#100: Triathlon goes from Paris to Boston

Or, at least the Olympic medalists do

Aug 14, 2024

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issue #100: Aug. 14, 2024

Hey, look at that, we’re almost back to our regular schedule! And I’ve only had to sleep for multiple days! (Actually, I was so tired that when I went to rebook my flight from Paris to Boston, I accidentally booked it for the wrong Sunday — stupid reverse European dates — and didn’t realize until I went to check-in. Which was an expensive mistake. But! I figured it out! And I’m in Boston now for the Boston Tri + Supertri race!)

And, we’re back mostly to our normal Triathlonish schedule: This is your regular free weekly Wednesday newsletter with analysis, commentary, your summary of what to know about this week. Paying subscribers get the voiceover on this newsletter so they can easily listen on their commutes + an extra Sunday newsletter that’s often a Q&A or an article or a history dive + my love and gratitude.

And, as a reminder, if you want your ‘it’s not a moment, it’s a movement’ shirts we had in Paris, get them while the getting is good.

- Kelly

And then: How will L.A. compare?

Before I left Paris, we went to the U.S.-Brazil soccer game — and I could write a whole essay about how the USWNT is both symbolic and symptomatic of the changing role and era of women’s sports, how you can see all the tensions and evolutions play out in this one team, and how much it mattered that they’ve been able to shift their style under Emma Hayes and win again because it means that the team who shaped the modern landscape of women’s sports hasn’t just been left behind by it.

But, mostly, it was super fun and the fans were super intense (and possibly it was the only stadium that actually sold beer at the Olympics). And then we walked and walked and walked back to the train station.

And on that nearly two-mile walk I just kept thinking about the L.A. Games and laaaaaughing. Can you imagine if they try to make Americans walk miles to the stadiums? Can you imagine L.A. shutting down entire neighborhoods and closing off tourist destinations for weeks? Do you have any idea what would happen at those City Council meetings, or on Nextdoor, if they even tried!? Can you picture where the events are going to happen compared to Paris? I can! Are we just going to hold them all at the Hollywood sign for TV purposes? 😂 Look, L.A. doesn’t look the way most people in the world picture L.A. looking. It doesn’t look like Paris either, for reasons probably actually historically sound if you think about it. But I’m not sure if people’s expectations are going to match reality.

I love California and I will forever maintain it’s a far far better place to live than France (especially for women and minorities) and I am so beyond pumped about a California Olympics and I was so so so sick of Paris by the end of the two weeks, but I lived in L.A. for awhile and I know it pretty well, and I keep thinking of people comparing the L.A. Olympics to these Olympics and I keep laaaaughing.

If these were a deeply French Olympics, ours are gonna be deeply California-American. And I already love everything people will hate about that.

Now: The first chance to see the Olympic medalists post-Paris

I’m in Boston now for the Boston Triathlon + Supertri Boston race — which is going to have both of the Olympic gold medalists, plus a whole bunch of the other medalists.

Plus, it’s also the first of this year’s Supertri calendar and of their new events in the U.S.

Aug. 18: supertri Boston
Aug. 25: supertri Chicago
Sept. 8: supertri London
Oct. 6: supertri Toulouse
Nov. 3: supertri NEOM

While Supertri is just partnering with the existing Boston Triathlon here, they’ve purchased the Chicago Tri, New York Tri, and Legacy (Long Beach) Tri — and, as a reminder, are still arguing over the future of the Malibu Tri. (Plus, word is certainly that they’re looking at a number of other events to partner with or acquire…) All of which is part of their effort to claim big city short-course racing here in the U.S.

It makes sense. It certainly hasn’t gone smoothly for them to start (Malibu gone! New York canceled!) and that start then made me wonder if they really understood the U.S. market. But it makes sense in the sense that it claims a lane that is not currently occupied: Ironman owns long-course here, the PTO has staked out expensive mid-distance pro racing (whether or not that’ll work either!). So if you’re going to form a business plan that has a chance, then you have to fill a niche that actually needs filling.

The same, though in a different way, is true of the local favorite Boston Triathlon. I went to their Monday evening open water swim clinic for first-timers — and I have been to a lot of pre-race beginner clinics, I’ve even taught some of them, and even I was surprised by the sheer amount and degree of completely new-to-triathlon people coming out to this event. People who were talked into a relay last year and now are trying a whole tri or who just rented a wetsuit literally this week and put it on for the first time on Monday or who started watching Youtubes on how to swim a few months ago. There were questions at the clinic that would never even have occurred to me as questions. But that is the lane Boston Tri has claimed here.

They’ve committed to bringing in people who have never even thought of themselves as doing a triathlon, the ones who not only couldn’t see themselves in the sport but never thought to think about it, the people who are like ‘triathlon?! that’s crazy’. And if it works for this race, if they can stake that lane and grow it, then there’s probably something for everyone to learn from.

Plus, I’m doing a relay with my brother-in-law and a friend of his, who also have never done a triathlon before and also had a lot of questions. And who were excited about the Olympic gold medalists — though were concerned that we would be in the same race (we will not be). So, we’ll see how this goes!

The rest of the results

XTERRA European Championships: In the Czech Republic, there was a full-distance race this past weekend followed by a short-track the next day. It went back and forth in the women’s race but Loanne Duvoisin defended her European title. And in the men’s races Felix Forissier and Arthur Serrieres traded 1st and 2nd in the full and short distances — and the overall series remains close!

