This is your regular free weekly newsletter. If you’re one of our many post-Kona new subscribers, the weekly newsletter on all things triathlon-ish typically goes out Wednesday mornings (California time) — but I picked up the requisite post-Kona cold/flu have been moving slow the last two days.

That’s also why I didn’t do a great job promoting the Massive Big Post-Kona Show we recorded the day after the race — because I got sick right after it went up. Clips from the finish line, interviews with the Salomon staff on the Ironman deal, from-the-ground behind-the-scenes on everything around the race and the week.

Next week’s newsletter: No more talking about Kona.

- Kelly

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It’s giving Make Triathlon Great Again

There are two things I miss about racing in the pro field (even at a deeply mediocre level).

One is being really really fit. I don’t miss the constant low-level fatigue, the nursing injuries, or crying in your car, but I do miss feeling like you could run through a fucking wall if you had to. Being generically healthy and fit-in-the-scheme-of-humans just doesn’t have quite the same feel to it now.

The second thing I miss is the before and after with the other pro women. The hanging out and sharing war stories, the knowing there was someone else who been through it. There are a limited number of people in the world who understand that specific experience, and so there was a reason we so often ended up solving life problems while on a bus back to the race hotel, packing bikes in a garage, laying on the ground in the med tent — even if we’d just met in some country we’d never been to before, we knew each other.

It was like a secret handshake into a special club that could only be earned through sweat and tears.

When people talk about “Kona” as shorthand for the race, the week, the idea, what they’re often talking about is that club. A chance to be a part of that club for even just one day. They’re talking about the ephemeral belief that anyone who has ever started “Kona” gets to be in this club, that entry for anyone can be earned.

The exclusivity, the extreme-ness, is part of the appeal. I get it. Just like frats in the SEC or the supper clubs and secret societies of the Ivy League. But there’s a reason those things have inherent problems, too.

The official theme of Kona this year was: Let’s never again mention Nice.

No, I’m kidding. The official theme was unity and togetherness. Next year’s official theme is now that we’ve come back together, “moving forward with an open heart.” But, really, the theme is “we will pretend the split race rotation of the last three years never happened.” Or whatever that phrase is in Hawaiian.

That theme was an undercurrent — both officially and unofficially — throughout the whole week. Both in what Ironman said and in what so many other people now felt free to say out loud.

Thank God we didn’t let those women ruin Kona, right.

The problem with this overwhelming undercurrent is that we didn’t end up with the split gender race rotation in Nice + Kona just because former Ironman CEO Andrew Messick one day woke up and decided to do it. We ended up with the women’s race and the men’s race in Nice/Kona because Messick was trying to address issues that are still very much issues:

• Kona is still deeply size limited, especially if Ironman hopes to grow globally.

• Kona is still inherently very expensive, geographically isolated, and difficult to access for much of the triathlon world.

• Ironman’s entire business model (now) still rests fundamentally on a volatile local relationship with a small island town.

• And it is still true — no matter how many women’s initiatives we launch — that you can not have equally fair and equally premiere men’s and women’s races (pro AND age-group) at the same time within the same race. Coverage and course space is intrinsically limited. We all said the debate was settled on the women having their own race, we all said it couldn’t go back. We all answered Ironman’s survey with the #1 pick actually being that we wanted two days (men’s + women’s) in Kona. And then we just went back anyway.

Messick chose to answer these questions one way. CEO Scott is choosing another way. But those questions still exist. Those facts are still facts no matter how many drinks you have at Huggo’s.

Traditions have a lot of value. Exclusive secret clubs have a lot of appeal. But the problem is they also calcify and harden over time, and you won’t even know the pipes have rusted out until your clubhouse collapses.

A few last things from Kona

• The shoes of the top ten pros.

• The swim gear.

• And the bikes. With the new Pinarello making an appearance.

• Also feel like a lot of you will appreciate the pro gear that’s actually available to buy.

• And I really appreciated this look at the trends in the bike count (and why those shifts have happened) over 20 years.

• Like we mentioned on the podcast, DNF rates appeared high. It’s now (semi-)official: 2,258 athletes finished out of 2,544 (though it’s always hard to tell exactly how many started v. checked in). Which is an 88.7% finish rate. While we had a similar rate in Nice because people more often missed the bike cut-off on that course, it’s a high DNF rate for Kona since age-groupers generally will do anything to get to the finish line. Higher DNF rate among the pros than AGers, of course. Even higher among the pro women this year. Mostly, I think, because of the conditions

• Pretty good breakdown of what actually happens to your body.

• One AG friend told me he tried to talk to the medical team to tell them he was fine and discovered he sounded like he was having a stroke and his muscles had seized up. Another told me his wife’s legs wouldn’t stop running — she was laying in the med tent with her legs still making a running motion, which apparently happens to about one person/year.

• Slowtwitch has all of the age-group winners and a breakdown by country.

• The one that stood out to me at the awards ceremony was the woman who won the oldest age-group that had female finishers this year (70-74yo): The 71-year-old Laura Rossetti went 14:03!

• The oldest finisher was 80-year-old Simon Butterworth from Ireland.

• Former world champ Normann Stadler DNF’d in the age-group field on the bike. Brigitte McMahon, who won gold at the 2000 Olympics and then served a doping ban, took second in the 55-59 age-group.

• Some interesting stats on pros who previously raced in Kona as age-groupers.

• And, in case you were wondering, the Ironman World Championship page has already been changed over to the "Salomon” Ironman World Championship.

• We had one finish line proposal.

• Plus, the Ironman Foundation auction is open through the weekend. You could big on Dr. Matt’s Lego bike.

Mark your calendar

A whole bunch of races again on the calendar this upcoming weekend:

• Women at Cascais 70.3 (Lizzie Rayner going for the three-peat) and at Florianopolis 70.3 (a nearly all Brazilian field) + men at Malaga 70.3, both men and women at Port Macquarie 70.3 (a nearly all Australian field)

• A Challenge race in Spain

• And Gwen Jorgensen in the #1 bib at the World Cup in Beijing

The -ish

And just a couple of non-Kona-related things from the past week or two.

• Sullivan Middaugh won his first XTERRA World Champ title in New Mexico over the weekend; his dad was also 6th, which is probably more impressive. The race is in New Mexico for at least two more years, so worth checking out. (Slowtwitch)

• Ashleigh Gentle and Josh Amberger had their baby. (Instagram)

• Ali Brownlee received an OBE from Prince William, which is evidently a step down from knighthood. (World Triathlon)

• TTL is accepting new pros and top age-groupers to their racing team this year. (Instagram)

• Ironman added a new 70.3 in India. (Ironman)

• Extreme flooding meant about 70 runners had to rescued in the middle of Moab 240. (Instagram/The Guardian)

• Kipruto and Feysa won the Chicago Marathon, but obviously we all mostly care about the American who got 10th after doing almost all of his training (and he does a LOT of training) on a Planet Fitness treadmill. (Wall Street Journal)

• Running v cycling: Which makes you fitter? I’d argue this doesn’t take into account the primary issues, which are logistical: You can go harder for more hours biking, impact isn’t a limiter; but in terms of efficiency you can get more bang for your buck in the same amount of time running, but you have to do less of it. So. (Runner’s World)

• Mostly I don’t mountain bike anymore because I kept crashing, but bears chasing you is also a good reason. (Instagram)

• No, but actually explain the joke to me about women wearing short shorts in the gym. I don’t get it. (Instagram)

One last thing

Best recap of last weekend’s races.

This is your from-the-ground special post-race edition, so we don’t wait four more days to talk about those wild races. We’ll be back to regular Wednesday newsletters later this week.

- Kelly

The storm here broke Friday night before the race started. The rain dumped and the wind blew. We walked to the pier in a drizzle.

And I walked back to the hotel, along the last mile of the run course, after the pro press conference and the interviews were done, watching emotional age-groupers finish down that final stretch of road in the dark. Go ahead, try not to cry.

Vince Luis cried at the finish. Taylor Knibb cried. Gustav Iden definitely cried, second place here after the last few years and wearing a kit to honor his mom passing away; he was emotional enough that he needed to take a break from answering questions. Dr. Matt (really Med Student Matt) choked up. Imogen Simmonds choked up. Kristian Blummenfelt choked up too, he looked so sad, but probably for different reasons.

