We’ve now moved Triathlonish (sorta) fully over to the Feisty system, as part of our merging of the two brands. Don’t worry! You’ll still get your Thursday morning Triathlonish newsletter (assuming you weren’t one of the people who’s email got eaten by internet goblins), and you’ll still get all of the swim-bike-run industry analysis you’ve come to expect. From my end, we’ll also now have more resources as Feisty expands into more women’s sports, so we can continue to cover triathlon and our sports the way we want them to be covered.

From a logistics standpoint:

• The email now comes from kelly@livefeisty.com — if you put that in your known emails or mark it as ‘not spam’

• We imported all the subscribers to the new list, but some inactive emails didn’t come through — so if you didn’t get yesterday’s email, please let me know and we’ll make sure to get you added again

• Anyone (hey, you, if you’re new!) can now subscribe moving forward directly on Feisty’s Triathlonish page — but there are a couple of you who trickled in in the last 48 hours and so fell in between the cracks of old list and new list. Don’t worry, I’ll add you!

OK, that’s all. See (some of) you in Kona!

- Kelly

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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• Coaches: Take the anonymous 6-minute survey from augo, a new tech startup, about your daily pain points and be entered to win an On Running gift card.

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.

All-sporters, it’s a holiday week here in the U.S. And apparently in Canada, though different holidays. And I was up in Tahoe all of last week for TrailCon and Western States, so personally I could use the break. I plan to go to the TLC concert at the county fair on Thursday evening and not think about triathlon for at least multiple days.

But first. Lots to talk about…

- Kelly

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In which we all have to learn about age-grading

Ironman announced this morning a new system for world championship qualification based on “performance” instead of participation numbers. I’ve spent a lot of time understanding the details in the last few days, so here’s the Cliff notes:

• Every AG winner will get a world champs spot; that spot can roll down the podium but no farther

• The rest of the qualifying spots at a race will be handed out by going down an overall ranked list of age-graded times

• Age-graded times will be determined via a calculation (based on the last five years of world champs), where every age-group has a kind of handicap factor that you multiply your time by to get your age-graded time

• The pool of men’s & women’s slots are being treated as one combined pool for Kona spots and men & women will be age-graded and compared against each other; however, 70.3 Worlds spots will now be treated as separate men’s & women’s pools and the number of spots available will finally (hallelujah!) be equal

Honestly, it kinda seems like a whole lot of work to avoid just making the Kona spots equal. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Whenever I’ve explained the outlines of this new system to people, the reaction is: “…OK?” Like, yes, I think we’ve all generally accepted that a performance-based qualification system is better than a participation-based qualification system. And, under the old model that rewarded large amounts of mediocre participation, smaller age-groups would get screwed regardless of how the best of those athletes performed. So, sure, this is…better?

But it’s hard for me to get super excited about qualifying to a world championship via an algorithm, because you can make an algorithm do whatever you want it to do. And you can say “equal opportunity” and “fair” as many times as you want, but it doesn’t make it true or not true. People have used those terms to justify almost whatever they wanted to justify throughout history.

The reality is it’ll probably look about the same in Kona; a little different — slightly more women (~35% v. ~27%), slightly more older athletes — but about the same.

Because if you base an age-grading or handicap calculation on who is already at Kona then it’s going to reflect that back, to a degree. Any algorithm fundamentally is based on the past, it can not be forward thinking or project what is possible, it can only lock into place existing structures whether you like those structures or not. Think about it this way: If somehow this year the Kona results started being wildly different, it’d take five years for that to be fully reflected in the “adjustment factor.”

An aside: Even though at 70.3 Worlds the men’s & women’s races have been on two separates days for nearly the last decade, spots were actually still proportionally allocated out of one combined pool – with women getting fewer spots for no good reason. And I now consider it a small victory that we’ve all at least finally agreed that was dumb.

Age-grading is interesting in running or Crossfit. It’s a fun fact, an asterisk to compare your half-marathon to someone else’s half-marathon. But the reason it’s always just been sort of an interesting aside is because it’s a way to compare and handicap people who are not actually winning.

You know who the actual best 31-year-old triathlete in the world is? Kristian Blummenfelt. The best 42-year-old woman? Anne Haug. Personally, I think coming up with a way to rank all the 31-year-olds who aren’t as good and then compare them to each other kind of throws into stark relief how ridiculous the whole concept is: A world championship for the people who are the same age as the pros but just not quite as good. It’s all made-up anyway, is my point. We could make it up however we want.

One last thought: One of my favorite races in the world, the Dipsea, is a handicapped race by age and gender. (And “The Handicapper” adjusts the handicaps every year.) But it’s run as a headstart system, instead of a post-race calculation, so whoever crosses the line first wins — which is way more fun to have 65-year-old women sprinting it out against 14-year-old boys.

While I’m sure there’ll be a whole niche triathlon industry doing the math to approximate what qualifying times you need to do at each race, the new Ironman age-grading system is actually going to make it impossible to know while you’re racing if you’re in a qualifying position or not. You’ll have to wait until after everyone is finished and the calculations are all done. So. Wouldn’t it at least be way more interesting if we did it in reverse? As a head start calculation for every age-group, and then the first xx number of athletes across the line get to go to Kona. At least it’d be wild and fun. If it worked that way, I’d probably sign up for an Ironman again.

A list of all the things that happened at IM Frankfurt

IM Frankfurt this weekend was the men’s European Ironman Championship — and, yes, Kristian Blummenfelt ultimately won and it was all about the Scandinavians (yay to Gustav back in 4th), but really it was about the chaos of things that happened during the 7.5-hour race.

• While leading the race, Jonas Schomburg’s whole aerobar setup simply came off his bike. Officials eventually made him withdraw for safety reasons after it happened a second time.

• Early on the run, Kristian Hogenhaug got a penalty for “outside assistance,” which sounded like a coach running alongside him briefly (?).

• Patrick Lange got a penalty for something? Not taking off a swimskin? I dunno. But he was far back by T2.

• Kristian Blummenfelt cramped at one point.

• And then, of course, there was the DQ of Magnus Ditlev for “littering” by dropping a cup a few feet after the official end of the aid station. And then the rescinding of that DQ. Let’s put it this way: Magnus is one of the calmest guys on the circuit; if he’s swearing at the refs, then you know German officiating has gone off the ledge.

Did I miss anything?

From the races

• Nice 70.3: Yay for Jess Learmonth — deciding to race Nice on such a short turnaround after the T100 SF & Vancouver was probably an open question, but she won and it was her first win post-baby I believe. Also, good for Marten Van Riel with his first win of the year, but not after a baby.

• World Triathlon Long-Distance Championships: A small field, but Marjolaine Pierre was back on top (and I believe now tries to lock down her Kona spot at IM Vittoria) and it seems like Antonio Benito has really had a breakout year, right?

