

The thing is the system is still fundamentally based on two sets of assumptions: 1. that an amateur semi-pro world championship for prime-of-life ages isn’t a little bit absurd, and 2. that the women don’t inherently deserve their own world championship race and stage and pool of slots because they are their own race.

And, I simply, on a basic level, don’t accept those assumptions. *shrug emoji*

I get the sense I’m supposed to be on board by now (like, why am I still talking about women, that’s so three years ago), or that some people believe if it’s just explained at me more then I’ll understand why they’re right. But if, on a basic level, we don’t hold the same set of values, then what is there to say? There’s no amount of times you can call inequality “equal opportunity” where I’ll stop thinking it’s bullshit. It’s not like 23 is the magic number where I’ll suddenly change my value structure and system of beliefs.

Sara also says she asked ChatGPT if there are any other sports where they use an age-graded or algorithm system to qualify to a world championship, and ChatGPT told her that’s not how sports work and qualification has to be head-to-head, and that the only exception was Ironman. And I took her word for it, because I also don’t believe in using AI.

From the races

• Jonkoping (pronounced Yen-che-ping, for real) 70.3: The controversy of the week. Lena Meissner and Caroline Pohle sprinted for the finish at the European 70.3 Champs — and, IMO, they just sorta ran into each other and stumbled as they came up the ramp to the line. Lena was originally declared the winner, but after a protest was filed she was relegated to second for “blocking.” And I didn’t know blocking was a penalty one could get on the run in Ironman. I also think, through no fault of Caro’s, that most people are kinda like: Eh, it was messy on both sides.

  • Which has now raised the question: Has there ever been a tie in an Ironman brand race? Not that I’m aware of…

  • Lots of people have also been complaining about how all these officiating issues lately are what’s stopping us from being a ‘real’ sport. To which I say: Are you kidding? Have you watched ‘real’ sports lately? Half of the point is to argue about refs’ calls.

Results: Challenge Roth, Sweden 70.3, World Triathlon - Tizzy World Cup

Mark your calendars

• WTCS Hamburg & the Mixed Relay World Championships: We’re back on the WTCS circuit with a banger. Cassandre Beaugrand, Beth Potter, Gwen back where she won 10 years ago, Dorian Coninx. Start lists here.

  • WATCH: On Triathlonlive.tv — men’s race on Saturday at 10:30 a.m. ET/7:30 a.m. PT and the women follow at 12:40 p.m. ET/9:40 a.m. PT. And the relay world champs are on Sunday at 7:50 a.m. ET/4:50 a.m. PT

• Swansea 70.3: The next in the IM Pro Series. Kat is probably going to take the series lead after this, right? Start lists here.

  • WATCH: On Outside Watch in N. American and on Ironman Youtube, DAZN, proseries.ironman.com globally — Sunday at 1:15 a.m. ET/Saturday 10:15 p.m. PT

• IM Vitoria: Women’s pro only; shaped up to be an interesting start list with Anne Haug finally back, Julie Derron making her full-distance debut, and Marjolaine Pierre looking for a Kona spot

• The start list for IM Lake Placid was also released (yeah Sarah True quietly sneaking on there), and if you look at the pro schedule and who still needs to validate (Sam Laidlow, Chelsea Sodaro) then the last options are going to be Kalmar for Chelsea and either Sam’s already on the Leeds start list in two weeks or he’ll have to do Copenhagen in August…

The -ish

Some of the things worth knowing about this week in our sports — or that I just think are interesting.

• Buried in the spectacle about the Race Ranger data eventually being released was an announcement that Race Ranger is also trialing an app for officials, which can be used to notify other officials and commentators when a penalty has been given. Ultimately, the goal is for live data to be shared on the app, too. (World Triathlon)

• Forgot to mention last week that the PTO’s T100 Vegas was canceled. Sorry, “postponed” to not this year. (Endurance Sportswire)

• The Saudi Public Investment Fund’s sports arm is also rumored to be looking to invest $20 million in the PTO. The PTO last raised $10 million in March. So, just a reminder, as best I can keep track: If the Saudi money comes through, that’ll be ~$90-100 million that people have given them since 2020. Which is a lot of money. (Sportcal)

• Grand Slam Track reportedly owes athletes $13 million in payments. Which is also a lot, but made me laugh because, well, they said they wanted to model their league off the PTO. (Front Office Sports)

• Supertri will be available on HBO Max. And they’ve been putting out these announcements about the Supertri teams for this year’s season, which have mostly been boring announcements, but this one about the Podium Racing team included some weird dishy quotes about Tim Don changing teams. (Supertri)

• USATF is suing a former board chair and also struggling financially. (The Sports Examiner)

• I just learned there’s an XTERRA Trail Running World Champs. (XTERRA)

• It’s Tour de France Hommes time and the only cycling coverage I absolutely love is: The secret pro. I also love Ashley Gruber’s photos from the ground, and if you want to go deep on coverage I stick with Escape Collective’s because they do fun things like ‘the fake news of the day.’ (Escape Collective/Instagram)

• Marianne Vos untied and changed her shoes while in the middle of a Giro stage. (Instagram)

• Maya Kingma is riding in the Women’s Giro with the EF Education team — which is interesting. (Instagram)

• Katie Zaferes had her kid. (Instagram)

• Steph Clutterbuck was diagnosed with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. (Instagram)

• Chelsea Sodaro is hosting a charity weekend of riding and wine and learning from high-performance guests as a fundraiser for For All Mothers (which used to be &Mother), which is cool and it’ll be a nice event & location. (Chelsea Sodaro/For All Mothers)

• Brad swears he’s starting a weekly newsletter, so that we’ll have one more person making mean jokes about triathlon. (Zone 2sletter)

• If you missed the world records at the Pre Classic, Beatrice Chebet became the first woman to go sub-14 in the 5,000m on the track and Faith Kipyegon ran a 3:48 1500m (confirming that crowds and competition are more performance enhancing than Nike science labs). And the men’s 1500m was, well, exciting. (CitiusMag/Youtube/Twitter)

• Did you know there’s a “geek’s only” page of the Western States website with a lot of numbers and data. (WSER)

• Paris opened up the Seine to public swimming and then closed it a day later. (The Gaurdian/The Hill)

• And your hilarious headline of the week: “Boyfriend continues competing in Hyrox event as paramedics treat his passed out girlfriend.” (New York Post)

One last thing

If you want to add to your list of things to be terrified of: Slipping at the top of a cliff as you start to dive off.