In general, I don’t really believe in island magic. I think a lot of what we chalk up to some ineffable Hawaiian mystique is mostly the outcome of scientifically explainable weather conditions combined with extreme situations that leave us emotionally strung out. Of course we cried. Ironman is very good at what they do.

Lucy Charles-Barclay DNF’d in the same spot she DNF’d last year. Julie Derron walked before she rallied for third. Taylor Knibb vomited for a bit, but slowed down, managed her body, and kept it together. Which ended up mattering (a lot) when Solveig Lovseth suddenly wobbled and went down so close to the win she could practically see the finish line. Sam Laidlow and Patrick Lange pulled out. Kristian Blummenfelt went backwards in the heat. And then, in the lead for so long, Magnus Ditlev started walking too — with less than 10km to go.

Someone in the finish area asked me why does this keep happening more now? The wild collapses and leaders imploding so suddenly so last-minute. It’s always happened in Kona, but not this extreme, not every year. Why now?

I said: Because they’re going harder.

None of you picked Vince

Not one single one of you had him in your podium picks. Which maybe was a mistake. (One could argue obviously it was a mistake, since we were all wrong.) But I’m not sure even Vince had picked Vince.

He was 4th at IM Texas this year, 5th at IM Frankfurt. Kona was supposed to be a bucket-list last race before retirement. Another 4th or 5th or 8th or 15th seemed likely. A fond farewell to the sport. I think he probably thought his best days, his peak days, those years when he couldn’t lose an Olympic race, were behind him, so who were we to argue.

Do you remember peak Vincent Luis? When he won the World Triathlon world championship title in 2018 and 2019. When he was the heavy favorite going into the 2020 Olympics — who was going to bet against Vince back then. He was a huge deal in France, a Nike athlete with real sponsorship money. It was the Baller Vince Era and he made that clear. And then the Olympics were postponed and he just couldn’t hold onto it for an extra year. It’s hard to maintain that dominance for that long. And slowly it became one of those little setbacks that leads to another and another until it’s a big setback. There’s probably an Ironman metaphor in there, or a life metaphor: Sometimes you have to walk and cool down and then you rally and come back stronger, and sometimes you have to walk and then you never start running again.

Vince said this win meant more than those other two Olympic-distance world titles, because of the years it came out of. He said he still plans to retire now, winning didn’t change his mind, this was his last race. Win Kona, drop the mic, and go out on top. He said he’d rather leave standing on his feet than on his knees. He said no one’s ever done it before and he’d be an original.

Was it the most baller move we’ve ever seen in triathlon?

And then, again?

At the finish line, Taylor Knibb was briefly at a loss for words. (She got over it.) All she could say was: “Solveig and I have to stop doing that — the collapsing part. Holy smokes, I’m stunned.”

We do probably need to stop doing this collapsing thing. Or at least we need to decide what amount of darkness we’re OK with. As a sport.

Last year, Lucy went down in the Energy Lab, and then Taylor went down with a little over a mile to go, and Solveig then Kat then Laura ran by her. This year, Lucy again and then Solveig went down with 3/4s of a mile to go, and Taylor then Laura then Julie then Kat ran by her.

Evidently, Solveig was still able to answer questions, knew what was going on and where she was, wanted the cameras to stop filming and the ref to stop annoying her as she lay on the ground, got up, lay on the ground, got up. She remembers it — unlike last year’s collapses from Lucy or Taylor, who don’t remember anything — and she ultimately walked the last 800m in for 8th. One could argue that she wasn’t in real danger of doing permanent damage. Probably. (Though aren’t we all in danger of doing permanent damage with this stuff.)

Still. It freaked out so many people with flashbacks of last year. So many people, in the finish area, who lived through it with Taylor and Lucy, said: Ironman should have a plan, Ironman should step in, after last year Ironman should be prepared to handle these things.

I don’t know what that would look like exactly. Who would get to decide how much is too much? Everyone outside of triathlon already thinks this all insane anyway, all crazy. Where’s the crazy line that we shouldn’t cross? Taylor Knibb said Pat wrote on the whiteboard out on the Queen K, after she was throwing up, that “vomiting is normal.” And he’s not wrong. It is normal here.

And, yet, there’s a line somewhere. One has to assume. A line even we wouldn’t cross.

Right?

An assortment of other Kona things

• Kat Matthews, in 4th, looked the most out of it in the post-race press conference, and didn’t have the usual joy you see from her at the finish line. She was the only one who actually prompted the announcer on the finish line mic to say, “Are you OK?” I think the run was hard for her, she had to work her way up through the field.

• Julie Derron and Imogen Simmonds looked the happiest. Imogen so thoroughly didn’t expect to be in the post-race press conference that she didn’t even bring post-race clothes and had to borrow some. And she was back at the finish line at midnight.

• Imogen also told this wild story about deciding to swim back to her hotel from bike check-in on Friday, roughly a mile away. The waves were still crazy Friday, and she didn’t realize how bad it was until she started getting pulled under and held down when she tried to get out. She said she thought ‘oh this is how people drown.’ But, ultimately, she decided it was a sign from the island that she had made it and the island was OK with her.

• The swells and chop were bad enough yesterday, during the race, that it broke up packs and made for slow times. Laura Philipp got seasick.

• And the wind on the bike was brutal. Both directions. The motos said they were getting blown around.

• Taylor Knibb said the vision in her right eye went blurry, which has happened before apparently.

• Taylor also started her post-race interview, in the mixed zone, behind the finish line, with specific suggestions she had for how Ironman could improve the event — which included moving the pre-race press conference inside so it’s not sweltering. And sometimes Taylor has a point.

• The post-finish-line mixed zone didn’t work as well as I think they were hoping it would, probably because triathlon hasn’t quite figured out how to do media yet. We were supposed to wait there to grab athletes for interviews after they finally left the finish line, but so many of the athletes are messed up and need medical that you don’t want to take too long and Ironman told us all to do interviews together (ie. all stick mics in one person’s face at the same time), which is how these things work at bigger events. But it, then, led to 10 mics in one athlete’s face, who really just wanted get some water and dry clothes. And, of course, because it’s still triathlon, which is still relatively small, some outlets still ignore all of that and just grab the athletes sitting around the hotel so they can feel like they got quotes that were different and exclusive.

• Ironman also moved the pro athlete area out of the pool and into the restaurant, which is bigger and has AC, but no more pool-side or beach interviews.

• A lot of the Ironman operational back-end was tightened up. It was much much easier to get across the finish line to the media or VIP zone.

• Plus, there was a security guard at the hotel entrance stopping regular AG athletes, who weren’t staying in the hotel, from using the lobby to sit down or hang out.

• However, I made the mistake of trying to get from the hotel, behind the transition, out and across the start area right after the pros started and when all the age-groupers were lining up — and I have never thought I might have a full-on crowd panic attack before.

• Dr. Matt, in third, said he’s flying from here to L.A. on Wednesday to present a paper at a medical conference.

• He went back and forth with Gregory Barnaby, in 4th, a few times on the run. Sometimes passes stick and sometimes, here in Kona, they don’t.

• Vince said it broke his heart to pass Magnus Ditlev walking — because everyone universally agrees that Magnus is the nicest guy in triathlon — but “business is business and cash is king.”

• Pierre Le Corre, in 5th, said he almost quit triathlon in 2024.

• Gustav Iden, who so nearly caught Vince with 2km to go, then started to fade and had to barely hold on that last mile. But he just seemed so happy to be back after the last few years, and to come back from nine minutes down at the start of the run.

• Gustav, Matt, and Julie all got three-minute penalties.

• It made me laugh a little how many pros kept saying the AG drafting was so bad. Do they just not remember how bad it’s always been here during the combined one-day race?

• Sam Long held his own hot tub press conference for 6th. And kudos to him.

• Patrick Lange went back out to volunteer at the aid station.

• Gustav Iden and Laura Philipp won the IM Pro Series and were handed giant novelty checks.

• Here’s the bike count — with Canyon on top.

• And one of the few bike launches, the new Pinarello — which Casper would have ridden if he hadn’t crashed pre-race.