Results: IM Frankfurt, Nice 70.3, Challenge Walchsee, World Triathlon Long-Distance World Champs, World Cup - Saidia

Mark your calendars

• And now it’s time for Challenge Roth this weekend! - It’s certainly not as deep a field as usual (though I think it’s a fair guess that some of the DNF athletes from Frankfurt will end up on the start line). But it’s still Roth. And I think we’re all curious if Sam Laidlow is back on form and how Vincent Luis will do. And I personally am curious if Laura Philipp goes after the overall iron-distance world record. My guess is yes. This could be the first women’s sub-8 we see!

  • And a shoutout to Sid, who is back on a start line and racing Challenge Roth for the 9th time, after a massive concussion and brain bleed when she was hit by a car during IM Brazil two years ago. LFG Sid.

The -ish

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

• Lots of thoughts coming out of Western States, but the main being this: Abby Hall won in the 4th fastest time ever on the course (on a very hot day) — but she wasn’t even supposed to be on the start line. She had a bad injury two years ago, major surgery, just missed out on qualifying twice this year. And then when another athlete got pregnant, their spot rolled down to her. (Also, Western States has lifetime pregnancy deferrals, fyi.) (Instagram)

• We did a whole episode of our new women’s sports podcast about Western States and it drops tomorrow with lots of interviews and clips. (Youtube)

• It seemed like there were a lot of infants and small babies up at the Foresthill aid station and on the side of the course, and part of me thought ‘well it’s just getting normalized and if you finally got in the lottery you’d have to just make it work.’ And then I realized one of the smallest babies was Caleb Olson’s, who won. (Instagram)

• This People Magazine headline caught my attention because it’s hilarious: “New Mom Says Her Husband Signed Up for an Ironman Right After She Gave Birth” and then the details are even funnier: He trains for at least an hour *every day.* Whoa. (PEOPLE)

• The shoes of Western States. The worry about if it’s all just getting too commercialized. The overhyped-ness, the more cameras than runners. Feels like pretty standard stuff. (Outside Run/Tony with a Sony)

• Other standard stuff: Track nerds complaining about Faith Kipyegon’s Sub4 attempt, and arguing that she was never going to be close so Nike just overhyped it and they wish people would just appreciate Faith’s running for what it is without the spectacle. I mean, sure, and I wish the world was different but it’s not. (Steve Magness/Slate)

• There was also a beer mile at Western States and a 100m race at TrailCon, neither of which I did. I also did not do mushrooms and get a tattoo in the parking lot, if we’re talking about pivotal trail running experiences I could have had last week. (Instagram)

• This guy ran a stroller mile in 4:26.29. (Instagram)

• And this guy ran 465 half-marathons in a year, which is apparently a world record. But that record seems highly suspect to me, because I’m pretty sure every runner at Western States ran the equivalent of more then 465 half-marathons last year. Like, that’s ~115 miles/week. Tough but not crazy. (NY Post)

• In other things that weirdly went viral: This triathlete hitting a bear during a race. (Slowtwitch)

• Gwen Jorgensen crashed. (Instagram)

• Jonny Brownlee is having a kid. (Instagram)

• The Pre Classic is this weekend and Faith Kipyegon is going for the actual 1500m world record now. (Marathon Handbook)

• The Tour de France Hommes also starts on Saturday. (Velo)

• Good thing there’s not a heat wave sweeping through Europe. (Associated Press)

One last thing

The calmness with which second place finisher Fuzhao Xiang ate her noodles in the middle of the aid station chaos at mile 62 of Western States is something I aspire to.

All-sporters, I am reporting to you from Western States. Well, like, from Olympic Valley, where Western States will start in two days.

I told Sara to send me a picture from our work so far, and this is what she came up with:

We’re here to support the existing women’s running organizations (and put on a lunch today for all the women!), to do some coverage for Feisty Media, and to put together a podcast episode for next week for our new women’s sports podcast. First episode (not about Western States) dropping tomorrow, Thursday.

And also to have a little bit of fun.

- Kelly

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Is trail running the new triathlon?

I mean, yes.

But. If, ten years ago, triathlon was the new golf, then does that now make ultras the new new golf? Does anyone actually just golf anymore? A question to ponder during your next long run. (It’s not not true.)

This is something I’ve thought about a lot: As I look around and most of my old triathlon friends are running trails now and ultras, and all my local tri races are now local trail races. And I don’t think I’m the only one who’s wondering were all the triathletes went. There’s a straight pipeline from triathlon to ultrarunning to trail running.

We showed up at TrailCon this week — the trail industry conference held in between Broken Arrow last weekend (like short-course) and Western States this upcoming weekend (long-course) — and I thought I would only know a couple of people and we’d have to do a lot of cold intros. But over and over again, walking around Happy Hour and the Village, there was person after person who I already knew, who is probably reading this. (Hi guys!) They’d already gone down that tri-to-trail pipeline.

And, if you spend a lot of time deep in the weeds (which I know you all do), then it’s very very (very) hard not to notice that trail running is going through the same things triathlon was going through 10-15 years ago. They’ve having the same goddamn conversations and same growing pains. The same over-profileration of races swallowing each other, the same shock at how fast athletes get when there are resources finally pouring in, the same debates about how to grow sustainably and diversely, how to keep the grassroots feel but eliminate barriers to entry, how how how. Which is only wildly frustrating to watch on repeat.

But it also means they have the same conviction triathlon used to have that the sport will never stop growing (hah), that it will always be cool and edgy and new. And maybe they’re right. I mean, hell, I mostly just want to trail run and quasi-ultra these days. It seems more fun. But also probably they’re not right.

And now for something completely triathlon niche:

From the races

• IM Les Sables d’Olonne: Who doesn’t love India Lee? No one. Everyone thinks she’s the best. And now we get to see her and Els Visser in Kona.

• World Cup - Huatulco: We also need to give a shoutout to the sprint finish between Maria Carolina Velasquez Soto & Erika Ackerlund. Erika used to do these interesting dispatches for Slowtwitch about what it’s like racing at the World Triathlon pro level, so I think a lot of people are also very invested in her first podium. And Cuban triathlete Alejandro Rodríguez won Cuba’s first World Cup medal.

• World Triathlon Multisport Championships also crowned cross world champs this week — which is kinda like Xterra and both the winners were familiar Xterra names: Alizee Paties and Felix Forissier. And they crownd duathlon world champs. Next up: Long distance champs.

• Interestingly, Alanis Siffert and Max Studer also mixed it up off-road with wins at Xterra Switzerland. Do we just, like, all need to learn how to mountain bike.

