#84: Oh, so doping's in the news again?
#84: Oh, so doping's in the news again?
Weird.
issue #84: April 24, 2024
Presented by Precision Fuel & Hydration:
All sporters, this Saturday is my first-ever 100K at Canyons. I’m definitely not totally prepared — but I am as fit as I could have gotten myself in the timeframe available. Now: I’m in a terrible taper mood, annoyed with everyone, legitimately eh about this, and ready to just do it. It turns out Canyons is a *very big* race in the UTMB world, with 2,500 people across the four distances and live coverage. All of which means I was trying to explain the whole Ironman-UTMB-’is trail running getting too corporate’ thing to my husband by telling him: “People are very worried about the stoke.”
While I’m not sure how my legs are going to hold up, the one thing I am pretty confident about is my nutrition plan: Gone through it with the Precision Fuel & Hydration team and have opted to stick primarily with the PF30 gels & the 250mg electrolyte capsules, after I drink through my 500ml bottle of mix. (Even though I prefer the chews in a lot of ways, the gels + salt pills are easy to always get down no matter how you feel. I’m incredibly sensitive to gel consistency — something that lots of women evidently say — and these gels are super thin and light.) You can also book your own video consult with the PF&H sports scientists if you have your own questions.
Next week, then, however this goes, I’ll be slightly semi-on-vacation and trying to recover from the chaos of everything lately. But, first, the tri news…
- Kelly
TK puns on super and Supertri
Right after last week’s newsletter went out, Supertri officially announced this year’s Supertri league schedule. The biggest news is the two new pro races in the U.S. — one at their Chicago Triathlon & one in conjunction with the Boston Tri.
Boston: Aug. 18
Chicago: Aug. 25
London: Sept. 8
Toulouse: Oct. 6
NEOM: Nov. 3
I know a lot of people throw the PTO & Supertri into the same “rich guy funding” bucket, but IMO there’s actually a big difference in their business models. Supertri’s model (whether or not it works) has a lot more revenue streams already coming in from corporate & VIP events, host cities, and age-groupers. Supertri’s market opportunity also fills a hole: short-course. It’s kinda sorta the only big obvious hole currently in the U.S. landscape.
None of that means Supertri will necessarily be successful. But it does mean — if they sort through some of the Euro-centric-ness and some of the historic dude-ness — that it has a chance.
Plus, it’s fun in the meantime. And I’ll be in Boston.
You can read more about their plans for the U.S. here:
I’m going to try to explain why everyone’s talking about doping again
What do we do here if not try to capture the zeitgeist. And right now the tri zeitgeist is all about anti-doping measures. So here goes my explanation.
After Youri Keulen won T100 Singapore, there were whispers and questions (as there always are after a surprise name wins — to be totally clear and fair to him). One of the main whispers was that people realized Youri is not currently in an out-of-competition testing pool. He is not in one for either his national governing body or for Ironman, and the PTO does *not* conduct out-of-competition anti-doping tests. That means Youri is *not* tested out-of-competition — through no fault of his own.
In-competition tests: Are basically the blood and urine tests conducted at the race venue — these are considered somewhat necessary but also exceptionally hard to fail, because athletes know they’re coming and can plan ahead
Out-of-competition tests: Are the tests conducted at random times at athletes’ homes, etc
Last year, I wrote extensively about the gaps in testing in long-course triathlon and some of the background, so I’m going to just sum it up here.
Here’s the issue:
In order to do out-of-competition testing, you have to run a testing pool where athletes enter their whereabouts, you send testers to them at random, and the results all get entered.
All of the national governing bodies and World Triathlon run these testing pools through the same system (called ADAMS) under the World Anti-Doping Agency. HOWEVER. Those testing pools tend to be focused on short-course/Olympic pipeline athletes. Some governing bodies do *not* even consider long-course athletes to be their anti-doping responsibility (ex. U.S.) and do *not* put those athletes into their pools.
To their credit, Ironman saw what would be a problem there and became a WADA signatory and created their own testing pool under the same system. They, then, put some Ironman long-course athletes into their Ironman testing pool. There is an effort these days to coordinate and communicate so that Ironman can pick up athletes who are missed by their national governing body and fill in holes, share info, etc.
However. The PTO doesn’t run a testing pool at this time. And not all athletes racing for the PTO are in Ironman’s pool or in their country’s pool or in the World Tri pool. Which means not all the athletes racing for the PTO could ever even be tested out-of-competition, even if they want to be. (Athletes have NO say in whether they’re in a pool or not.)