• But even Triathlete’s gear roundup of new things this week mostly includes things that aren’t actually new this week.

• As best I can tell there were 1,595 age-group men who finished and 41 pro men. And 573 age-group and 36 pro women. I think (but will confirm) that’s a pretty high DNF rate for here.

• And, since all of you were nearly equally wrong, the winner of our podium predictions contest is: Taryn Spates! Stay tuned for prizes!

One last thing

Kat getting Paula moving again out on the Queen K.

LFG.

Someone, who was going through their first Full Kona Experience, said to me yesterday morning: OK, but I’m ready for the race to just be tomorrow.

Ditto.

I’ve been focused so much on the events and the activations and the gossip and everything that goes on around the race — the stuff that makes up Kona Week — that I had started to forget: Oh yeah, there’s also a race happening. Isn’t that why we’re here afterall.

But what do I need to know really. Everyone looks good, everyone looks fit, everyone’s lying to you or to themselves about how this is going to go.

Women: Lucy CB will lead the swim. At some point Taylor Knibb will catch her. How long can they hold on, will anyone bridge up, what kind of gap do they have into T2 over Kat or Laura or Julie or whoever. Tell me what I didn’t get right there.

Men: The group out of T1 will be at least 15 people. Sam Laidlow will have to go off the front on the bike if he wants to win. That’s his card and he will play it. Someone will try to go with him. How long can they hold on, will anyone bridge up, what kind of gap do they have into T2 over Kristian and Gustav or whoever. Tell me what I didn’t get right there.

Don’t forget to enter our podium prediction contest to win a random assortment of Things in Kelly’s Office + two brand new pairs of Roka’s top-of-the-line R2 goggles.

For the record: My men’s picks are probably Kristian, Gustav, Rudy VB. My women’s picks are trickier because I do think Taylor and Lucy are both ready to fucking murder anyone for the win, but Solveig seems so relaxed and I wouldn’t underestimate a pissed-off Chelsea right now. Probably it’s something like: Lucy CB, Solveig, Kat, Taylor, Chelsea. Or not.

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🥵 The Ironman pro press conference was literally so hot — because they had built a wall on one side of the tent, which blocked any kind of breeze from coming through — that Gustav sweated through his shirt and all the poor athletes went bolting for cold water and AC as soon as the mic wasn’t even set down. (Ironman had the men sit in the audience through the women and then the women sit through the men, and everyone hated all of it.)

🎤 If you ddn’t watch the pro press conference, here’s what they said.

🌊 It also wasn’t our imagination: The locals confirmed for me that yesterday was deeply hotter + humid-er. The waves were also epic-ly huge and knocked over all of the banners on the road. I was told it has something to do with the high tide + wind + weather all hitting at the same time. And should be better today. Saturday also should be rain at some point on the bike — so the humidity will either break or just steam up into an awful stew on the run. #sofun

Whatever we think, it’s time to do this thing now

Men start at 6:20 a.m. in Hawaii tomorrow on Saturday/9:20 a.m. PT/ 12:20 p.m. ET — and the women are ten minutes later at 6:30 a.m. (Bonus bet: How many pro men will Lucy catch?)

WATCH: On Ironman’s Youtube or on DAZN — and coverage actually starts at 4:30 a.m. in Hawaii in case you want to watch them be body-marked for some reason. (The new split quad screen feeds are available on Smart TVs.)

Thanks to our sponsors

Salomon - A big thank-you for flying me out this week as they work to build an understanding of the Kona experience and the triathlon community. Deeply appreciate the effort they’re putting in. And have enjoyed their Aero Blaze 4 as my go-to shoe all week.

Roka - And the Roka R2 goggles have been excellent for open water sighting and comfort. Probably a reason so many top athletes use them.

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Almost the last chance to enter our podium predictions contest 🥇

Do you come for the race or do you come for the gossip and then a race breaks out?

The general consensus this year seems to be that because there are so many brand activations, so many schedules, so many shakeouts and popups and podcasts, no one theme or thing is emerging as the thing everyone is talking about.

I was sitting having a beer last night before heading to the Hall of Fame dinner (and watching my Valkyries stress us all out) and Gustav Iden jogged by on some brand’s shakeout run with just seven other people. It’s not that Gustav can’t attract a crowd — he absolutely does and can — it’s more likely that probably no one even knew the run was happening.

Yes, the ProTriNews boys are getting big crowds and big guests. Yes, the TTL donut run had 100 people (more?). Yes, the retro merch from Precision & Zoot & Ironman is cute —apparently everyone was inspired to go retro this year (get it, get it?) — and booths are selling good numbers. But I’m not the only one who’s been like: Where’s all the gossip, all the industry drama, all the big announcements and new gear reveals.

The biggest gossip outside of who is sleeping with who (and I can’t tell you that) is still that Chelsea Sodaro is being snubbed in the Ironman press conference and I already told you that on Tuesday.

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🚲 Not that there’s not fast gear here — demo some new Salomon shoes at their community run at 7am today from Kona Heaven, or a Roka swimskin from the pier until ~9am — but there hasn’t been a ton of new gear. (There is a brand new Pinarello bike that I’m going to check out tomorrow and a new Ekoi helmet, but.) Even Triathlete decided not to shoot pro bike photo galleries because there just wasn’t the appetite. So if you need a gear fix, Slowtwitch has a few bike pics: Jamie Riddle’s, Hannah Berry’s, Jonas Schomburg’s.

🍺 No one can decide if there’s an appetite for the traditional beer mile on Friday at the old airport either. One person said yeah yeah it’s happening ask this other guy, and then that guy said I don’t know I’m not organizing it ask this other guy, and then that guy said I haven’t heard anything. It’s almost as if ever since the year the boys tried to get an official permit from the city it killed the event.

👑 Karen Smyers and Craig Alexander were inducted into the Hall of Fame last night and both gave lovely speeches thanking their families, who had come out for the event. (Also Karen, apparently, set off the “fall detection/call 9-1-1” on her Apple Watch during the Feisty podcast show because she was waving her arms around too much.)

📺 And you can watch the Ironman pro press conference at 11 a.m. Hawaii time/5 p.m. ET on Youtube. All four of the former men’s world champs will be there — so I guess we’ll get to see Kristian and Sam Laidlow poke at each other in person.

A fun fact

I’m not sure if this is a useful stat or not from TrainerRoad, it seems mostly not, but they tried to compare the average W/kg to the Kona-qualifying W/kg. The men who qualified were in the 79th percentile, and the women were in the 88th.

Thanks to our sponsors

Salomon - Come to Kona Heaven today to test their new supershoe, which I know you’re curious about.

Roka - And don’t forget to demo a new Viper X.3 Ghost swimskin down at the pier.

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Don’t forget to enter our podium predictions contest to win a pair of Roka’s R2 goggles + triathlon bragging rights for the rest of your life. You have until race start to get your picks in.

Vibe check: 2016 v. 2026

The one and only time I raced Kona was a decade ago. Do you remember that far back? Does anyone in triathlon remember that far back?

One of the questions going around has been if we really remember what a combined men’s & women’s one-day race here looks like. It hasn’t happened in seven years. Do we remember how the race dynamics work? How the crowds flow? Do you even remember how many pros are invited to the press conference, did they do the men & women at the same time? It’s so hard to think back that far.

In some ways, this year actually feels very similar (for better and worse) to a decade ago. About the same number of dudes. About the same types of debates. Different people talking, but about the same things.

It’s bigger, but not that much bigger. Despite promises of up to 3,000 athletes, it’s really just under 2,600 — only about 100-150 more than the last one of these. It doesn’t seem like more people on the ground. Not really, not yet. What happened? Why isn’t it as different as we were told it would be?

My guess: Turns out many of those supposedly new ideas to innovate the race were actually just old ideas that were rejected a decade ago because they didn’t work. And now here we are.

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LISTEN: In our pre-race podcast episode, we covered all the questions everyone’s been asking that aren’t about who is going to win: jellyfish, female participation, why Ironman is trying to ban athletes from biking on certain roads, and unfounded rumors of race cancellations.

Listen and follow Triathlonish on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or watch the show with clips from Kona on Youtube (if it finished uploading overnight).