Mark your calendar

• Holy shit IM Frankfurt: That is really quite the start list isn’t it. Kristian Blummenfelt, Patrick Lange, Gustav Iden, Rudy Von Berg, Magnus Ditlev. How many world champion podium finishers can you have in a non-world champs race?

  • WATCH: Sunday 6 a.m. local/midnight ET/Saturday 9 p.m. PT on Ironman’s Youtube globally but Outside Watch in N. America

• Nice 70.3 also has some interesting mid-distance names taking a break from T100 this weekend: Marten Van Riel trying to lock down a 70.3 Worlds spot for options I think, and Jess Learmonth probably doing the same.

Results: Challenge Gdansk, IM Les Sables, Westfriesland 70.3, World Cup Huatulco, World Triathlon Multisport Championships

The -ish

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

• This week’s wild rumor I need to dispel: The PTO’s stats database is not going anywhere anytime soon. (At least not until they run out of money, hah!) In many ways, it is the best thing they’ve done, made it so much easier to cover the pros, and so, no, I checked with the guy who runs it: It’s not going anywhere, don’t know where that rumor came from. (PTO)

• But. Does the PTO need to move their Qatar race? Um, yes. (New York Times)

• There’s also a new Ironman in Chile, btw. (Ironman)

• Mile & Stone has more details on the state of American trail running, based on this mega trail running week here. (Mile & Stone)

• And here is your actual Western States preview. I mostly want to see how Kilian Jornet does. And, sure, yes, also David Roche. And, also Heather Jackson. And, also, Tara Dower. (Outside Run/iRunFar)

• And, if you missed the photos from the Broken Arrow race this past weekend: The 46km had to get called off in the middle of the race and ~390 people had to be evacuated off the mountain when it started to snow. And actually also because lightning hit one of the ski huts during the wild June storm. So. Next time you complain about something going crazy in triathlon, at least you weren’t stuck in a ski patrol hut in the snow for three hours with 90 other runners (like one of my friends was). (Instagram)

• The Boston Marathon has a new qualification policy adding time adjustments for net downhill courses. Which, I dunno, I’m sort of currently tired of things where we make up some random calculation to decide what performance is equal to what other performance. Either take net downhill times or don’t. (Runner’s World)

• UTMB also has a new sustainability travel policy — the goal of which is to minimize the race’s carbon footprint by incentivizing runners in the lottery to choose the lowest carbon option for travel. The problem, of course, is the overall structure of chasing “stones” to put in the lottery is fundamentally at odds with this goal. So maybe a reminder first to start with low-hanging fruit: You could drive a smaller car. Trail runners, I’m looking at you. (Outside Run)

• And even though I know it’s a lot for Faith Kipyegon to go from a 4:07 mile to a sub-4:00, when she’s already the world record holder, I am so deeply invested in this Sub-4 effort tomorrow. Going off at 11 a.m. PT. Watch on Nike’s Youtube. Read about the science going into it and the original paper on the drafting benefits. Speculate wildly. I am 100% here for it. (New York Times/Amazon Prime/Youtube/National Geographic/Outside/Journal of Applied Physiology)

• This also looks like a cool doc coming out of Western States. (Instagram)

• And in this Who Cares Era, care. (Dan Sinker)

One last thing

I signed up to do a shakeout 5K tomorrow morning to support one of the groups here (you can do it virtually!) and then I remembered I can’t really run right now. So, gonna walk/jog my ass up and down the valley in the morning.

Well, you all, it finally happened. I missed a Wednesday. They say you should be kind to yourself, but honestly I think most people could stand to be a little harder on themselves. So, we’ll put this in the fail column and move on.

The problem, yes, is childcare but it’s also that I’m flying to Victoria (Canada) tomorrow for a big live panel on women’s sports on Friday. If you’re in Victoria, you should come by. The panel will also be the launch of our brand new women’s sports podcast — which will be live with this first episode next week, June 26. More to come on that, plus I made a podcast graphic, so of course you should subscribe.

And, next week, we’ll also be up at Western States — and putting on a FREE women’s trailrunning speed-networking lunch with the Women’s Trailrunning Fund as part of TrailCon on Wednesday, June 25 at noon.

So, uh, things have been busy.

- Kelly

Pregnancy deferrals and other questions you’ve had

A lot of people have asked me about how Ironman’s pregnancy deferral policy worked, since it seems not too many people have actually used it yet. (And 100% I knew more about it than the customer service person who responded to my request.) So figured it was a good week to talk about a few pregnancy deferral and pregnancy training details:

Ironman’s pregnancy deferral: I emailed the general race director email for IM California last fall and asked to defer. That email got passed onto a customer service person, who then asked for a doctor’s note — which I found understandable but slightly annoying, so I sent them a pic of the ultrasound because I was being mildly a bitch and because I didn’t feel like going back and forth with the doctors. Customer service person then said I had to pick to either defer to 2025 or 2026. I picked 2025.

Because I had already done a regular transfer from Placid to California last summer (when I had just found out I was pregnant and couldn’t get off the couch and was trying to decide if I was going to race), I do not now have the option to change my mind again. Which is completely understandable. So I’ll either do California this October or I’ll just DNS (or maybe I’ll just do the swim since it’s driving distance from my house). Right now, it’s looking like I will not be doing the full thing, since I can’t even run yet.

You can see all the details of their policy here. Honestly, I think it’s a fair enough policy, but it is hard to predict whether you want to defer one year or two years.

A couple of other pregnancy deferral policies I’ve found out about:

• UTMB: Is two years for any UTMB brand race, if you’re already registered. But, for a lot of us, getting the stones (ie. lottery tickets) to put in the lottery is the harder part. Stones are only good for two years. Since I earned mine in the spring of last year (right before shit went down), I’m putting them in the lottery this December, before they expire, to try to enter for summer 2026.

• Western States: If you’ve gotten into Western States, they actually let you defer to any year in the future, no time limit on guaranteed entry. Which I only heard about when one of the pros got pregnant this year and her spot rolled down.

• A lot of smaller or medium-size races will actually let you roll your spot over if you just contact them. The Dipsea here (oldest trail race in the country) is one where you have to re-qualify every year — and it was pretty clear there was a zero percent chance I was going to be able to run 12 weeks after the C-section (much less run a technical all-out trail race), so I emailed them and they said it was cool, they’d let me back in next year. So. Just ask.

Training & recovery

I have a much longer post written about this, but again, a lot of people have asked — largely because there’s so little research on training during or after pregnancy, many of the official recommendations are stupid and inadequate for athletes, and so much of what pros are doing is based on anecdotal sharing.

