issue #207: Oct. 28, 2026
All-sporters, I survived a half-marathon this weekend, so naturally I came home and signed up for a spring marathon. Which means I am now signed up for: A Hyrox and a Spartan DEKA, a road marathon, a few trail races obviously. I did Jan’s SGRAIL tri right before Kona, and have been weighing hitting up Escape from Alcatraz or Redding 70.3 but I need to be inspired and right now my fitness is more in the sprint triathlon realm (which are quite fun so I might do one of the college sprint races around here).
All of which is to say I think I’m officially part of the new demographic of “endurance” that just does a whole lot of everything and none of it well.
- Kelly
Way too much detail about Olympic qualification
The LA28 points window started on May 18. It ends May 18, 2028. Though there are actually two windows — one for each year — and athletes can only count up to seven races in each window for 12 races total. And those are the kinds of in-the-weeds details you can expect in this week’s podcast episode (which somehow still got an explicit rating).
We went deep on Olympic qualification, as athletes start to plan their campaigns and with individual countries’ selection criteria TBA over the next couple of months.
Quick reminder:
Countries earn a set number of quota spots — but the athletes who earn those spots for their country do not necessarily get given the spot
Quota spots are handed out to each country via qualifying a mixed relay team, individual overall rankings (having three athletes in the top 30 gets you three spots), and then “new flag” spots that go to countries who would not otherwise qualify an triathlete
Tim’s argument is that with more “new flag” spots this year combined with the emphasis on mixed relay, it has left fewer spots allocated via the rankings — which means there are more athletes with lower rankings on the Olympic start line
My argument is that’s actually kinda the point of the Olympics
Each country then fills their quota spots via their own announced qualification processes. And yes, there is a history of messy situations — which we get into in the episode
Question for the peanut gallery: Has there ever been a successful appeal of a discretionary selection in triathlon?
What got more women to Norseman?
Norseman announced its lottery numbers for 2027: Entries for the 335 spots doubled from just under 8,000 last year (7,956) to just over 16,000 this year (16,033).
And, interestingly, the average age went down from 38 to 34. And the number of women entered in the lottery tripled — which still only brings the total number of women in the lottery up from 8% to 12%, because extreme long-distance triathlon is still a lot of dudes.
It should be noted: If you look at the actual Norseman results from this year there were 54 women out 269 athletes who started, which is 20% women. So my assertion on the podcast (based on what the race director told me seven years ago) that Norseman slightly weights the lottery is correct.
Good for Norseman. They’re benefitting from YOLO trends and from wellness/health trends among younger populations and among women, and from the overall shift in triathlon demographics (which I’ve talked to a lot of execs about recently) towards doing many different kinds of things and not just all road triathlon all the time. But still, good for them.
This past weekend there was also one of Nike’s big After Dark Tour women’s races down in L.A. Those have never particularly seemed like my thing (too many sparkles), but it’s some people’s thing. And I heard varying opinions of the L.A. event: Some love the all-women sparkles, some thought a lot of the over-the-top-ness Nike was going for didn’t work or felt very clique-y, everyone thinks men signing up for an all-women’s event is peak douche. But Nike’s certainly successful in its overall marketing of these events to women — despite all of Nike’s women problems.
This past weekend I also did an all-women’s trail half-marathon here in Marin, which had all the things you always have, because we know they work, to grow women’s participation (childcare grants, free training programs and group runs and Q&As in the lead-up, a free shuttle over from San Francisco — because we’re on this side of the Golden Gate Bridge, lots of cute merch and individual touches). But what they also had was the largest prize purse for an all-women’s trail race: $25,000.