💵 Do you think someone really spent $4,200 at the Ironman merch tent? I actually sorta do believe it. Went to check the tent out today and Ironman merch has legitimately upgraded over the last few years — ever since that first all-women’s race; they even sell clothes from Marine Layer now. So trendy, so high-touch.

🚲 Do you also think the 20m draft rule will dramatically alter the outcome of the pro race? Triathlete said yes; I say probably not really. Not with Race Ranger already working at 12m.

📸 Do you know who the pros take selfies with? Courtney Dauwalter. Especially the female pros.

❤️ And what if the Norwegian secret is just having fun and training hard. Oh, and 40km runs the weekend before race day.

A fun fact

Sam Laidlow will donate €23,000 to 23 upcoming young athletes.

Thanks to our sponsors

Salomon - Come to Kona Heaven from 2-4pm to meet Courtney Dauwalter and Jessie Diggins. I asked them if being here made them want to do the race and they said yes 😉

Roka - And don’t forget to come to the pier to demo a new Viper X.3 Ghost swimskin today or tomorrow morning; it’s made from Roka’s fastest material, which repels water on contact and has a seamless, laser-bonded constructon

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A big thanks to Salomon for flying me out to Kona this year and to Roka for supporting our Kona coverage.

Bonus: You can now win a pair of Roka’s R2 goggles as part of our podium predictions contest. Get your picks in before the race starts.

How many women is the right number of women?

jk, there is no right answer

There will either be 2,548 athletes or 2,612 athletes on the start line on Saturday, probably depending on if you count people who have already pulled out. (Yes, I’ve asked Ironman about the discrepancy in their own reported numbers.) And 27% of those athletes will be women.

I’ve seen a lot of AI-generated “facts” about women’s participation. Most of which are not accurate, purely statistically speaking. But it’s pretty easy to look around on the ground in Kona and be like: Whoa, OK, there are not very many women here.

And that is one of the fundamental problems with Ironman announcing its “women’s initiative” at the same time as our return-to-one-day Kona. There’s a fundamental perception gap between saying you really really want to achieve 50% women’s participation and you really really mean it now, and looking around and seeing just 27% women.

What is ‘Woven?’

A lot of people don’t understand what Ironman’s Woven women’s initiative really is. So I asked Ironman to send me their actual documents after they tried to explain it to me, and after I’ve heard about it from people working on it, and here’s what I understand:

• It’s an internal effort coming out of a survey of 10,000 women across Ironman events and the triathlon-curious

• That, then, identified key (obvious) pain points for women: they don’t see themselves in Ironman marketing, there are necessary women’s-specific event accommodations and issues, and women need other women to talk to and train with/around (because, holy shit, there are so many dudes)

• Woven is a number of small things, then, that address many of those issues after working with some smart people (to varying degrees): female-specific marketing, tracking of women’s specific race data and responses, race policy standardization (like pregnancy deferral guidelines and lactation stations), women’s ambassadors and community events and content, and targeted efforts at a handful of 70.3 events to see what truly drives female participation

Could it work? Sure. Have we heard this before? Sure. Do we just need to wait and see what they actually do now? Absolutely.

More TK.

BONUS: Feisty is selling ‘Here For The Women’s Race’ shirts at Voyagers in the Kona Inn shopping center every morning this week. Because, we are 100% here for the women’s race.

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💭 Where are all of the men’s and women’s Kona champs now?! Obviously, Peter Reid has had the most interesting life post-win (as a bush pilot). And Robin Beck is my most respected: “No one knows where Robin Beck is or what she is up to. She is a mystery.” Mad props.

🚲 There was one bad age-grouper bike crash today — her bike is cracked in two — but no wide-spread reports yet of jellyfish swarms. We did hear from people who saw jellyfish but didn’t get stung.

📺 Ironman announced a split screen option on smart TVs where you’ll be able choose how many + what feeds you want to see this weekend. The additional video feeds will come with no commentary — audio is only available on the main feed — and the split screen is only a smart TV feature. (Getting a demo later today, will report back.)

❤️ The from-the-ground in Kona gossip: And if I was making a bet, I would notice that Ironman world champ Chelsea Sodaro is being excluded from the official media kits and from the press conference and from the brand pre-race events, and I would think that maybe she’s going to be ready to prove on race day that you all overlooked her, because it is goddamn wild to exclude an Ironman world champ from the Ironman pre-race press conference. IF I WAS A BETTING PERSON.

A (semi) fun fact

Enter Gustav Iden’s fundraiser to win his bike and raise money for cancer research in honor of his mom.

Thanks to our sponsors

Salomon - Come to Kona Heaven tomorrow afternoon (Wednesday) from 2-4pm to meet Courtney Dauwalter and Jessie Diggins

Roka - Come to the pier at 8am tomorrow (Wednesday) to test out the best swimskins on the market — they’ll have swimskins available to demo — and swim with Flora Duffy

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A big thanks to Salomon for flying me out to Kona this year and to Roka for supporting our Kona coverage.

Bonus: You can now win a pair of Roka’s R2 goggles as part of our podium predictions contest. The prize is no longer random things in Kelly’s office. It’s now random things in Kelly’s office + the fastest and most comfortable goggles on the market.

Plus, if you’re in Kona and want to test out their Viper X.3 swimskin — which Lucy Charles-Barclay & Jamie Riddle will be wearing on Saturday — you can demo one Tuesday-Thursday until 9am(ish) at the pier.

Have we hit peak Kona?

The big debate in running is if we’ve hit the point of too many brands, too many activations, too many shakeout runs, too many live podcast shows. Too many. UTMB mayor’s unhappy, New York Marathon’s banning confetti cannons.

Putting together my schedule for the week, it seems like Kona may be reaching this point, too.

• On: Their Tuesday morning run from Kai Eats appears to be sold out; they had a whole week’s worth of schedule but it’s disappeared now so who knows. WHO KNOWS.

• Salomon: At Kona Heaven Coffee mid-week — come by on Wednesday afternoon to meet Jessie Diggins & Courtney Dauwalter

• Ventum + Wyn Republic + the ProTriNews boy: At Laverne’s daily with … live shows & stuff

• Rouvy + Precision Fuel: At Kona Coffee & Tea on Palani — Tuesday-Thursday each morning + a treasure hunt

• Faster Through Science (Deboer, etc): At Magic Sands with swims every morning

• Canyon: At Lava Java with mechanics and … more stuff

• Breakfast with Bob, of course, always forever and ever amen: At Huggo’s

And more I’m sure. Plus, that doesn’t count every group doing a pop-up or a swim.

Everyone always says the locals have a complicated relationship with Ironman. But I don’t think it’s that complicated: There are some benefits and some costs; those are not distributed equally and at some point the costs start to outweigh the benefits for too many people. Live Aloha!

Kelly prediction: Give it 1-2 years and Ironman will be trying to regulate non-sponsor activations again. Wouldn’t it be funny if this is the year that finally breaks Kona?

Bonus pro trip: If an activation includes a recreational IV, you should know that is 100% definitely banned.

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🐟 Did the jellyfish get you? The practice swim went off yesterday at half the distance and with a slightly adjusted time due to box jellyfish swarms. (Plus, athletes who chose to pull out could get a refund.) We noticed many of the favorites didn’t risk it 👀 — but haven’t heard about a rash of stings yet… let us know

😂 A local’s take that made us laugh: How you know when it’s Ironman week.

📺 What to watch: Bob Babbitt is still at it (Taylor Knibb’s interviews will always be our pick) — but don’t miss Ironman’s Fighting Chance videos either, the Norwegians say so

❤️ Congrats: Word is one of our pros will be celebrating a new arrival pushing them to the finish line!

A (not so) fun fact

There will be 2,548 athletes lining up on Saturday — with 689 women as 27% of the total field.

Thanks to our sponsors

Salomon - Stay tuned for more about their Ironman intentions and what they have planned.

Roka - Don’t forget to enter our podium predictions contest for a new pair of R2 goggles, which I did wear this past weekend and are excellent.

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Presented by:

This is just your reminder that if you’re going to be in Kona in two weeks, you should get your COVID & flu shot now so you have a bit of a buffer. Kona is one giant petri dish anyway, might as well give yourself a chance.