My top line for pregnant athletes to know is this: 1. There is an increasing amount of evidence to support maintaining whatever level of activity you were doing before (including strength training, more volume/hours than the official ACOG recommendations, and hard efforts or speed work); 2. you’ll probably have to modify by feel and take more recovery; 3. increasingly, researchers are recognizing one of my pet peeves: that risk has to be balanced against benefit — and that includes the benefit to you as a human person! (ie. if biking is the only exercise you can do, then the benefits of health/being outside/mental stress have to at least be counted against the likelihood of and whatever risk or potential downside there is to a fall).

All that being said, I probably trained too little. Partially because life. But I was at the Female Athlete Conference two weeks ago and one of the presenters was talking about some preliminary research that suggests excessive de-training during pregnancy (ie. getting too out of shape) was correlated with increased injury rates in return to exercise. And I was like YES, this is my problem right now! And no amount of telling me to “be kind to myself” will stop that from being my problem.

July/August: I did almost nothing because I felt awful and largely did not get off the couch. By nothing I mean literally: somewhere between zero to four hours per week. Someone at the time asked how I trained while we were in Paris, and I said, ‘oh I didn’t.’

September-early December: Averaged 7-9 hours/week (counting hiking!). With some super light weeks because of travel and illness. Bonus problem: I couldn’t run more than 20-25’ unless it was uphill because the extra weight or whatever messed up my running form and caused me knee problems. So there was 1x/week of modified Crossfit or strength, 1-2x/week of shorter bike rides, 1-2x/week of medium swims (this was where I got my harder efforts until I couldn’t anymore), and then a bigger hike.

late-December-February: Rapidly decreasing amounts of anything. Followed by a solid 3-4 weeks of barely walking in March because my lower abs had been cut open. Am now back up to hour bike rides, 30-40’ swims, and 2’ jog/2’ walk.

Let’s put it this way: My CTL in TrainingPeaks was ~90 right before pregnancy. It hit a low of 9 post-birth. It’s now back up to 23, though I think that overindexes on hiking.

From the races

• T100 - Vancouver: It seems like it was a success?! Re: age-groupers and general vibes. And whales. Yay to Taylor Knibb winning again — I know we act like of course she’s going to, but that’s never a given — and kudos to Jess Learmonth in third! And the Jelle Geens v. Marten Van Riel rivalry is actually really shaping up at this distance; it’s just sort of a shame that it’s not that exciting to Americans.

• IM Cairns: And another yay for Jackie Hering coming back from her DNF in Hamburg to become the first American woman to win, and to Dr. Matt for bouncing back from literally having to stop in T1 due to cramps to really run down the win (and also become the first American to win here). And, yes, yes, we all want to know why Lotte Wilms waited that long in T2 for her watch.

• Happy Valley 70.3: But mostly, I just want to say: Holy shit Lydia! (Lydia Russell outran Chelsea Sodaro and Jeannie Metzler for her first pro win — and, look, I’m including those names not because I’m saying anything about whether they had good days or bad days, but because it provides context.)

Results: T100 - Vancouver, IM Cairns, Happy Valley 70.3, Boulder 70.3

Mark your calendars

• World Tri’s Multisport World Champs start this week — and it’s primarily an age-group festival, but there is a long-distance world championship for the pros.

• IM Frankfurt: And well well well, the best long-distance start list in Germany in July isn’t in Roth this year. A first time for everything.

The -ish

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

• In a twist no one could have seen coming, Hyrox is now experiencing growing pains. The World Champs in Chicago this past weekend had push sled controversies (certain lanes were slow! and later taken out! Dan Plews was a victim of the slow sled scandal!) and volunteer judging discrepancies (!) and this may be why they’re considering going to a pro-only world champs model. Which, having done exactly no Hyrox(es), I think is a mistake. If you want to be more than this year’s color run, then GET IT TOGETHER. (BarBend/Instagram)

• Also, Paralympic triathlete Lauren Steadman won the first adaptive Hyrox world champ title. (Women’s Health)

• Speaking of growing pains. Grand Slam Track abruptly canceled its last event in L.A. I think suddenly canceling your finale that you’ve been hyping, and then claiming it’s because you met all your goals for the inaugural season, speaks for itself. (It says: Riiiiiiight.) So I don’t have a lot to add other than I saw someone saying they didn’t understand why a potential new investor would cause a strategy/location shift, and I laughed. Do you remember when the Collins Cup was going to move to Morocco? That’s why a new investor changes things abruptly, because investors have opinions about what you should do and the money to make you do it. (Inside the Games)

• Olympic champ Noah Lyles and NFL star Tyreek Hill will *not* be racing now. In case you were wondering. (The Guardian)

• NCAA champs was also this past weekend. And I would just like to say I once interviewed the coach who just became the first female coach to win national titles at two different schools. (Citius Mag)

• I definitely do not keep a finger on the pulse of young up-and-coming runners, but I was aware of Nico Young being a big name on the message boards (and a legitimately big name in the college scene), and now his new 5,000m American record and impressive win at the Diamond League really means he’s worth knowing more about. (Youtube)

• Trail running’s Kona Week (held in Tahoe) is about to start: This weekend is Broken Arrow (also a Golden Trail World Series Race and one I really had been hoping to be ready for post-C-section lol), then TrailCon is during the week, then next weekend is Western States. (iRunFar)

• In how they’re training for Western States: David Roche unloaded another one of his no secrets brain dump. And Killian Jornet talked to Outside. (Twitter/Outside Run)

• I do agree with Roche, though, that taking heat training to an extreme is the new frontier for athletes pushing the edges. And also: don’t do this. (Velo)

• AND. We’ll be up at Western States next week — doing coverage and partnering with the Women’s Trailrunning Fund & TrailCon to host a women’s trail running speed-networking lunch. It’s FREE, it’s Wednesday at noon in Palisades resort as part of TrailCon (but anyone can come!), and it’s going to be fun with food and prizes. (TrailCon)

• Did you see Courtney Dauwalter wants to do gravel now, too. (Instagram)

• Nike is releasing some of the details about the gear and tech advances Faith Kipyegon will use to attempt to be the first woman to break the four-minute mile. (Instagram/Outside)

• This New York Times/Athletic story about how Sam Long is a bad swimmer but a great triathlete is kinda hilarious, purely because it’s hilarious it exists as a story. Also, Sam is teaming up with Greg Harper (first out of the water at 70.3 Worlds) to get better at swimming, so that’ll be fun. (The Athletic/Instagram)

• Lionel Sanders has an interesting video out about realizing he has REDs. And for those of you who don’t spend a lot of time in female athlete research, Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport isn’t just about disordered eating: It’s a imbalance of energy output and input, which basically can come about as too much stress or not enough recovery or eating fine but not fine for your training or eating enough but not enough of certain things. However, I will say, Lionel’s experience is one of the most common: Thinking you’re eating healthy or “clean” but that ultimately ends up leading to not quite eating enough for your output, which hinders your overall resiliency, and then you can’t figure out why you just keep getting hurt or sick. And I suspect there are a lot of male athletes who don’t realize this is happening to them. (Youtube/British Journal of Sports Medicine/Instagram)

