issue #201: Sept. 2, 2026
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
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.