And a reminder: Episode #2 of the Triathlonish podcast came out yesterday. I didn’t email it out to all of you because I, personally, hate getting too many emails, but I am going to now point you towards it a bunch of times:

In fact, one of the reasons this email is hitting you a little early is because today, right now as you read this, the World Triathlon Congress is happening in Spain. So. Buckle up.

- Kelly

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First, two quick Kona questions

In two weeks, I’ll be on the Big Island, so I’ve been lining up my meetings & events & interviews & plans. In the past, I’ve written a quick-hit daily newsletter, typically for Feisty, that includes a few fun facts, some links and recs, a blurb from the ground. (I’ve done the these from Kona, Nice, Paris.)

But I haven’t decided yet if I should do them this year. Would you all be interested in short daily emails only during Kona week?

Second question: I liked this idea Matt Trappe had during Western States and UTMB, where he simply brought together a bunch of people in the sport (industry, media, agents, athletes, RDs, organizers) for an off-line chat at a house with some drinks. To give everyone a chance to talk about all the things we’re all talking about anyway, but without worrying about how it looks or might be perceived. Off-line, not online. Share wild ideas, questions, half- (or fully-) formed thoughts.

I think this could be fun to do in Kona. (Formally. Since we all do it informally throughout the week anyway.) But, also, I simply do not have the energy for it to end up being an evening of lectures on why men deserve more World Championship spots than women. I’m not interested, I’m not going to change my fundamental core beliefs, and I have no desire to re-tread this well-worn inanity. I do not have space in my life for that.

So, is it possible to talk about Ironman and triathlon and the future without devolving into debate on proportionality? Would we be able to approach the evening with fresh insights and new ideas? Thoughts?

If you’re interested, slide into my DMs and I’ll mull the salon possibility.

One other Kona thing: Start time innovations have dropped

Do you remember when we all asked how a 2,600-person one-day race with the men and women crammed into the same course together could possibly create fair racing conditions for the women? And CEO Scott said “innovations in start times.”

You don’t remember that? Well, I do.

And now, the innovations are here:

Honestly, I’m being mean because this is what RDs have done almost since start waves were invented, but that doesn’t mean I don’t understand what Ironman is going for.

Ironman race directors have often put thought into spacing waves by age and gender in order to give the pro women enough time before the age-group men, to create gaps between age-group waves of similar speeds, and to create speed differentials so that when athletes from one wave pass athletes from another wave they move quickly through — decreasing the possibility of clumping and large packs.

So I do understand what they’re going for here.

But, I also think we all know that those men’s Waves #3-6 are going to turn into one giant smoosh, and that the women’s Wave #7 is going to get swallowed up by men on both sides. We all think that’s what will probably happen because that’s what we’ve seen happen many times. Which is partially why I also think we’re having a bit of a short-term memory problem. I know Jimmy (the head ref) and Diana (the head of world championship events) remember what one-day combined Kona races were like with the massive packs and 90% of athletes coming out of the swim in a 15-minute window. But the last one of those was in 2019. I think a great many other people have forgotten a one-day Kona, and I do not think CEO Scott has any idea what that looks like on the Queen K. Guess he’s gonna find out.

fyi, World Triathlon has a Congress

Now. This week, alongside the World Championship races in Pontevedra, Spain, is the annual World Triathlon delegates meeting. Called The Congress. It’s where all the people in charge of stuff from all of the different countries meet to give updates and read budgets and have drinks and make deals and vote.

This year’s vote will include possible changes to the World Triathlon Constitution.

Because most of my Triathlonish work lately has gone into the podcast, and because we did a huge episode all about the World Triathlon drama leading into the Congress meeting today (which is happening right now), I’m just going to share here some of the background and links:

• The Inquisitor did a whole investigation into documents that showed people were given a list of who to vote for in the 2024 World Tri elections

• This then raised questions about corruption and a complaint was filed with the Court of Arbitration for Sport

• Tim has interviewed many (many) of the people involved and written about the ongoing back and forth between the parties

• And you can read the full World Triathlon Congress agenda and packet here, if you so choose

🎧 GET THE DETAILS: We tried to explain it all clearly and concisely in yesterday’s podcast episode — because you need to understand the back story to understand what got us to today’s Congress

Go listen (or watch): Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube

Also happening: The World Tri races

In addition to the voting drama in Pontevedra, there is actual racing drama, too. The WTCS Championship Final: women on Saturday, men on Sunday.

As a reminder: The Final gives a 1.25x multiplier of points — meaning 1,250 points to the winner v. 1,000 in a regular WTCS race.

Also a reminder: In triathlon, the World Champion is the season series winner after the Final. (Which, personally, I think is confusing, and that there should be a world champion who wins the world championship race and then a series winner who wins the season-long series. Like in mountain biking. Or skiing.)

This does create a certain amount of drama, however, because series standings can swing wildly in the Final. And leads to a lot of announcers trying to do math mid-race.

Here’s where I understand it to be heading into the Final, based mostly on Tim’s math and World Triathlon previews:

The women’s race

Cassandre Beaugrand leads Beth Potter by 225 points, then Tilda Mansson by 363.

If Cassandre finishes on the podium, she wins the overall. Period.
If Beth is second, then Cassandre just needs to be 4th.
If Beth is third, then Cassandre just needs to be 6th. Etc.
If both Beth and Cassandre finish well down (as happened last year in Wollongong), then Tilda or Lisa Tertsch could win.

The men’s race

Vasco Vilaca leads Matt Hauser by 354 points after Matt had a very sub-par (for him) race in Weihai.

In order for Matt to win the overall, he has to win the race and Vasco has to finish 6th or lower.

Not that this has never happened. Think poor Alex Yee losing it in what seemed like an impossible race in 2023 and in a closer race in 2021.

WATCH: Para races on Friday @ 1 a.m. PT/4 a.m. ET, elite women on Saturday @ 11 a.m. PT/2 p.m. ET, elite men on Sunday @ 11 a.m. PT/2 p.m. ET

From the races

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

• T100 French Riviera: Hayden Wilde was my pick for Good Week; he’s really having quite the September.

• Sao Paulo 70.3: No reason to mention other than a shoutout to Rachel Olson because I know exactly what it feels like to keep having things go south and your life turned upside down and to know you’re capable and just want to win one of these damn things.

• Cozumel 70.3: And Lionel Sanders returned to racing with a 3rd.

• IM Maryland: This was the wild one here in the U.S. this weekend. Cam Wurf can still win an Ironman, with the fastest run split too btw. But the big story was…

  • A bad accident required a helicopter medical evac, which necessitated stopping bikers from entering the helicopter landing zone. Depending on where you were on the course you may have not been stopped at all or may have been stopped for about 10 minutes. Because of where it landed in the two laps, this heavily split the pro men’s race and was also emotionally rough I think for those who witnessed the accident. And then after the finish, it was later determined that the most fair way to adjust the results was simply to subtract the entire ~15-mile segment between the two timing mats. Which **did ultimately change the results. I checked those details with Ironman and they’re accurate, but OnYerLeft has the best graphical explanation.

Results: T100 French Riviera & standings, IM Maryland, Sao Paulo 70.3, Cozumel 70.3, Emilia Romagna 70.3

Mark your calendars

• Also happening this upcoming weekend (in addition to the World Tri racing): New York 70.3 (men) & Augusta 70.3 (women)

The -ish

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

• I don’t even totally understand this Backyard Ultra Triathlon, but: It operated essentially the same way Backyard Ultras work (one loop every hour on the hour until you can’t go on), except these athletes did a sprint triathlon every two hours until they couldn’t go on (500m swim, 20km bike, 5km run). In the end, two women did 33 loops in 66 hours with the closest man in third place at 21 loops. Which is still a lot of loops. (Instagram)

• Taylor Knibb was 13th overall and the top American at the UCI time trial world championships. (Tri247)

• Which is part of the Cycling Road World Championships, happening right now this week. (Velo)

• Triathlete had a fun list of the top triathlons in every state — which is really more like the most popular non-Ironman-brand triathlon in each state, but still, they got California right. (Triathlete)

• The World Road Running Championships were this past weekend and I’m going to leave it to Citius to give you thoughts. (Citius)

• Hyrox issued refunds after the “poop incident” and also sold a majority stake at a $700 million valuation. (Canadian Running/Huddle Up)

• If you missed it in the podcast: World Triathlon has claimed “hybrid racing” under its purview for the purposes of being the international governing body. Except now they might call it “hyathlon.”