• We also had Paula Findlay on the Feisty Triathlon podcast and Joanne did a fantastic interview with her. (Feisty Triathlon)

• Gwen Jorgensen announced a new scholarship fund. (USAT)

• We now have four of the Supertri pro league venues: Toronto, Chicago, Jersey, Toulouse. And one of the teams announced. (Supertri)

• Ironman also announced an ESPN deal for Latin America. (Ironman)

• 92-year-old Hiromu Inada is basically the answer to whenever people are like ‘there should just stricter time limits for world championships! it’s a world championship, if they can’t finish in less time then they shouldn’t be there! they’re supposed to be the best in the world!’ Like, yes, they are the best and finishing one of these things at 92 years old *is* the best in the world, so shut up. (Instagram)

• I just feel like not enough people appreciated how good Summer McIntosh’s week last week was. (Instagram)

• This U.S. public lands sell off is not great. (Wilderness Society)

• There are a lot (a lot!) of seemingly unconnected (but actually connected!) things about the state of the world and the future that have been circling around in my brain, and the closest I’ve come to connecting them all yet is this: I think people probably need to put more friction back in their lives and understand the un-smooth edges of the actual world. (Kyla’s Newsletter)

One last thing

This is an old clip from Nice, but honestly Kat’s face makes me laugh every time.

Some of you know me, but a lot of you don’t. And so a lot of you probably don’t know what my husband does or my friends and family, or that I’ve spent a good amount of my non-triathlon time lately focused on what’s happening in L.A. and out here in California. On what comes next. Because, look, like when push came to shove, it was always going to be California where things went down first, but it’ll be other cities in the U.S. soon. And so we’re all going to have to decide what we do, because I’ll tell you (in case you didn’t know) that I think an important part of America is that people can’t just demand to see your papers while you walk down the street, that law enforcement can’t just throw you in vans or prisons without warrants or legal processes, that you can’t get in trouble for what you say about the President, that the President can’t use the military to shut down protests over his own policies. The whole right to assemble thing was kinda a big one in the founding of America. (So was the whole ‘everyone born here is American’ thing, because otherwise what are you gonna be, English?) There are lots of reasons to support immigrant communities, but even if you think that’s not your problem, you should still be worried about agents grabbing anyone off the street, out of car washes, as they drop off their kids at school, without evidence or proof. Because there’s not as much as you’d like to think to stop that from being you.

Or, as someone else put it: You can’t say criminals don’t deserve due process; due process is how you determine that they’re criminals. Otherwise, you’re just kidnapping people you don’t like.

That’s what I’ve been thinking about in between being super sick today. Thinking less about triathlon…

- Kelly

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Stiff headwinds and other phrases that mean ‘being a race director is only going to get harder’

Because I was out of town, I didn’t hear about the shitshow at Escape from Alcatraz until the end of last week.

Turns out an athlete was paralyzed when another athlete jumping off the boat landed on top of him. After I heard, I was texting around to athletes and local clubs, and multiple people said volunteers at the boat exit were just pushing everyone to jump off as fast as possible, and they weren’t metering or directing traffic. At least one other athlete was injured in a similar (though less severe) fashion.

I’ve done the race 11 or 12 times (depends on if you count the year I DNF’d) and I’ve done it with different race directors and race owners. Half of those times were in the age-group field. And it’s always controlled chaos getting everyone off the boat within six minutes (or whatever the time limit is because of the current). And you always have to swim away from the boat as quickly as possible once you hit the water. But it’s historically been controlled chaos — volunteers saying jump there, wait a sec, OK go now; people keeping an eye on the athletes in the water.

I don’t know what changed operationally this year or if it was just bad luck that caught up to the race. But I do know that IMG has struggled a little bit with the financials of this event in recent years, pivoting to try and make it more VIP (and expensive) right before the pandemic. And, the costs and city haven’t gotten easier since then. I can’t imagine that now this mess will help them on an event-level.

Putting on events is increasingly an unappealing proposition. It’s not profitable. Even large for-profit companies end up relying on random free volunteer labor (with sometimes disastrous consequences). A lot of democratic [small d democratic] municipalities don’t really want races anymore, either, so they’re not making it easy. The onus is on you, as an organizer.

There were two other things I was thinking about this week: 1. A California court decision ruled an event’s waiver doesn’t absolve the host city of its fundamental responsibilities (ie. potholes, infrastructure), which is a little bit no duh to me, but it still makes hosting slightly less appealing for that city. 2. And technically Colorado State Patrol requires “competitive events” (ie. races) to be held on entirely closed courses — which nearly none are; I don’t even think it’d be possible at Boulder 70.3 this weekend, for example, because the bike course rides on a highway — but only SBT GRVL has come up against enforcement yet. So what’s going to happen if other counties decide to start enforcing, too.

I’d say most towns are open to a charity 5K or a non-closed-course trail run, and bigger cities can get their heads around the benefits of a NY Marathon or an iconic destination race — but it’s a hard sell, especially at the mid-size level. You can just look at the Malibu Triathlon and what happened with the town there after Supertri bought the race; I don’t think anyone did anything particularly sinister, I just think a lot of you have never sat through a local California town council meeting before and it shows: the councilmembers don’t care about triathlon, they just want to know where the port-a-potties will be set-up for how long and how many cars will come into town. And how you plan to stop people from being seriously injured.

From the races

• Eagleman 70.3: Good to see both Lucy Charles-Barclay & Chelsea Sodaro back in form. And I enjoyed that Trevor Foley didn’t blink when in a step-by-step battle with Sam Long.

• World Tri Para Series - Taranto: A lot of Paralympic medalists back at the top level of para racing. (It’s their WTCS.)

Results: Eagleman 70.3, Warsaw 70.3, World Tri Para Series - Taranto, Americas Championship - Calima

Mark your calendar

• T100 - Vancouver: A new race in Vancouver! (Love this local article explaining that it’s a “huge international triathlon” that will close the roads.) We’ll have Julie Derron & Taylor Knibb & Ashleigh Gentle, and Maya Kingma is an interesting wildcard, though I think everyone’s rooting for Paula Findlay in her home country. And the usual contenders: Rico Bogen, Marten Van Riel, Jelle Geens, and an interesting wildcard in Miguel Hidalgo just off his WTCS win.

  • WATCH: Saturday - men at 9:30 a.m. PT/12:30 p.m. ET & women at noon PT/3 p.m. ET on T100 Youtube, HBO Max, Eurosport.

