#116: Brewing up some triathlon tea
Where does it even come from?
issue #116: Dec. 4, 2024
All-sporters, as we near the end of the year — with maybe just one big race left? — I’m going to try to keep the last few newsletters of 2024 short and sweet. We have some new things coming in the new year, and I might already be in ‘let’s circle back after the holidays’ mode. So.
Sorry to all of you who still have races on the calendar; this is why I stopped doing Indian Wells.
- Kelly
P.S. Had some delivery issues today, so you got the email twice after getting it zero times earlier.
Updates on a few pieces of triathlon gossip lately
Because it’s time for a bunch of quick hits. ‘Tis the season when hot topics take on a life of their own. Almost like we get bored and just come up with stuff to talk about.
First up…
#1: Are the Ironman World Champs changing for 2025?
Last week rumors started flying that changes were coming soon for Men’s Nice & Women’s Kona: the 2025 Editions — even though we’re already well into the qualifying period.
As best I can tell this tea came primarily from two podcasts: The Triathlon Hour and ProTriNews, both of whom said they had been hearing rumors. And, sure, yes, if a change was going to be made, athletes and agents and officials and industry people would have to be told. And word would start to spread. So maybe they’ve heard that word. (That’s what happened in 2022 when the original Nice/Kona split was announced; by this time of year everyone had heard the rumors.) But, for whatever it’s worth, this time around I have not heard this about 2025 — though, granted, I tend to talk more to the female pros than male pros — and at least a few of Ironman’s brand partners told me they’ve not been told of any changes for next year, they’ve been told it’s very much still Men’s Nice & Women’s Kona.
The other source of the rumors seems to be the fact that the Men’s Nice registration page showed as Kona instead for a few days. It sounds like when you went to sign up for Nice, it instead showed everyone as registered for Kona and no Nice race. Now, this sounds like more of a glitch to me. (It’d be one thing if the registration showed a totally new race, like the Ironman Lake Placid World Championships, but just defaulting to Kona seems more like a system fluke.) And, again for whatever it’s worth, I asked Ironman about this and their response was basically: What are you talking about. They say 2025 is still Men’s Nice & Women’s Kona.
So, in conclusion: Is it possible things are going to change and they send everyone to Kona, even this late in the game? Sure, yep, definitely. I think we all know anything is possible. But my guess is that things stay as they are for 2025 and changes come for 2026.
One relevant new fact: The one actual piece of information that has changed is that Kona got a new Mayor this month. And as best I can tell, reading between the lines, the new Mayor is more receptive to additional Ironman athletes/days/events. So it’s entirely possible that two days in Kona is now very much back on the negotiation table. In which case the calculation changes. Wouldn’t that be something.
I do expect some Ironman announcements about some things to come out at 70.3 Worlds — but we’ll see what those amount to.
READ: Will Ironman Go Back to a One-Day World Championship?
#2: Who is taking a T100 contract?
There’s also been a lot of speculation the last few weeks about who is going to sign a 2025 T100 contract. I’ve been a little slow to jump on that because it’s going to come down to individual preferences, sponsor contracts, schedules, injuries, etc. But there are some trends starting to emerge.
For a refresher: The top ten in the T100 standings get a contract, then the next six in PTO rankings or “standout performances,” and then four hot shots.
I believe, in the end, it was half of the contracted women who ultimately met their contractual obligations this year, plus a few of the men who didn’t. It also became clear by the end of the series that the pure long-course athletes (who were also going after IM wins during the season) struggled more often both with injury and with the training and sharpness needed to succeed in both styles of racing.
So what seems likely to happen now is that going into 2025 we’ll lose even more of those pure long-course athletes — the ones who have designs on Ironman World Championships, whose sponsors are saying ‘win an Ironman title,’ and the ones who were just sorta stuck in the 8th to 15th range at T100 races. With more of the short-course and medium-course athletes likely focusing on T100 next year (with no Olympics) it’s also less appealing for the longer-course-oriented athletes.
I think this is probably ultimately going to be more true for the men, for all the reasons we’ve talked about before: The women are more used to grinding it out for a whatever prize money because they’re more reliant on prize money, the men usually sign bigger sponsor contracts that give them more room to bet it all on one or two big races, they also tend to be rewarded more for that big IM World Champs win too (especially if they’re European) so it makes that bet more worth it, and that just sorta creates a dynamic where I’m guessing we see more of the long-course guys opt for Ironman over T100.
Or, as my husband says: “In dudes, hope springs eternal.”
#3: And one last note about the PTO’s Athlete Board
Last week, we also mentioned that the athlete voting for the PTO’s Athlete Board representatives now gives higher ranked athletes more votes and gives no votes to anyone outside of the top 50 — which seems sort of ridiculous.
It’s been suggested since then that this is totally fine because the PTO can do whatever they want and the only reason people are upset is because the PTO used to say it was xx (an athlete union) and now is actually yy (a for-profit race organizer), but if they had just said they were yy all along then no one would be upset. I wrote out a whole response to this logic, but it was eaten by the internet, so instead I’ll just say it here:
Of course, a private company can do whatever a private company wants, but we can also evaluate and judge that company based on its choices.
The PTO got funding and support on the premise of claiming to be xx (an organization that represents athlete interest), they continue to promote themselves as “athlete-owned” (it’s in nearly every article about their funding rounds) and is clearly something they still push in their decks and investor pitches. [You can read my thoughts about what “athlete-owned” actually means in this context.] They’ve used and continue to use the rhetoric and so it is fair to ask how this rhetoric is actually implemented.