• A good story about the steps this paramedic took to save their partner after a bike crash while they were riding.

• And a cool contest from FORM to fund someone’s first triathlon. Share it with that friend who keeps thinking about trying one. (FORM)

One last thing

Accurate.

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

Presented by Mint & Honey Co.

Sure, sure, there was a massive world championship this past weekend and we re-launched the Triathlonish podcast yesterday with an episode all about 70.3 Worlds. But the biggest news of the week: I did my first Hyrox (or Hyrox-like event). And you all, whatever the haters hate, it’s super fun. Also, I actually hands-on-knees mid-race blew myself up and was crippled for two days. And also, I 100% started Googling to find the next one.

I think that officially makes me a lifestyle athlete now.

Even though I additionally promised to do Jan Frodeno’s SGRAIL race here in three weeks — and will probably dust off my TT bike for it 😬 because triathletes gonna triathlete. Come join me in trying to remember how to Olympic-distance triathlon.

Now, let’s get to your weekly newsletter: Lots of tidbits, results, and more races races races.

- Kelly

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Au revoir Nice *French emojis*

Subtitled: Does anyone love triathlon more than Taylor Knibb and Kristian Blummenfelt? I’d say no.

My husband asked me why Taylor was doing 70.3 Worlds + UCI Worlds + Ironman Worlds, while Lucy CB was just focusing on Ironman, and I said: Because Taylor just loves it all too much, she can’t help herself, it’s all just SO FUN, aren’t you having fun!? (Zero criticism. She’s a 4x world champ, there’s nothing to criticize. Fun is fast, and you only get so many years at this level so you better enjoy them.)

We re-launched the Triathlonish podcast yesterday with a very (very) detailed episode about the 70.3 World Championships from me and our on-the-ground co-host Tim Heming. So I won’t repeat here all the industry and broader multi-sport things we covered extensively and in-depth: The numbers, the history, the money, the big announcements.

🎧 Go listen (or watch on Youtube for clips from the Nice finish line too): Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube

Women’s race

I watched the start of the bike, thought ‘OK, Taylor’s going to win,’ and went to bed because it was 11 p.m. here. Honestly, I could have been wrong, things happen, but I was right.

Full race recap. Interviews with the pros here and here. Results here.

1. Taylor Knibb - 4:19:24

2. Julie Derron - 4:23:30

3. Alanis Siffert - 4:25:10

4. Solveig Lovseth - 4:25:50

5. Marjolaine Pierre - 4:26:38

My surprises of the race: I underestimated Alanis Siffert in third. I thought she was better at the longer distances and this course wouldn’t suit her. I was wrong. I think Imogen Simmonds also got slightly under-rated in 7th. People (including me) might have just overlooked her following her 2025 and her understandable lack of a desire to grab a spotlight now.

Other end of the spectrum: I always think Kat Matthews is going to pull it out and just run her way onto the podium, because she so so frequently does. She didn’t quite this time — nursing a run injury, which happens — but I didn’t see that coming, even when I heard rumors about the injury a few days before. I too had irrational optimism, lol.

A thought for Kona: Quite a few people looked like they were solid but carrying training fatigue: Solveig, Paula Findlay, Laura Philipp. I would keep an eye on those people.

Also a reminder that Julie Derron and Imogen Simmonds will be racing in Hawaii.

Men’s race

Obviously a very different style than the women’s. 27 men out of T1 together. Too many lead changes to count on the run. A descent that made me very very nervous to watch, but that Gustav Iden says was under control so believe him if you want. Lots of complaining about draft packs and Race Ranger lights, but really what are ya gonna do.

Full race recap here. Interviews here and here. Results here.

1. Hayden Wilde - 3:50:51

2. Kristian Blummenfelt - 3:51:09

3. Jelle Geens - 3:52:40

4. Gustav Iden - 3:53:16

5. Lasse Nygaard Priester - 3:54:08

My surprises of the race: I’ll admit it: I didn’t think Hayden Wilde would even podium. I thought he was tired — he has a big September (raced Supertri, has T100 this upcoming weekend, then WTCS Finals) — and I thought he’d just get rolled. Boy was I wrong about that. I had pretty much everyone else in the right order after him, but minus him.

And, if anyone said they had Michele Bortolamedi in their top ten beforehand, they are lying now.

For Kona: I’d worry about the Norwegians. All of them.

French odds & ends

Since we did cover far too much dense detail in the podcast, I’m only going to add a few 70.3 Worlds tidbits.

• The fastest bikes and the bike count. (Triathlete/Instagram)

• Kristian’s 1:05 Strava run file and Gustav Iden’s fastest bike file. (Strava)

• Ironman posted the Col de Vence times. I had a hard time finding the right segment on Strava, because even in this day and age there are too many Strava segments, but if you want to see the overall leaderboards I think this is it. (Instagram/Strava)

• As Tim explained on the pod, there was evidently a crash as the front pack of pro men came into T2 on the Promenade — the moto head-on’d into an age-grouper coming out of T1, and then almost took out the whole group. Sounds like everyone is OK. (Triathlete)

• Taylor Knibb went on The Triathlon Hour to talk about her race. And Jelle Geens went on his own show, All In Triathlon, to talk about his race. (Youtube/Apple Podcasts)

• We talked lots of the numbers on our show: And as far as I can tell there were 3,003 women who started (though started is a little tough, since it’s more like ‘who checked in and had a chip/bib’) & 2,689 women who finished; there were 3,498 men who started & 3,145 who finished. (Spotify)

• We also talked about the big heavily rumored Salomon title partnership deal (and my estimate at how much the deal is worth). The next question I keep coming to is: Why, what is Salomon’s goal? (WWD)

• Which, speaking of, in case you were wondering, Salomon does have a super shoe. (Outside Run)

Mint & Honey Co.

As I’ve mentioned a few times, one of the things that’s nice working with Lynette at Mint & Honey Co. is that she really understands and is a part of both the triathlon and running communities but also the growing wellness and health spaces. So I asked her to explain what she thinks it means to combine wellness and endurance:

“To me, the intersection of wellness and endurance sports combines the grittiness of exploring what you’re capable of physically and mentally, while nourishing your body with real food, doing workouts you actually enjoy, spending time with loved ones, prioritizing recovery and sleep, and ensuring you have alone time.

Wellness is supposed to make you feel well, not overwhelmed. Before the optimization boom of biohacking, wearables, tracking everything, we subconsciously lived healthy, active lifestyles.

I find it important to be in this intersection personally and professionally because recognizing the line between over-optimization and understanding the numbers allows us to live in a balanced way with flexibility.”

Reach out to Lynette to find out what Mint & Honey Co. can do for you as an athlete, a brand, a race director, or even just as a person also passionate about endurance & wellness.

From the races

There were a lot of other races this past weekend and quite a few on the calendar this upcoming weekend, so we’re just going to try to hit the highlights.

• WTCS Karlovy Vary: Lots of crashes in the rain. Big shoutout to Georgia Taylor-Brown for the win three years after her last one. Good to see her back on top. And Alex Yee looks like he’s starting to return to WTCS form — didn’t quite hunt down Dorian Coninx but close.

• IM Wales: Speaking of rain. Another big shoutout to Nikki Bartlett for winning this one.

• Challenge Samarkand: Sam Laidlow did have to walk but did also win. So make of that what you will.

Results: WTCS Karlovy Vary + the standings ahead of the Championship Final next weekend, IM Wales, Sunshine Coast 70.3, Challenge Samarkand, Challenge Almere

Mark your calendars

• T100 French Riviera: In which Hayden Wilde continues his epic September. Joined by quite a few of the guys who raced in Nice.