• IM Cairns: The next in the IM Pro Series. Personally, rooting for Jackie Hering to bounce back from the Hamburg mechanical and for Braden Currie to have a good race.

  • WATCH: Saturday 2 p.m. PT/5 p.m. ET on Outside Watch in N. America or Ironman Youtube everywhere else

The -ish

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

• Speaking of races being a bit of a mess, turns out chip times didn’t work right when athletes crossed the swim entrance mat at Warsaw 70.3. Now, officials are asking people to send in screenshots or whatever proof they can of their swim times. Oops.

• There’s a new Ironman 70.3 race in Chile. (Ironman)

• Supertri also announced the first set of athletes signed on for their Supertri season: Cassandre Beaugrand, Jonny Brownlee, Taylor Spivey, Jeanne Lehair, etc. (Supertri)

• Dr. Matt (Marquardt) was named to Forbes 30 Under 30 Local Edition. And I’m sure we’ll all going to pretend that we’re not the least bit jealous. (Instagram/Forbes)

• Lucy CB tried Hyrox, but not in a competition, so I think that could also just be called a workout. (Instagram/Youtube)

• I’m not super big on the self-created world records, but why not! To that end: Josefine Rutkowski is going after doubling the women’s record for consecutive days doing an Ironman distance with 60 in 60 days later in July. (Instagram)

• Will we see a women’s sub-8 attempt in Roth? It sounds like Anne & Laura are both lining things up — so probably! (Triathlete)

• You can also get tickets now for Faith Kipyegon’s 4-minute mile attempt in Paris. (Nike)

• The NCAA settlement is finalized and I spent a decent amount of time trying to understand the roster limits and new NIL clearinghouse. Let’s just say I’m not convinced it won’t be a mess. Spin off semi-pro football already! (Front Office Sports/Instagram)

• Was also slightly confused by Colleen Quigley’s new team announcement, but the more I heard about it the more I was intrigued: In essence it’s a new kind of structure that let’s athletes come together without being tied to one shoe-backed coaching group. (Fast Women/For the Long Run)

• LifeTime is launching an LT Games this fall — kinda like Hyrox kinda not. (Fitt Insider)

• The final Netflix Tour series has trailered. (Escape Collective)

• Will people come to the U.S. for the World Cup and Olympics? Not in the numbers they did before. (The Nation)

One last thing

Because we always need more Ilona Maher.

All-sporters, I’m in Boston right now for the Female Athlete Conference — some takeaways from the last one two years ago — and it’s my birthday on Friday and I just got shit on by an entire tree of birds. So, that’s how things are going thanks for asking. I was going to talk a little bit about postpartum training and the various pregnancy deferral policies, but we’ll save that for next week and, anyway, we talked all things pregnancy training with Katie Zaferes and Emma Pallant-Browne on this upcoming Friday’s Feisty Triathlon episode. So, we’ll just stick to the highlights today.

- Kelly

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What was the best performance in a weekend full of them?

Debate.

Let’s review a few of the contenders:

1. First up, we have Ironman Hamburg and the new new Ironman brand world record. (A reminder: Ironman records only cover Ironman brand races; the fastest ever times often come from Challenge Roth.) Hard to believe, though, that at the start of this year the Ironman brand world record was 8:18 from 2022; the world record was 8:02 from 2024. Then Kat Matthews lowered that to 8:10. Now, Laura Philipp (and Kat pushing her on the run) brought it down again to 8:03. And we haven’t even thrown Anne Haug (who has the 8:02 from Roth) back in the scrum. Notably, even third place at Hamburg (Solveig Lovseth) went under that previous record (8:13) — with a broken aerobar for a good portion of the bike. Remember when a women’s sub-8 seemed like it required a team to draft off?!

2. Not to be outdone by Laura becoming the first woman to run under 2:40 in an Ironman, Manoel Messias at Ironman Brazil became the first to run under 2:30 — and not by a small amount: 2:26:50 (and he only got second place). There’s been the standard internet debate about this, and it’s fair to say it’s not like he has *no* history of previous performances but this is certainly a significant leap.

3. At the T100 San Francisco race, I’ll say I thought Rico Bogen’s dominant win was impressive — in how he did it (he rode away and some of the best athletes in the world weren’t able to catch back up) and in the fact that most people thought he couldn’t get back to his 70.3 world title level. But I also think many of the guys in the field weren’t quite at full form yet; you just can’t be for every race anymore.

4. The big takeaway from San Francisco: We now know that Taylor Knibb can be beaten. Was this the recipe all along: Find someone to work with you on the bike, stay in reach, and then outrun her? It worked for Julie Derron, but I don’t know that it would have worked without Jess Learmonth on the bike, or if it’ll work when Taylor’s in better run form. But isn’t that why we race!

5. And what about Cassandre Beaugrand back on top at the WTCS Alghero? Or Miguel Hidalgo with the first WTCS win for Brazil? (Big weekend for Brazil.)

6. Or, what about the totally crazy Giro?

7. Or, Heather Jackson setting a new course record at the 350-mile Unbound XL four weeks before she takes on Western States? (Sid has a list of all the things Heather’s been up to lately. It’s a lot.)

According to the PTO’s point scoring system, Kate Waugh’s third place in San Francisco was worth more than Laura Philipp’s new Ironman record. So take that with a grain of salt.

What’s your pick?

Best of the rest

• IM Brazil: Pâmella Oliveira won her home race, which has to feel good. Plus, a special shoutout to Fiona Moriarty in second.

• Loire Valley 70.3: Good to see Indie Lee back. And Casimir Moine seems to be another athlete who is starting to pop up on the top of mid-distance podiums again and again, but it’s just so hard to keep track of everyone.

Results: IM Hamburg, WTCS Alghero, T100 - San Francisco, IM Brazil, Loire Valley 70.3

Pro athletes really need to learn to read their emails

It turns out that, yes, the pros on the Ironman pro list did get an email back in April about the hydration and fairings rules. They also got another one last week to remind them that the rules went into effect on May 25 (for pros). If you haven’t watched the World Tri video on those rules, it’s worth something. Reports, though, from the pro meetings were that in Brazil officials’ concerns were significantly more focused on not stacking your water bottles into a pyramid and not carrying absurd quantities. fwiw

But, also, pro athletes really do need to learn to read their emails and calendars. One of the pros in San Francisco was explaining how he reads emails on Thursday. Only on Thursday. Which I partially respect, but also partially never want to hear you complain about coverage or communication.

A few more thoughts from the ground at T100 SF

First, and most importantly: No, that was not a shark on the broadcast. It was probably a porpoise (there’s lots of them in the Bay), though I will tell you that two weeks ago there were whales in the Bay and when we were standing on shore during the race I saw a couple of water spouts (possibly porpoises). Make of that what you will.