The reason this is super in the zeitgeist right now is because: ProTriNews then went through all of the PTO athletes to create a spreadsheet of who is currently in a testing pool and who isn’t in order to make this point. Most of this is public info — who is tested via World Tri & who is in the Ironman testing pool — so it’s all mostly figure-out-able, but certainly takes some work to go through. And while there are some mistakes and specifics in their IG post that got missed (ie. some athletes were just removed from one pool, some details are wrong), I think the overall point is valid: The PTO doesn’t run an out-of-competition testing pool.
Those of us who have thought about it probably all thought that the PTO would eventually run their testing pool through World Triathlon, now that they’re an “official” World Triathlon series, and they’d contract it out to the ITA (like everyone does) — because how could you even possibly have a series like that without out-of-competition testing. That’s more or less what they promised. But they haven’t yet.
And, meanwhile, I’d imagine, Ironman is getting tired of being the PTO’s free anti-doping service, and they won’t or can’t keep PTO athletes in their Ironman pool forever…
And now, the weekend’s races & results
IM Texas: Things are actually pretty normal American-sized in Texas
This weekend is the first full Ironman on the Ironman Pro Series — and the second race in the series. The one that was full-on sold out. All of last year’s podiums are returning (except for Rudy von Berg I believe).
WATCH: Saturday, 7 a.m. ET/4 a.m. PT - Outside Watch in the U.S. and proseries.ironman.com globally
XTERRA World Cup - Greece: Stop #2 on the World Cup tour
With the winners of Stop #1 looking to hold off newbie contenders
WATCH: 2:15 a.m. ET Saturday/11:15 p.m. PT Friday - on livecoverage.gr
The best of the rest of the results
Ironman S. Africa: Daniela Ryf had an off day, Marta Sanchez surprise won. And somehow Cam Wurf took a three-day break from his pro cycling career, after racing Amstel Gold on Sunday and Flèche Wallone on Wednesday, to take third here in S. Africa. That’s gotta be the craziest week ever.
Valencia 70.3: Yes, there were 80+ guys that started, but Leo Bergere still wins every 70.3 he enters — I have to assume this is a post-Paris plan. Laura Madsen and second-place Lena Meissner could also be up-and-coming on the women’s side.
Cebu 70.3: Just a shout-out to Els Visser for backing her top three in T100 Singapore with a win here.
This week’s newsletter is getting packed. See all the rest of the results and details on how to watch here.
The -ish
The rest of the news you should know about from our sports this week.
It’s official: Mortal Hydration will be the on-course hydration for N. American Ironman races. I’ll be honest, I didn’t think this was a huge deal when everyone was freaking out about the rumors a few weeks ago — like, don’t you carry most of your nutrition & hydration with you, anyway? — but the primary thing to know is that Mortal is very high in sodium/very low in calories. (One of our readers has started to put together a spreadsheet comparing mixes.) Plan accordingly. (Ironman/Google Docs/Triathlete)
In the ongoing challenge of getting cities to host World Tri Championship Series races, WTCS Montreal has been canceled. The World Cup in Weihai, China has now been upgraded to a WTCS — but the Sept. 27 date now conflicts with T100 Ibiza. Oof. (World Triathlon)
A private investigation has been opened into the death of an athlete at 70.3 Galveston. (The Galveston Daily News)
London Marathon was the big race of this past weekend — I’m not sure who decided to put Boston & London six days apart?! — and there was a new women’s only world record of 2:16:16. Actually, all four of the top women broke the old record. (Women’s only world records can only be set in races where the men are not mixed in, so can’t serve as pace-setters or interfere. In case you think it doesn’t matter: The women’s world record for the mixed marathon (ie. with dudes) is 2:11:53. So, faster.) (Instagram)
Some other fun facts: Third place in the men’s race wore a Casio non-smart watch, so there. Ruth Astle’s brother set a record for the fastest time by a man with MS. And the Kenya marathon team is going to be stupidly hard to make. (Medium/Instagram/Citius Mag)
Here are the top shoes at the Boston Marathon — including the wild prototype On shoe that they’re saying isn’t a prototype. (Outside Run/Canadian Running Mag)
Did you know about the man who has finished 55 consecutive Boston Marathons!? (h/t Morning Shakeout)(Running Anthropologist)
And, what if you got a rejection email from the NY Marathon — and it had your picture as the header? (Canadian Running Mag)
The other big race this past weekend: Start of the Lifetime Grand Prix. Which, in case we thought tri was cheap, pays out just $30K to the series winner at the end of the season. (CyclingNews)
I did a big package for USAT’s magazine on the Paralympians and understanding paratri. The first one on Mo Lahna is up now online, but you can see the whole feature in the print mag or, if you’re a member, you can see the digital magazine. (USAT)
One last thing
Our Feisty theme for the year as we’re planning all our women’s sports coverage: It’s not a moment. It’s a movement. And now we have shirts, too.
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