  • WATCH: Saturday 2 a.m. ET/11 p.m. PT the night before on Youtube

The -ish

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

• This was a sweet homage from Daniel Baekkegard to The Norwegians. (Instagram)

• Daniela Bleymehl won’t finish off her career in Kona, like she was hoping. Because, unfortunately, most of us never get that fairytale ending and that’s OK. (Instagram)

• Challenge Roth was happy to report all the doping tests conducted in-race were negative. Which I feel like you should actually have mixed feelings about. (Roth)

• An athlete died during the swim of the Wisconsin 70.3, which is the fourth death in Madison (full and half). I’ve done that race, my husband’s done that race, I love that race; no idea why or what’s happening. (The Athletic)

• The World Ultimate Championships — track, guys, they’re talking about track & field — is meant to be something exciting in the off-years, a shorter and more money and more pizzazz meet, and a way to test innovations. It happened this past weekend and, despite the fact that you probably didn’t know that, it sorta succeeded. (The Athletic)

• Canyon made LeBron James a massive 3XL custom bike. (Velo)

• Just a thought but maybe we don’t need high school sports content creators. (Front Office Sports)

• Lots of people on podcasts this week: Jenny Simpson was on Rich Roll to talk about her heart stopping, Chelsea Sodaro was on Trail Society, and Kilian Jornet talked to Jan. (Youtube/Apple Podcasts)

• Kate Courtney’s RedBull movie is pretty solid and way to go Etienne on the shooting and producing it. (RedBull TV)

• Here’s a little more about the Canadian runner who disappeared on the Matterhorn. (Outside)

• Seems like all retired gold medalists are getting into ultra trail running. Jessie Diggins was next up, winning her first 100-miler. (MPR News)

• Of course, we can’t not mention the pro winner who had explosive diarrhea at the Hyrox in Beijing. So I’ll just say while it is not uncommon for elite athletes to shit themselves in triathlons, I think the primary difference is that in marathons or Ironmans if you accidentally poop you’re only really impacting yourself (and it tends to happen during the later portions of the run, outdoors, almost finished). In Hyrox, which is an indoor competition, you’re sharing equipment and space with all the other athletes who come after you (and this was very much not self-contained, it was running down her legs, and it was early in the competition — so). I absolutely feel bad for her, I think she just did what she’d trained to do (continue competing), and she doesn’t deserve the amount of viral-ity that’s now happened, but I think most criticisms have less to do with her as an athlete and more to do with the impact it had on other athletes. (NY Post/The Athletic)

• “We Are Pleased to Announce the Acquisition of Hell by UTMB®” (Zoe’s Substack)

One last thing

I do not think I would have finished (or started) this half-marathon.

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

Presented by Mint & Honey Co. — a unique public relations and digital marketing firm that is personally invested in the same industries their clients work in. Reach out to talk about how they could help you grow your business, where there might be opportunities, or just to brainstorm.

The big news of the week is the podcast is back. Or will be back. On Tuesday. New co-host, new angle. Gonna try to just nerd out.

And yes that nerding out in episode #1 will be almost exclusively about Nice — which I went to in 2019 for my husband to race 70.3 Worlds + me to cover it for Triathlete, in 2023 for the Global Tri Awards, and then in both 2023 & 2024 for Men’s & Women’s Nice 1.0. Feels weird to not be in Nice this year.

But, fear not, we’ll have the industry and event reports from the ground. What is the future of 70.3 Worlds? What’s the history? Do brands make money? Does Ironman make money here, what’s their business objective?

First, though. One quick-ish thing about doping. Just one.

- Kelly

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The anti-doping whereabouts app has a 2.2-star rating

Just a fun fact. The system used to log your location so that anti-doping testers can find you (called ADAMS, with the app now called Athlete Central) is universally hated by athletes because it is cumbersome and buggy and a huge pain in the ass.

And that’s basically Joe Skipper’s argument for why he now has an 18-month doping ban: He had three whereabouts failures between July 2024 and May 2025, and he’s more or less saying he didn’t dope, he just messed up the paperwork.

(((An aside: Jack Kelly had a whole video with overly detailed explanations about this one time Joe was on a bike ride and the testers showed up, and then this other time he updated his overnight location for a race but forgot to update his daytime location, etc etc etc. But then Joe said Jack was full of shit, and then Jack took down the video, and then all of our heads imploded.)))

A FUN READ: Who is responsible for anti-doping in long-course triathlon?

A quick explanation of how whereabouts works:

• Depending on what kind of testing pool they’ve been put in, athletes have to provide a daily one-hour window in which they must be exactly where they say they’ll be so they can be tested

• For the other 23 hours of the day, they have to provide general information and keep it updated: overnight location, travel schedules, regular training/work/social commitments, contact info

A good way to understand this is that in the one-hour window the burden is on the athlete, and in the other 23 hours the burden is a best effort accuracy that the tester has a reasonable chance of locating the athlete.

There are two ways athletes can get a whereabouts “failure.” And if they get three failures within a 12-month time period, then it counts as an anti-doping violation — because you can’t be tested if you can’t be found — and that violation comes with the requisite ban.

The two ways to get a failure:

• Missed test: If the tester shows up in the hour window and the athlete isn’t there or can’t get there within the hour time period, then it’s an automatic missed test.

• Filing failure: If, for the other 23 hours, the athlete doesn’t submit location information, provides incomplete information, or gives incorrect information.

There’s a little more gray area in the 23-hour period (IMO), because if your information generally says you’re home but then you go out to dinner that’s fine — but if you say you’re home and then you’re really in another country, that’s not fine. (So how far away can you go to dinner? lol.) The burden is on the tester to locate you, as long as you provide reasonably accurate information. It’s not automatically considered a missed test if they can’t find you, but once you’ve been found you can not refuse a test. I’d say there’s also a little more gray area in the 23-hour period because testers don’t necessarily know if your information isn’t accurate unless you don’t fill it out, or if it’s super obvious or suspicious and they’re checking up on you, or if they show up to test you and you’re really somewhere else. So, honestly, you could make mistakes a few times before it catches up to you.

The general consensus from athletes is both:

1. that the whereabouts logging system doesn’t work well (updates don’t save, you have to re-enter all your info, athletes are constantly changing their training and racing plans and then they have to re-update it all again)

and also…

2. that once you have one or two whereabouts failures (which happens to lots of athletes) you get really freaked out about not getting a third and you work hard to make sure your information is always correct.

Do I particularly think Joe Skipper is doping? No, not really. Do I think the idea that he’s ‘really against doping’ proves anything? No, not really. You can’t argue that the rules should be super strict unless you also believe they apply to you.

In conclusion, I will leave you with Joe’s own words from 2023 about how dopers could, theoretically, use holes in the whereabouts system to cheat.

Now what you came for: 70.3 Worlds

OK, onto the big exciting fun stuff of the week: The first (and, personally, my favorite) world championship of the season.

Here’s everything you want to know for Nice — and we’ll have a NEW podcast episode on Tuesday post-race with the industry news, gossip, analysis:

• Previews from Triathlete & ratings from Thorsten

• Very long podcast shows from Triathlon Hour & ProTriNews

• And the (nearly) complete list of which pros are really starting

Men’s race

I think the general consensus is that the men are going to go up (and blow up) in a giant pack on the climb, and then pay the consequences on the run. And it’ll mostly come down to who, out of the group, is able to keep the gas on in the second lap of the 13.1.

Here’s Rudy Von Berg’s analysis from the climb during the last 70.3 Worlds here — plus, he’s lived in the area and knows the numbers pretty well.

Personally, I think we see a run back-and-forth and possibly another sprint finish in the final Ks. Kristian Blummenfelt seems to be in full fucking with the others form, so read into that what you will.

Women’s race

Will likely be a smaller group and more catching up on the bike from the second swim pack. It depends a little bit on where Kat Matthews and Taylor Knibb end up out of T1, because they (and Laura Philipp) will want to attack on the climb — while some of the newer short-course athletes, like Sophie Coldwell, may have a bit of gap out of the water.

I feel like we have some very different styles in the women’s race, and different opinions. You have Taylor doing this + cycling world champs + Kona and Laura P. racing herself into shape, and then you have Paula Findlay turning down cycling worlds because it’s too much and Lucy CB opting out of Nice to focus just on Kona.

Can they all be right?

Hit the comments below with your podium predictions. Closest guesses may win our standard ‘whatever random stuff I have in my office’ contest. Personally, I’m picking: Taylor & Kristian — with Kat & Jelle right behind.