Secondly: The barricade situation was French-like in its absurdity. I was wearing a media vest and I guess I looked official because spectators kept yelling at me about the layout. The problem, from a simple standpoint, is that the race and transition are along the water; whoever set up the operations set it up (both last year and this year) so that spectators were supposed to spectate from the water side of the course — however, since NO ONE APPROACHES FROM THE WATER, this meant everyone encountering the race had to cross over the bike and run courses to get to the other side. And there was nowhere to really cross, no logical flow to where you were supposed to go or how to watch, even being on the correct side would dump you into corners you couldn’t get out of. This is fine if they primarily care about it as a TV product, but not great if they’re trying to create a spectator product.

Third: This is maybe a local thing, but after two years here I now officially think it’s dumb to have a race that’s the day before Escape from Alcatraz, not quite the Alcatraz course, not quite connected to the more famous event, and not quite easy to explain. Escape from Alcatraz has been around for 44 years. Media and people understand it, it gets attention, it’s on Sunday with 2,000 athletes. Having, instead, some smaller version of the race on Saturday morning that’s different is an uphill battle to explain to media or to locals or to spectators. Even the handful of people who came out to watch kept getting confused: ‘No, sorry, this race doesn’t do that part of the course.’

Mark your calendars

• Eagleman 70.3 (presented by Qatar Airways, which maybe only I think is funny): Quite the start list.

  • WATCH: 5:45 a.m. ET/2:45 a.m. PT on Sunday - on Outside Watch in N. America and Ironman’s Youtube everywhere else

The -ish

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

• Both the men’s and women’s races at Unbound were decided by long (ie. like over 100-mile) breakaways. And these are their bike set-ups. (Velo/CyclingWeekly)

• I’d also like to point out: Female participation was up 44% at Unbound. How? Top-down and bottom-up genuine efforts over many years. (Instagram)

• Speaking of: Shoutout to Wild Swimrun, which is doing a free women’s intro program to get more people into Swimrun — if you’ve been thinking about it! (Instagram/Wild Swimrun)

• Kilian Jornet released a look back at 15 years since his first Western States. (His 50-mile Strava training run in prep also puts the Norwegians to shame.) (Youtube/Strava)

• You can fake Strava runs, too, if you really wanted to for some reason. Though I’m skeptical that this happens on any kind of scale because what’s the point. (New York Times)

• A bunch of new Strava subscriber features, btw. Though they’re clearly still having a challenge getting people to pay; personally, I pay primarily for the mapping functions. (Strava)

• Mikaela Shiffrin wrote about dealing with PTSD after her crash. The Endurers podcast has also been talking with triathletes about mental health and resilience. (Player’s Tribune/Instagram)

• A Brazlian Paralympic medalist was suspended for a positive doping test from Paris. (Triathlon Magazine Canada)

• The U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials standards were released — the men’s got two minutes faster (2:16) and the women’s stayed the same (2:37). And I agree with Mario that this is a bit of a miss; the goal should be a big field for all the reasons that’s a benefit. (USATF/ )

• The Army also released new fitness test standards — and there was a lot of talk about how they’re harder for combat positions, so I was trying to figure out if I could pass the tests. I think I could; I mean not right now, but in general. (New York Times)

• Mile & Stone had an interesting piece on trail race organizers feeling frustrated with environmental constraints. Which is, you know, something. (Mile & Stone)

• I’m always fascinated by which stories go super viral, and the one about Stephanie Case winning the 100K postpartum, while breastfeeding, from the last wave has now reached super viral status. (Instagram/NPR/The Guardian)

• The Ingebrigtsen trial is wild. (The Guardian)

• Athlos announced a team league for 2026. And Grand Slam changed things up in Philly — which made sense from a spectator POV but it’s not great for the distance runners. (Citius Mag/Runner’s World)

• Can the L.A. Olympics deliver on its promises? (New York Times)

One last thing

This is not a joke: Killian Jornet is looking to hire a pacer. It could be you.

All-sporters, I am not getting back into things quickly. I know we tell everyone not to compare themselves in postpartum recovery (etc etc), but I can compare enough to know it’s just straight-up annoying to not be able to run yet. I don’t feel bad about myself because of it, but I would appreciate if there was more guidance and knowledge for women post C-section. “Be kind to yourself” does not qualify as sufficient medical advice.

And if you haven’t checked out the new Feisty Triathlon podcast yet, we have a couple of episodes up and we recorded the next one this morning — which is only partially why I’m just getting today’s newsletter finished.

Be kind to yourself ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

- Kelly

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Our most exciting controversy is about water bottle size?

I was trying to explain to my parents why I was going down a bunch of holes this week trying to understand Ironman regulations on integrated hydration systems. And, well, it certainly does not make triathlon sound interesting.

So that you don’t have to, here’s my quick sum-up:

• Earlier this year, World Triathlon updated its rules on faring and hydration systems in order to regulate size, because athletes had gone crazy in their attempts to gain any possible aero benefit.

• Ironman, in general, tries to align with World Tri rules so there aren’t totally different rules in different races — but there are some instances where Ironman asks for exceptions or tries to explain to World Tri why their rule wouldn’t make sense for long-course athletes (ie. the zipper rule, for example).

• However, races are actually, in general, sanctioned and governed by the host country’s governing body. Ironman contracts with local refs on the ground at those races. There are some rule variations, then, by country — like how you have to wear your number on the bike in Europe.

• German officials, being German, went a little nuts about the hydration system rules and interpreted them rather harshly. World Tri then released an interpretation document — which appears to say you can have a maximum of one liter per bottle, two bottles on the rear, and all equipment on the rear of your saddle must fit inside an imaginary 30x30cm box.

• This was then interpreted by a lot of triathletes as banning you from having both rear bottles and a rear flat kit, and appeared to have the effect of making many existing bikes with integrated systems illegal. Everyone then went slightly insane for a week.

However, I don’t know if I’d totally interpret the rules that way because the World Tri clarification document says bottle holders must fit inside the 30x30 imaginary box, however “bottles may protrude beyond this area.” It also says: “bottles inside the bike frame itself (internal bladder) are excluded from the maximum volume capacity limits.”

But. Hard to say. And, it’s annoying for things to be open to any individual ref’s interpretation instead of being clearly laid out. Plus, it sounds like a few pro athletes at Kraichgau 70.3 (yes, in Germany) this past weekend were forced to modify their systems pre-race. But I also listened to the whole chat with Ironman’s head ref and it also sounds like Ironman hasn’t actually changed their rules and are trying to make sure there’s clarity across events, because no one wants the majority of age-groupers to be f’d. So, as long as you don’t try to push the limits with some crazy set-up, you’ll probably be fine with an off-the-shelf bike and hydration system. Probably.

Jimmy, did I get that right?