I also think it’s one thing to define athlete however you want or to say only the top 100 or top 50 get to vote on their representative. Sure, totally, it can’t be every athlete out there. But to literally give more say and voice to the athletes who benefit more and make more money from their own choices seems like the very definition of circular logic. It’s as if no one in triathlon actually read Animal Farm when it was assigned back in junior high.
Correction: Gregory Barnaby *can* win the IM Pro Series
And we know because he is now currently winning.
I have to admit I did my math bad last week. When I was thinking about whether Gregory Barnaby or Kristian Høgenhaug or Dr. Matt could pass Patrick Lange for #1 in the IM Pro Series I was primarily thinking about if they could get enough points at the 70.3 World Champs (which seemed, roughly, like it’d require a top 5 or so). I didn’t think about locking down the 2,500 points with a win at Western Australia 70.3 first! Oops.
(In my defense, back in Kona, Patrick also said something at the press conference about how he hoped he had done the math right and didn’t plan to race anymore. Evidently, we’re all still getting used to calculating possible outcomes.)
Point is: Now we’re going into Worlds with a very real match-up between Barnaby (currently in #1 in the standings) and Høgenhaug (currently in #3) and Dr. Matt (who still needs a 5th score to add to his standings, so could leapfrog onto the podium).
See: The full IM Pro Series sings
The best the rest of the races
The Ultraman World Championships: Always a quirky one during Thanksgiving weekend. This year, we had two female (former?) pro triathletes take the 1-2 spots overall — which has never happened before. And Jen Annett set a female course record of 23:04:56. Yes, sure, I’m aware many years there are men who beat that time, but you race who shows up on the day and a win is a win.
Bahrain 70.3: I gather there were supposed to be more big names on this start list (Kate Waugh, for example) so not totally sure what happened to all of them. In the end it was Georgia Taylor-Brown by 22 seconds in her first 70.3 and Vince Luis by 15 seconds. Which I, for one, never had any doubt of. Is this the future for both of them now?
Patagonaman: More of a race against yourself, right? Caroline Livesey became the first person to ever win twice. And Josiah Middaugh moved over from XTERRA, so things probably seemed chill.
Results: Western Australia 70.3, Bahrain 70.3, Patagonaman
Mark your calendars
Indian Wells 70.3: This used to be a very big end-of-season race (and it does still have 72 men on the start list), but I think there’s sorta just too many races now. What everyone’s interested in is Morgan Pearson doing his first 70.3, Matt McElroy, and Vetle Thorne as the next Norwegian.
CLASH Daytona: I should also note that Daytona is happening this weekend and will be the USAT Long Course National Championship, but there is no pro race.
The -ish
Stuff from around our sports worth knowing about this week.
Kristian Blummenfelt went on Rich Roll to talk about how actually the Norwegian Method totally still works (and also about how he clearly still wants to win *in* Kona). But, interestingly, his stated VO2 max of 7.7 liters has caused a whole bunch of internet controversy over whether that’s even possible. Kristian doesn’t really strike me as the kind of guy who makes stuff up, so it’s a conundrum. (Youtube/Twitter)
Reminder: You can read our Q&A on the Norwegian Method book. (Triathlonish)
David Roche also went on Rich Roll, and if you’re a super in-the-weeds training experimentation person it’s interesting. (I’m more of a broad overview of the weeds training person.) One of the things David’s mentioned before and that he talks about here and that we were talking about earlier this week is that he basically was able to step back from traditional structures of training models and prepare for his course records without huge volume by seeing what worked for his wife and how women were structuring their training in “non-traditional” ways. (Youtube)
The UCI is asking riders to stop using carbon monoxide inhalation, because they’d really rather if you’re going to die you don’t do it for that reason. (Escape Collective)
Sara Hall set a new U.S. Masters record at the Valencia Marathon and Sabastian Sawe ran the 5th fastest marathon ever on his first try (2:02:050). (Instagram/BBC)
Tim wrote a Race Ranger opus that gives a good overview of where it came from and where it’s going — though along with the technical aspects, figuring out the business aspects is going to be key to age group adoption. (Triathlete)
There’s also a ton to say about the chaos of college sports right now, but most of what there is to say is that no one knows what will emerge from the ashes. That being said, Vince Lananna’s Q&A on the future of track (and Olympic sports) had some interesting details. And even though I’m for athletes getting paid for their labor and I’m for spinning off football and I’m probably for the Super League with going back to geography-based groupings, it still doesn’t seem great if private equity buys out college teams. (Citius/Sports Illustrated)
Michael Johnson got in some shit for saying he could save track but not track & field. (The Sports Examiner/BBC)
The Boston Marathon will now pay athletes who missed out on prize money due to dopers beating them. (Wall Street Journal)
The most clicked article last week was the Women’s Wear Daily piece on CEO DeRue turning Ironman into a lifestyle brand — and a few of you asked: So here’s the non-paywalled version of that article. (MSN)
Freetrail is running their trail runner of the year contest. And Mile & Stone is hosting its first trail awards event next week (and have been unveiling finalists each day). (Freetrail/Mile & Stone)
The UK’s Triathlon Industry Conference is taking place on Monday. (TIA)
An interview with the new Brit Tri CEO, who starts in January. (Triathlon 220)
Curious what an Olympic medal looks like after a couple months? Not great. (Instagram)
One last thing
Plus, the Ilona Maher content we all need in our lives right now.
