#139: It's not going to get easier
Take that to mean what you will.
issue #139: June 11, 2025
Some of you know me, but a lot of you don’t. And so a lot of you probably don’t know what my husband does or my friends and family, or that I’ve spent a good amount of my non-triathlon time lately focused on what’s happening in L.A. and out here in California. On what comes next. Because, look, like when push came to shove, it was always going to be California where things went down first, but it’ll be other cities in the U.S. soon. And so we’re all going to have to decide what we do, because I’ll tell you (in case you didn’t know) that I think an important part of America is that people can’t just demand to see your papers while you walk down the street, that law enforcement can’t just throw you in vans or prisons without warrants or legal processes, that you can’t get in trouble for what you say about the President, that the President can’t use the military to shut down protests over his own policies. The whole right to assemble thing was kinda a big one in the founding of America. (So was the whole ‘everyone born here is American’ thing, because otherwise what are you gonna be, English?) There are lots of reasons to support immigrant communities, but even if you think that’s not your problem, you should still be worried about agents grabbing anyone off the street, out of car washes, as they drop off their kids at school, without evidence or proof. Because there’s not as much as you’d like to think to stop that from being you.
Or, as someone else put it: You can’t say criminals don’t deserve due process; due process is how you determine that they’re criminals. Otherwise, you’re just kidnapping people you don’t like.
That’s what I’ve been thinking about in between being super sick today. Thinking less about triathlon…
- Kelly
Stiff headwinds and other phrases that mean ‘being a race director is only going to get harder’
Because I was out of town, I didn’t hear about the shitshow at Escape from Alcatraz until the end of last week.
Turns out an athlete was paralyzed when another athlete jumping off the boat landed on top of him. After I heard, I was texting around to athletes and local clubs, and multiple people said volunteers at the boat exit were just pushing everyone to jump off as fast as possible, and they weren’t metering or directing traffic. At least one other athlete was injured in a similar (though less severe) fashion.
I’ve done the race 11 or 12 times (depends on if you count the year I DNF’d) and I’ve done it with different race directors and race owners. Half of those times were in the age-group field. And it’s always controlled chaos getting everyone off the boat within six minutes (or whatever the time limit is because of the current). And you always have to swim away from the boat as quickly as possible once you hit the water. But it’s historically been controlled chaos — volunteers saying jump there, wait a sec, OK go now; people keeping an eye on the athletes in the water.
I don’t know what changed operationally this year or if it was just bad luck that caught up to the race. But I do know that IMG has struggled a little bit with the financials of this event in recent years, pivoting to try and make it more VIP (and expensive) right before the pandemic. And, the costs and city haven’t gotten easier since then. I can’t imagine that now this mess will help them on an event-level.
Putting on events is increasingly an unappealing proposition. It’s not profitable. Even large for-profit companies end up relying on random free volunteer labor (with sometimes disastrous consequences). A lot of democratic [small d democratic] municipalities don’t really want races anymore, either, so they’re not making it easy. The onus is on you, as an organizer.
There were two other things I was thinking about this week: 1. A California court decision ruled an event’s waiver doesn’t absolve the host city of its fundamental responsibilities (ie. potholes, infrastructure), which is a little bit no duh to me, but it still makes hosting slightly less appealing for that city. 2. And technically Colorado State Patrol requires “competitive events” (ie. races) to be held on entirely closed courses — which nearly none are; I don’t even think it’d be possible at Boulder 70.3 this weekend, for example, because the bike course rides on a highway — but only SBT GRVL has come up against enforcement yet. So what’s going to happen if other counties decide to start enforcing, too.
I’d say most towns are open to a charity 5K or a non-closed-course trail run, and bigger cities can get their heads around the benefits of a NY Marathon or an iconic destination race — but it’s a hard sell, especially at the mid-size level. You can just look at the Malibu Triathlon and what happened with the town there after Supertri bought the race; I don’t think anyone did anything particularly sinister, I just think a lot of you have never sat through a local California town council meeting before and it shows: the councilmembers don’t care about triathlon, they just want to know where the port-a-potties will be set-up for how long and how many cars will come into town. And how you plan to stop people from being seriously injured.
From the races
Eagleman 70.3: Good to see both Lucy Charles-Barclay & Chelsea Sodaro back in form. And I enjoyed that Trevor Foley didn’t blink when in a step-by-step battle with Sam Long.
World Tri Para Series - Taranto: A lot of Paralympic medalists back at the top level of para racing. (It’s their WTCS.)
Results: Eagleman 70.3, Warsaw 70.3, World Tri Para Series - Taranto, Americas Championship - Calima
Mark your calendar
T100 - Vancouver: A new race in Vancouver! (Love this local article explaining that it’s a “huge international triathlon” that will close the roads.) We’ll have Julie Derron & Taylor Knibb & Ashleigh Gentle, and Maya Kingma is an interesting wildcard, though I think everyone’s rooting for Paula Findlay in her home country. And the usual contenders: Rico Bogen, Marten Van Riel, Jelle Geens, and an interesting wildcard in Miguel Hidalgo just off his WTCS win.
WATCH: Saturday - men at 9:30 a.m. PT/12:30 p.m. ET & women at noon PT/3 p.m. ET on T100 Youtube, HBO Max, Eurosport.
IM Cairns: The next in the IM Pro Series. Personally, rooting for Jackie Hering to bounce back from the Hamburg mechanical and for Braden Currie to have a good race.
WATCH: Saturday 2 p.m. PT/5 p.m. ET on Outside Watch in N. America or Ironman Youtube everywhere else
The -ish
Some of the things worth knowing about this week in our sports — or that I just think are interesting.
Speaking of races being a bit of a mess, turns out chip times didn’t work right when athletes crossed the swim entrance mat at Warsaw 70.3. Now, officials are asking people to send in screenshots or whatever proof they can of their swim times. Oops.
There’s a new Ironman 70.3 race in Chile. (Ironman)
Supertri also announced the first set of athletes signed on for their Supertri season: Cassandre Beaugrand, Jonny Brownlee, Taylor Spivey, Jeanne Lehair, etc. (Supertri)
Dr. Matt (Marquardt) was named to Forbes 30 Under 30 Local Edition. And I’m sure we’ll all going to pretend that we’re not the least bit jealous. (Instagram/Forbes)
Lucy CB tried Hyrox, but not in a competition, so I think that could also just be called a workout. (Instagram/Youtube)
I’m not super big on the self-created world records, but why not! To that end: Josefine Rutkowski is going after doubling the women’s record for consecutive days doing an Ironman distance with 60 in 60 days later in July. (Instagram)
Will we see a women’s sub-8 attempt in Roth? It sounds like Anne & Laura are both lining things up — so probably! (Triathlete)
You can also get tickets now for Faith Kipyegon’s 4-minute mile attempt in Paris. (Nike)
The NCAA settlement is finalized and I spent a decent amount of time trying to understand the roster limits and new NIL clearinghouse. Let’s just say I’m not convinced it won’t be a mess. Spin off semi-pro football already! (Front Office Sports/Instagram)
Was also slightly confused by Colleen Quigley’s new team announcement, but the more I heard about it the more I was intrigued: In essence it’s a new kind of structure that let’s athletes come together without being tied to one shoe-backed coaching group. (Fast Women/For the Long Run)
LifeTime is launching an LT Games this fall — kinda like Hyrox kinda not. (Fitt Insider)
The final Netflix Tour series has trailered. (Escape Collective)
Will people come to the U.S. for the World Cup and Olympics? Not in the numbers they did before. (The Nation)
One last thing
Because we always need more Ilona Maher.