I will say that, from the informal conversations I’ve had with Ironman officials, any intent or desire was only to reign in the excessive “hydration” faring systems that pros had run wild with. We all know you weren’t really drinking out of that thing, OK.

Naturally, I’m hoping someone now reports back from the chaos that will inevitably be the pro meeting at IM Brazil and IM Hamburg this weekend.

This week’s Kona thought

From a simple math point of view, what is the limit on the number of athletes in a championship event — while still complying with drafting regulations? I think the pro men’s field is close to the limit already — the pack coming out of the swim together is too big. I’m not sure what the number is for a one-day mixed age-group race, but it seems likely it’s something less than 3,000. The swim simply doesn’t spread athletes out as much when everyone is the same speed. It feels like we could just do the math on this, to a degree, or live in denial. Either way.

Which race will you watch this weekend?

It’s funny how we have no races and then have all the big races stacked up against each other on the same weekends. Weird how that keeps happening, isn’t it.

IM Hamburg

A women’s only pro race. We’ve got the defending champion here (Jackie Hering), the current world champion (Laura Philipp — coming off a 70.3 win this past weekend), and the Ironman world record holder (Kat Matthews) all lined up. Plus a few more from the top 10 at the Ironman World Champs (Marjolaine Pierre), contenders to watch out for (Anne Reischmann, Danielle Lewis) and some interesting debuts (Solveig Løvseth).

I’m guessing this is probably top of everyone’s list; Kat or Laura seems to be the betting question. And I don’t keep a ton of track of the Pro Series standings this early in the season, but it’s a thing.

WATCH: Sunday at 6:15 a.m. local time/12:15 a.m. ET/Saturday 9:15 p.m. PT on Outside Watch in N. America or Ironman’s Youtube everywhere else

WTCS Alghero

We went from no WTCS races for months to two in two weeks and then another in early July. (I 100% said this wrong on the podcast episode coming out on Friday; because I thought the next one, Hamburg, was a few weeks sooner. Oops. Sorry.)

It sounds like the athletes like this new location — a brand new WTCS course — and the 9-lap bike course has quite a few hills and turns. I know we’re all rooting for more interesting WTCS courses. Could this be it?

Alex Yee and Hayden Wilde are still out, but there’s a whole bunch of the French men (Léo Bergere, Dorian Coninx, Pierre Le Corre). And both of the women’s WTCS winners so far this year (Lisa Tertsch, Jeanne Lehair) and the previous world champs (Beth Potter and Cassandre Beaugrand — though not sure how she’s recovered from her crash).

WATCH: Saturday with the women at 2:15 a.m. PT/5:15 a.m ET and the men at 6:30 a.m. PT/9:30 a.m. ET on TriathlonLive

T100 - San Francisco

This is the one I’ll be at. Probably have some Instagram stories on Feisty Triathlon and some interviews (pre- and post-), and of course an on-the-ground report next week.

Speaking of World Tri rules, I haven’t heard yet if the pros will be required to wear thermal caps and gloves again. I would also like it on the record that it’s not the full Alcatraz course and that, hopefully, the boat will be positioned so the swim is the actual distance this year.

Even with half the contracted athletes missing on the women’s side and seven missing on the men’s, we still have a Taylor Knibb v. Kate Waugh (v. Julie Derron v. Ashleigh Gentle) face-off. And I don’t know why people are betting against Marten Van Riel; I’d bet on Marten.

WATCH: Saturday at 6 a.m. PT for the men, 6:45 a.m. for the women/9 a.m. and 9:45 a.m. ET on HBO Max, Discovery+ in Europe, or PTO+ everywhere — with a second screen data dashboard, too

Rest of the results from this past weekend: Kraichgau 70.3, Shanghai 70.3, Challenge St. Polten

The -ish

Some of the other things worth knowing about this week in our sports.

• Also, Eagleman 70.3 has gotten a weirdly stacked start list now. Outside of world championships, the only other times Lucy Charles-Barclay has raced in the U.S. were the PTO’s Miami & Daytona races. (Instagram)

• Unbound — the Kona of gravel — is this upcoming weekend. And here’s my old man shakes fist at sky gripe: Only one of the distances should really be the elite race, and at Unbound it’s the 200. Stop trying to make everything a thing. (Cycling Weekly/Cycling News)

• The next Grand Slam Track is also this weekend and they’ve condensed the format into two days — which probably makes sense from a TV perspective, but means we lose a distance event now. Fred Kerley was also suspended from competition — which also probably makes sense. (Athletics Weekly/The Athletic)

• Supertri is really dragging out the announcements of their pro championship series locations. We now have three of them. I’ve also gotten a couple PR pitches about Supertri looking to raise $60 million, and it should be noted that looking to raise $60 million is a lot different than raising $60 million but I appreciate the hustle. (Supertri/Endurance Sportswire)

• Strava acquired the Breakaway, a cycling coaching app, which comes on the heels of its Runna acquisition, a running coach app. So, yes, they will be adding an in-app training program. Obviously. (Velo)

• Strava also is now valued at $2.2 billion (including debt) after a new funding round (which was, of course, led by Sequoia Capital). I saw someone in one of my endurance business sports groups ask then how they could have that valuation, those acquisitions, and still not be making money. And I laughed and laughed. (Wall Street Journal)

• This guy became the first person to swim around Martha’s Vineyard in order to show that you shouldn’t be afraid of sharks, which really could have taken a wrong turn. (NBC)

• The Enhanced Games — the Olympics with doping — are back in the news again because they’re claiming a doped up swimmer broke the 50m world record and they announced a Vegas launch for next year. (Fitting.) Reminder: We have a Q&A with the founder of the Enhanced Games. (BBC/Triathlonish)

• USA Triathlon announced its Hall of Fame inductees for this year. (USAT)

• Kate Curran had a bad crash. The injured reserved list seems to be catching on. (Instagram)

• Leon Chevalier got married. (Instagram)

• Ironman UK lost one of their longtime announcers, Jay Luke. (Instagram)

• Heat training is the hot new thing. Pun intended. (Velo)

• When I saw this Airbnb giveaway to ride a bike tour thing with Mark Cavendish I thought he was actually leading one of those VIP Airbnb “experiences” that you can sign up for when you book a trip, and I thought ‘man, endurance athletes really don’t make as much money as regular athletes.’ But it’s just a contest thing. But also probably true. (Airbnb)

• There’s a weird internet controversy (hullabaloo might be the right word) where a lot of people are wearing hydration vests for oddly short runs and then a lot of other people are being assholes to them about it. Both things are kinda crazy to me, but only one is crazy and asshole-ish. (Women’s Health)

One last thing

How many athletes can you recognize in this old photo from the podium at the 2015 ETU Junior World Cup?