And, interestingly, the effect of the money was that it drew every woman around Northern California who is in that tier of fitness where you think ‘I’m not going to beat the pro runners, but maybe I’ll sneak in for the last money spot.’ And then racing it becomes a thing and word spreads. And then you also attract all the weekend warriors who take running seriously but aren’t that great (ie. me right now). You attract the mediocre middle we usually only get in men’s age-groups. It’s rare to have that kind of pack fodder in women’s races. Typically, women’s races have the best, the top-end, the really good elite amateurs and pros, and then you have the beginners — but so often we’re missing huge quantities in the middle. (Mostly because there’s still an underlying attitude of ‘if you aren’t that good, why are you spending time on this, why aren’t you at home or with your family.’)
So it was fun and different to spend the whole thing mediocre-ly racing other packs of women, not alone or with guys. Did I go way too hard the last mile because there were three women right behind me? Absolutely. Given how far back we were, did those three places matter at all? Not even a little bit. And isn’t that equality.
Results: World Triathlon World Cup - Tongyeong, Challenge Forte Village, Challenge Barcelona
Mark your calendars
IM Florida: Very interesting start list for Florida on Nov. 7. Lots of athletes who maybe didn’t have the Kona they wanted (Magnus Ditlev, Rudy Von Berg, Alanis Siffert) and some athletes who haven’t had the year they wanted or are looking for early qualification (Holly Lawrence, Sam Long)
The -ish
Some of the other things worth knowing about this week in our sports — or that I just think are interesting.
After we said last week that three new Ironman events were coming to the U.S., the full 2027 N. America schedule is out. (Slowtwitch)
And are Canadians turning down their 70.3 Worlds spots? Sounds possible. Take rates are always highest in the region where Worlds is located, but given that N. America is quite large and Canadian tourism to the U.S. has plummeted, it seems reasonable to extrapolate that the “region” where takes rates are going to be highest is more limited to the Southeast and potentially the East Coast. (Slowtwitch/Forbes)
This woman is looking for the guy who side-swiped her mom during the bike leg of Kona and caused her to crash—breaking ribs, puncturing a lung, etc. (Facebook)
I don’t know if rage, broadly speaking, is just on the rise or if the internet is just making it more accessible, but this driver hitting a group of cyclists, killing two of them and dragging one a mile is awful. And this story all about the guy who sideswiped a different group of cyclists and still thinks he didn’t do anything wrong because cyclists just “do whatever they want” is wild. Maybe everyone could just stop assaulting people simply because they’re on bikes. (Yahoo/Atlanta Journal Constitution)
Speaking of how everyone needs to just stop: I didn’t realize that Henri Schoeman had been getting online hate for years for that viral Brownlee clip. Why. (Facebook)
We talked about it when we covered the World Tri Congress, but the partnership has been signed now: World Triathlon is teaming up with Hyrox. (Apple Podcasts/Instagram)
Gustav Iden raised over 1 million NOK for cancer research. (Facebook)
Ethan Hunger raised over $500K for the local food bank with a Guinness World Record of 22 super-sprint triathlons in 24 hours. (Triathlete)
A kind of interesting bit about the science that went into Sam Long’s 6th at Kona. (USAT)
And the oldest men and women at Kona. (The Athletic)
The New York Marathon is this upcoming weekend, if you want the full preview + Americans + celebrities. Or the finances behind the whole thing. (Youtube/Flotrack/Olympics/Huddle Up)
Plus, if you missed the news, the Tokyo Olympic gold medalist and London Marathon winner Peres Jepchirchir was caught for using EPO. Tim says that means the London Marathon has had someone on the podium who was later popped for doping in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2020, 2023 and 2024. (LetsRun)
Apparently, if you want to run a U.S. Olympic Trials qualifying marathon time it has to be on a USATF sanctioned course, not just a certified course. (Runner’s World)
And I’d do this weird vortex race all the way up the spiraling flights of this building in Lausanne. (Facebook)
People are doing a lot of weird things because of their broad general distrust of systems and authority, but eating raw chicken has to be one of the weirder ones. (New York Times)
What is the ultimate triathlon country? (Slowtwitch)
One last thing
