#118: Best of 2024

A random assortment of awards I made up.

issue #118: Dec. 18, 2024

Hi all, we’ll be semi-off next week — will just be sharing the year’s most popular newsletters and some links to fill your holiday free time — and then will be back on Jan. 1 ready to get 2025 started.

That gives me two whole weeks to decide what exactly I think about 2025. I’m still split on what’s going to happen with tri from here, which is probably because it’s a mix of answers. I’m also still split on how I feel about those answers. Will let you know in two weeks.

We’re also ending our paying subscriptions here at Triathlonish at the end of the year — which I’ve already shared with those subscribers, but am giving all of you the update, too. This is mostly because I’m shifting a lot of my time and work to focus primarily on Feisty, and will ultimately be rolling Triathlonish into Feisty (but don’t worry, this weekly Wednesday newsletter will still be coming to everyone the same as always!). I want to thank everyone for all their support and I hope you’re excited about all the things coming — even if I’m split on what’s happening with triathlon, I’m not split about everything happening in the triathlon-ish universe: lots of athletes, lots of investment and new opportunities, lots of coverage. We’ll see what rises to the top.

- Kelly

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New in New Zealand

At this point, you probably know what happened at the 70.3 World Championships in Taupo — which it sounds like, from everyone there, was generally agreed to be the best experience and crowds and location of the year. If only, with this whole ‘what should happen to Kona/Nice and the Ironman World Champs’ question, we had some kind of model for creating an incredibly popular event that rotates around the world to interesting locations & gives women and men their own races and platforms & qualifies large numbers without too much over-hand-wringing about ‘how hard it is to qualify.’

If only we had some kind of example for how to make this work and build it into a success over a decade. If only.

The women’s race

Can anyone beat Taylor Knibb? Not yet, not right now, obviously, but they’re getting closer. I really truly genuinely believed that Kat Matthews was capable of running her down, if there’d been more runway. She was going so hard, all-in, and got so close. Yes, sure, Taylor slowed when the win was in the bag, but still. The important thing is the other women aren’t rolling over, they’re trying everything they can. It’ll come together for one of them one of these days. (I also think, damn, Kat really wants to win one of these world titles now. That’s four second places and she doesn’t want to wait years for the win.)

1. Taylor Knibb - 3:57:34

2. Kat Matthews - 3:58:49

3. Ashleigh Gentle - 4:03:01

4. Imogen Simmonds - 4:05:12

5. Julie Derron - 4:06:02

The men’s race

If the women’s race is a question of one athlete shaping the day, then the men’s race is all about how the group has fundamentally changed the dynamic. It’s no longer a long-course mid-distance race. It’s a short-course event now. The whole podium came from the Paris Olympics. The short-course athletes have changed how you win these races. It’s too fast and too tight a front swim group that you have to be in, and then the bike group stays together as much as it does (dropping some athletes through attrition), until it’s simply a running race out of that group.

That’s what it takes now. The order is decided by who runs the fastest. Done. And Jelle Geens is the best at that. It wasn’t so much that he sped up as that Hayden Wilde slowed down.

1. Jelle Geens - 3:32:09

2. Hayden Wilde - 3:33:22

3. Leo Bergere - 3:35:08

4. Kyle Smith - 3:37:51

5. Justus Neischlag - 3:38:06

There were fights up and down the results list, including a three-way sprint for the last prize money spot in the men’s race, as is the custom. Full results here.

Photo: IRONMAN

IM Pro Series: And, of course, it was the final race of the IM Pro Series too — so the winners got oversized checks.

Kat scored 2,761 out of a possible 2,150 points. Can anyone get a perfect score?

And Gregory Barnaby held onto the overall men’s title — which was the race-within-the-race, though slightly less exciting than Kat’s win, because, well, simply put: She went for it.

Full final standings here.

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Triathlonish’s very random best of the year list

Why go with boring things like ‘the best athlete’ — they’re all good — when we can instead pick a whole bunch of random bests that stood out.

Best all-around season: Kat Matthews — it’s impossible now not to recognize what she pulled off overall this year, between 4th in the T100 series, 2nd at both the Ironman World Champs & 70.3 World Champs, and winning the overall Ironman Pro Series (which included a couple of Ironman wins), it’s one of the most impressive seasons in recent memory. Kudos to Kat!

Best performance: There were better and more interesting races, but in terms of pure exercising performances I’m split between Magnus Ditlev or Anne Haug’s world’s best (world records, whatever) Iron-distance times at Roth.

Most exciting race: The mixed relay photo finish sprint at the Olympics, right? Hands down. Crashes, comebacks, pull aways, had it all. Runner-up: The men’s Olympic race, with Alex Yee making his move past Hayden Wilde in the final stretch.

