Triathlon is very white, mostly male, slightly older, and generally wealthy. It’s been these things for most of its existence. I don’t think that’s up for debate. But what has been an ongoing question is: Why?
I’m going to attempt to give the Cliff Notes answer (as it pertains to the U.S.), though it’s certainly a more complex question with many more nuanced reasons and different answers for different regions. I’m also not going to solve the question, but I think understanding how we got here is usually a first step.
At Triathlete, we had three Black women answer the question ‘why aren’t there more Black triathletes’ and I thought thier essays were illuminating at the time. But I also realized from the comments and emails and conversations we got that a lot of triathletes just hadn’t even thought about it. A lot of people think the answer is simply: People of color just don’t want to do triathlon. And that’s not true.
Money, sure, but that’s not the only reason. Yes, triathlon is an expensive sport — more expensive than running, for example. There’s also (for all the efforts to make it cheaper) not really an unexpensive version. ie. Soccer or basketball can be expensive to play in certain places or leagues or in excessive youth elite development circles, but there are also kids playing with hand-me-down balls in parking lots and on street corners all over the world. That doesn’t exist in triathlon; there is no such thing as pickup triathlon.
Why does this matter? Because, statistically speaking, centuries of generational wealth being passed down more frequently in certain racial groups, plus laws that systematically limited the ability for other groups to accrue wealth, basically guarantees that on average the people who have the money and access to triathlon are going to be predominantly upper middle class and white. However, even within similar socioeconomic groups, there typically are still fewer Black, Latino, and Asian triathletes. So it’s not the only reason.
When we talk about access, we can’t ignore historical access and the implications that still has today. Let’s talk about pools in the U.S., for example. In the early 20th Century, as public parks and pools got built on wide scale, they were systematically built in poor or working class white neighborhoods but not in Black neighborhoods. There’d be stats like one small indoor pool that Black families were allowed to use in St. Louis, and nine huge ones for white families. (Separate but equal?) When recreational public spaces were then forcefully integrated it played out violently in pools and on beaches. Black kids were beaten up for trying to enter public pools, bleach was dumped in pools they were swimming in, there were riots from white families. Even after integration, in an effort to keep the “wrong kind of people” from swimming at their pools, some municipalities simply filled their pools with cement or closed them down. White families stopped using them, migrated heavily to private pools and country clubs — and even more public facilities then shut down because of the drops in attendance from those who didn’t want to share their water.
Why does this matter? It might be tempting to say that was a long time ago, but it was in the ‘50s and ‘60s. And the result is that are still far fewer public pools in historically non-white neighborhoods. The parents and grandparents of kids today were also themselves kids in the 1960s — and so if they didn’t learn to swim because they were violently excluded from the pools or they saw other kids getting beaten up for going to the pool, then they’re less likely to be able to teach their kids today how to swim or for it to be built into the fabric of their lives. Around 60% of Black kids today don’t know how to swim.
There’s also the element of simply not feeling culturally welcomed or seeing others who look like you do it. It’s hard to pin down how and why you feel comfortable in some spaces and not others, but it has to do with little comments people make to you or what the signs say or if someone goes out of their way to invite you in. These things can be small, but they can also be big — you hear runners and cyclists who are people of color talk about being stopped by police more often (that’s statistically true, btw), or being scared to ride in certain towns or neighborhoods because what if someone thinks they stole that bike or decides they’re trespassing. If you had to pick between a sport all your friends do and one where you’re going to have to fight to claim your space, which would you pick?
Why does this matter? Because the way you get into a sport you’ve never heard of and don’t know how to get started in is almost always by hearing about it from someone else and having someone to guide you. If you want to borrow a bike or learn how to open water, then you need to have a friend who has a bike to lend you or you need to know who to ask or you need to be in the right local training groups. All three of the women in that Triathlete piece talked about this element. It clearly matters.
Why does any of this matter? I get the sense in many places in the triathlon space (and, increasingly, in trail running and cycling — as those sports find their own way through these questions) that there’s an attitude of: Sure, it’d be nice if triathlon had a wider range of racial diversity, but oh well, it’s not our fault, we’re not stopping anyone from participating, so what’s the problem.
The thing is when something has external barriers erected around it, then it limits who can get through those barriers. And as long as you’re artificially limiting who comes in, then you’re never going to be able to really grow or, by definition, develop the best talent.
Tennis is still super white and it was kept that way deliberately for a long time, but once Venus and Serena fought their way in they changed the sport. They dominated a game they were previously actively excluded from. And then other women followed them. Can we really say we’ve got the best people in triathlon if we never have a Serena? If we never have East Africans competing at the level they run at? When the doors are thrown open, it’s generally better for everyone.