WATCH: Women on Saturday & men on Sunday (will they ever rotate that order??) @ 7 a.m. in France/1 a.m. ET/ 10 p.m. the night before PT on Ironman’s Youtube

A few other odds & ends

• The stats on the pros & on the giant age-group field (men + women)

• Precision’s breakdown on how they fuel

• Slowtwitch with some of the gear

• And Ironman evidently sent out a notification reminding athletes to practice safety on the bike and ride to the left of the road — except in France you definitely want to ride to the right of the road

From the races

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

• Supertri Final: Matt Hauser & Cassandre Beaugrand did what they’ve been doing all season and this time they each got $100K for it.

• Long-Distance Duathlon World Champs: Congrats to Merle Brunee for winning her 5th one of these.

Results: Supertri: men & women, Gerardmer XL, World Tri Long-Distance Duathlon World Champs

Mark your calendars

• One other big one this weekend: WTCS Karlovy Vary — the last WTCS race before the Championship Final next week and one a lot of athletes skipped China to do

  • WATCH: Sunday women @ 4 a.m. ET/1 a.m. PT + men @ 9 a.m. ET/6 a.m. PT

• There’s actually quite a few other races happening here in the middle of the championship weekend — but honestly ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ that’s perfectly fine for your personal fulfillment but I don’t feel compelled to follow: IM Wales, the World Tri Long Distance Championships at Challenge Almere, Sam Laidlow at Challenge Samarkand instead

The -ish

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

• BTW, there’s another big World Championship — the World Triathlon Championship Finals next week in Pontevedra — and with that comes the World Triathlon Congress. Which a fancy name for the big annual meeting where World Tri votes on a lot of stuff. More details TK in episode #2 of the podcast. (World Triathlon/Youtube)

• Ironman announced the 2027 IM Pro Series schedule, which is more or less what was expected. (Ironman)

• There were a few more thoughts from the trail runners about the UTMB mega-growth and the World Series-ization of the races. And I’ll say what I said here: That I think trail runners over-index on the Ironman investment when they debate the growth of UTMB and the “ruining” of the sport. I don’t think Ironman actually has that much say in what is and isn’t happening. (TrailRunner/Borderlands/Matter of Brand)

• It was the Otillo SwimRun World Champs this past weekend. Still very much on my bucket list. (Instagram)

• Megan Eckert set a new six-day running world record, covering 636 miles. (iRunFar)

• And this upcoming weekend is also the track World Athletics Ultimate Championship, which no one understands. (ESPN)

• Jonny Brownlee retired. (Reuters)

• Kristian Blummenfelt & Sam Laidlow are talking a lot of trash at each other. (Instagram)

• The Ironman Foundation has started a fund in memory of Jennifer Reinhart. (Ironman Foundation)

• An update from Jeanne Collonge after her bad crash. (Instagram)

• Canadian runner Kalie McCrystal is missing from a training summit on the Matterhorn. (The Guardian)

• This is a good piece about attempting Mt. Ventoux again as an amateur. (Escape Collective)

• Sam Appleton is doing Patagonman, as is required for retiring triathletes. And Olivia Dietzel is one of the athletes participating in the first organized triathlon in Antarctica. (Instagram)

• Triathlete had an interesting roundtable discussion about the pros and cons of creating extreme personal challenges. (Triathlete)

• It also came out this week that Tomas Rodriguez had a follow-up doping violation for “tampering” and for violating the prohibition on participating in events while serving his previous ban. He also posted a self-explaining IG video. And I don’t have an opinion about this other than that the responses to him v. Joe Skipper are … different. (ITA/Instagram)

• When the six-time bog snorkeling world champion tells you not to swallow the water, it’s good advice. (The Athletic)

One last thing

Who’s faster: Mountain biker or ultra runner? In my experience, up it’s usually the runner, down and flat it’s the biker.

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

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

Welcome to Marin, bitch.

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

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

- Kelly

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The limit does not exist

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

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

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

That’s the kind of insight I bring you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who’s in, who’s out

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some other UTMB odds and ends:

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

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

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

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

• Ben Dhiman’s Strava file of his win

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

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

And let’s get to know Doug!

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

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

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

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

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

From the races

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark your calendar

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

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

The -ish

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Sam Appleton announced his retirement. (Instagram)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One last thing

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

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

Presented by Mint & Honey Co.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And, now, back to triathlon(ish).

- Kelly

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The first of the lasts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From the races

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

• Allgäu Triathlon: Anne Reischmann is back racing postpartum.

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

Results: Leipzig 70.3, Tallinn 70.3

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

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

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

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

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

The -ish

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One last thing

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

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

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

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

- Kelly

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

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

Now here we are.

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

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

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

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

• The breakdown and early details

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

• Meme tiers of contenders

• And who’s already out: Leon Chevalier

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

And a thing I just happen to think about sometimes

btw.

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

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

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

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

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

From the races

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

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

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

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

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

Get to know the woman behind the magic

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

So let’s get to know her.

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

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

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

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

The -ish

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One last thing

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

Presented by Mint & Honey Co.

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

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

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

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

- Kelly

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Champs season has officially started

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

The course

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

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

The start list

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

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

Is this a boom?

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

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

Good question.

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

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

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

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

Is triathlon booming?

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

From the races

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

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

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

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

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

Mark your calendars

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

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

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

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

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

The -ish

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

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

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

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

• Maja Stage-Neilsen is retiring. (Instagram)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One last thing

Accurate.

Presented by Mint & Honey Co.

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

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

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

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

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

Now, your free weekly Wednesday newsletter…

- Kelly

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Last stop before Kona

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

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

Some key people making their final bid in Kalmar:

• Daniel Baekkegard

• Gregory Barnaby

• Jonas Hoffmann

• Pieter Heemeryck

• Robert Wilkowiecki

• Robert Kallin

• Jeanne Collonge

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

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

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

• Holly Lawrence, as mentioned, is too injured.

• And, obviously Lisa Norden is also too postpartum.

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

Two more things about 2027 T-Whatever

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

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

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

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

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

Honestly, no.

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

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

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

Work with marketers who really live the industry

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

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

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

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

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

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

From the races

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

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

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

Results: World Cup - Rio, Krakow 70.3, Norseman

The -ish

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One last thing

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

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

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

- Kelly

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

Do you get it yet.

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

T50

• March 27-28: Abu Dhabi

• April 24-25: Samarkand, Uzbekistan

• May 15-16: Yokohama, Japan

• June 5-6: Rome

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

• Aug. 21-22: London

• Sept. 8-12: Hamburg — World Championship

• Sept. 25-26: Weihai, China

• Nov. 20-21: Tauranga, New Zealand

T100

• March 20-21: Gold Coast, Australia

• April 10-11: Singapore

• June 5-6: San Francisco, California

• Aug. 14-15: Vancouver, Canada

• Sept. 18-19: Marbella, Spain

• Nov. 26-27: Saudi Arabia

• Dec. 10-11: Qatar — World Championship

• Date TBD: French Riviera

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

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

READ MORE: A Conversation with the World Tri President

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

Now back to the announcement…

What is the T50 distance?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Race Ranger data from Roth

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

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

So make of that what you want.

From the races

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

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

  • And Ari Klau explained the whole shoe thing.

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

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

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

The -ish

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One last thing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what else is going on?

- Kelly

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You never know how Ironman will go

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An update on women

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

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

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

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

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

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

From the races

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

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

Mark your calendars

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

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

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

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

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

The -ish

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

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

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

• Garmin bought TrainingPeaks. (DC Rainmaker)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One last thing

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

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

- Kelly

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If only someone could have warned us

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

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

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

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

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

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

One last time, relax, have a drink with me

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

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

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

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

From the other races

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

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

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

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

Mark your calendar

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

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

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

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

The -ish

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One last thing

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

This week’s newletter is brought to you by:

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

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

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

- Kelly

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A few last things from France

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• The bike count from Nice and the fastest shoes

• A graphical representation of how it all went down

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get your shirts

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

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

From the other races

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

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

Mark your calendars

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

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

• Supertri Jersey: Also this weekend!

The -ish

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Zwift canceled all elite racing. (Escape Collective)

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

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

One last thing

What a picture after the 1500m finish line.

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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.