Best comeback after for some reason everyone had sorta forgotten about him even though he’s already won two world titles: That’s what you get for thinking Patrick Lange was done, now stop asking him if he’s retiring.

The athlete no one seems able to beat right now: Obviously, Taylor Knibb at the mid-distance — but, we’ve been here before, where someone seemed undefeatable. She’s already raising the game for the other women, just give it a year or two.

Most impressive year that you probably didn’t remember happened: Cassandre Beaugrand won the Olympics on home turf — genuine celebrity stuff — and then won the world title. That’s something that doesn’t happen often.

Best (kinda) breakthrough: It’s not like Kyle Smith hadn’t had an impressive career already, but he really cracked into the tier of athletes whose names you know this year thanks to the T100 San Francisco sprint all the way to 4th at 70.3 Worlds.

An exciting race people weirdly undervalued: Kat Matthews & Laura Philipp’s battle in Nice was actually really very back-and-forth, and I still don’t understand why everyone acted like it wasn’t as exciting as it was.

Best overall experience: According to everyone, 70.3 Worlds in New Zealand — but I’m gonna have to take everyone on their word on that.

Best new pro series: Normally a category there’d only be one entrant in, but not lately. I’m gonna give this to the IM Pro Series — mostly because I think we all thought it’d be mediocre (and it certainly had its mediocre moments) but more than exceeded expectations. Though, we have to also give the award ‘for the biggest bet that’s helping push the sport forward’ to the PTO & its T100, of course.

The PTO also wins best stats and bios website that I use way way too often.

Biggest question going into 2025: Where is the T100 series going from here? Will it succeed? Will it be profitable?

Runner-up question: Are we all getting crammed back into one race in Kona?

Runner runner-up question: *Is* triathlon really rebounding?

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The -ish

Stuff from around our sports worth knowing about this week.

• All the rumors about T100 contracts are finally out in the open and the word about 8 out of top 10 committing for 2025 seems to be right: Kat Matthews and Laura Philipp reportedly turning T100 down (yes, I believe because they want to go all-in on winning Kona), and Magnus Ditlev (and Ali Brownlee, yes, duh) out. This is a good graphic representation. Only big surprise to me is Sam Long signing with T100. The open question, of course, was less about the top 10 and more about the long-course athletes who didn’t end up in the top 10 but would likely be offered contracts — think Anne Haug, Lucy Charles-Barclay, Patrick Lange, Rudy Von Berg, the Norwegians. Given how hard the series has shifted to mid-course/short-course athletes, I expect many of those names won’t sign. (Twitter/Instagram)

• In terms of the rumors about T100 races and dates moving around, I’m honestly having a hard time caring? I know the fluid schedule is causing a little chaos as people try to commit without knowing what they’re committing to, but, well, we’ll know when we know ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (Tri-Today)

• Ironman is also sorting out its Pro Series for 2025 and it sounds like they’ll be using GPS trackers. (Instagram)

• BMC announced its 2025 team — adding Laura Madsen and Clement Mignon, and still somehow only having two women. (BMC)

• Alex Yee is running the London Marathon and wants to run sub-2:10. Predictions? (The Guardian)

• Flora Duffy made the Bermuda holiday lights show. (Instagram)

• There were 30 world records at SCM Swimming World Champs last week — led by Gretchen Walsh’s 11. And each record came with a $25K bonus (split for relay records). Turns out all these short-course pools in the U.S. has at least one upside: we’re very very good at short-course. (Swimswam/Instagram)

• I also spent a whole bunch of time making this list of the 20 best moments in women’s sports this year. (Feisty Media)

• Garmin released its year in review — with the average body battery starting at 71 in the morning and dropping to 22, which makes me wonder what I’m doing because mine swings significantly more than that. (Garmin)

• The Golden Trail Series announced its 2025 calendar, with a few changes and stuff (this is a good explainer), but it’s still one of the most interesting trail/running series out there. (Golden Trail Series/Trailmix)

• This a fun project bringing in four young people from different backgrounds to run the Dipsea and documenting it. Obviously I love the Dispea because it’s a huge deal here, but it’s also a legendary race. (Seed & Spark)

• A father has been banned from this race in China after letting his 9-year-old run a marathon — and, I dunno, I’m always just sorta like whatever let them do what they’re gonna do, it maybe isn’t great but there are worse things and also it’s fine. (Running Magazine)

• The world of competitive bikejoring. (Escape Collective)

• But the weirdest story I read last week: The competitive high-stakes world of youth go-karting as a feeder grounds for Formula One. (Washington Post)

• And a unified theory of fucks. (A Working Library)

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One last thing

After Garmin got *torn up* for posting a ‘listen and don’t judge’ meme on their account (and then deleting it), this seems very accurate.