Mark your calendars

IM Sweden: For the women this weekend — but a relatively small start list with a lot of the female athletes already looking ahead to Nice in five weeks.
And the big one is IM Frankfurt: It has one of the deeper 80+ men’s Ironman-distance start lists we’ve seen in a long time: Patrick Lange, Kristian Blummenfelt, Matt Hanson, Braden Currie, Sam Long. Of course, the interesting adds are Kristian coming off the Olympics with the hope of just validating his Kona spot and Sam Long rolling onto the list at the last second this week. Honestly, I kinda understand Sam’s statement that he doesn’t have the energy or time to explain his reasoning right now. I feel that deeply.
- WATCH: On Outside Watch or proseries.ironman.com at 12:15 a.m. ET on Sunday/9:15 p.m. PT on Saturday.

The -ish

The rest of the news you should know about from our sports this week.

It’s Tour de France Femmes week now! (Whew.) Seven days, eight stages, and they get to end on the Alpe d’Huez — which is epic. There’s a lot of argument to be made that these 7- to 10-day races are actually far more exciting than the three-week ones because something happens every single stage. There are no throwaway boring days. Girls Gone Gravel has the daily pod from the ground, and I kinda enjoy these Tobin Heath-Demi Vollering crossovers on IG. (CyclingNews/Apple Podcasts/Instagram)
Keegan Swanson won his 4th Leadville even after a flat, which seems like a lot to me. (And Melissa Rollins won her first.) (Velo)
I’ve had this in my notes from before the Games, but whenever people go on about “the spirit of gravel” I’m going to think about riders stopping during the FoCo Fondo to rescue kittens. Oh, you didn’t rescue kittens during your race? Are you even really the spirit of gravel?! (Velo)
And oof, OK, I don’t know how many of you are deep on Crossfit stuff, but this past week at the Crossfit Games (which is basically the world championships) one of the pro athletes drowned about 100-200y from the finish of the first 3.5-mile run + 800m swim event. It appears that spectators saw him struggling and yelled for water personnel and even tried to jump in but were stopped — you can see him go under on the livestream, which has understandably been taken down — but nothing was done until it was noted that he had never exited the water and then divers came and his body was retrieved an hour later. While swim deaths are rare but do happen in triathlons, there are some key differences here that make this super super insane: 1. It’s incredibly rare for it to happen with elite competitors (I can only think of maybe two times ever and there were underlying health issues in those cases), 2. It’s incredibly rare when there are so few athletes in the water (there were just 80 elite athletes in the event v. thousands in an Ironman) because water safety personnel should be able to see everyone and respond, and 3. It does not typically happen near the end of a race. It sounds like Lazar Đukić was a former water polo player too — which makes this seem kinda pulmonary edema-y and/or heart attack-y + definitely makes it appear preventable. The competition eventually went on, but a lot of people dropped out and you can imagine many of the top Crossfit athletes are NOT HAPPY about safety protocols. (GearJunkie/WFAA/Instagram)
If you missed it before the Olympics, Jen Annett set a new Ultraman world record of 21:39:32 for the three days. (Penticton Herald)
Sifan Hassan is a legend. Three medals in the 5,000m, 10,000m, and then a gold in the marathon is next level. I’m not sure everyone could maintain this level of commitment every workout and I wonder how long she will be able to, but kudos if you can. (The Cut/Tiktok/Threads)
Jordan Chiles is now having her floor exercise medal stripped and it is over ridiculous technicalities where neither athlete did anything wrong. (The Long Game/The Independent)
The bronze medalist in the 1500m quit running professionally for a bit and was an age-group duathlete instead. (Tri247)
An interesting chart breaking down the age distribution of athletes by sport at the Olympics. Triathlon is among the oldest average age. (Twitter)
The Paralympics start Aug. 28 and I expect the tri races to be pretty epic. And this shirt supporting them is kinda funny, too. (NBC/Bonfire)
How are the Games going to adapt to climate change? Probably poorly! (Outside)
Did you know there’s a Paris 2024 club on Strava with a bunch of interesting stuff? (Strava)
This old story from Rio about the way the heads of the Olympic movement cash in is still something. (Washington Post)
There’s a lot (a lot!) of concern about how the collapse of the NCAA system — for better and worse — will impact the U.S. Olympic development pipeline. Or put another way: The U.S. doesn’t actually have a federal Olympic development pipeline. It has relied on the private university system to serve as one (and many other countries have also relied on the U.S. university system as an ad hoc U23 development program), but the way in which we have since intertwined the large-scale commercialization of certain university sports removed from the academics that nominally are the reason those sports exist has both subsidized some Olympic sports development and also distorted it to the point that the system is now collapsing. Going backwards is no longer really a viable option. So: USOPC, your move. (Range Widely/Pablo Torres Finds Out)
I said this on the podcast but I’ll say it again here: You can feel however you want to feel about the facts of COVID, but your feelings don’t change those facts. Just because you don’t want to think about something anymore doesn’t mean it suddenly stops existing. You can understand why Olympic athletes might choose to risk their longterm health (and others’) by competing with COVID, because they’ve put so much on the line to be there, but that doesn’t change the scientific reality that they may end up with longterm consequences of that decision, that 400 million people globally have long-term COVID with an economic impact of $1 trillion. Even if you personally feel like you just had a cold when you got COVID, that doesn’t change the fact it’s not just a cold or that some people can have issues for the rest of their lives. I know people who’ve had to retire in their 40s because they were so messed up, and your feelings don’t change that for them. (Spotify/AP/New York Times/Scientific American)
UTMB has a whole new series of content out — because everyone thinks they’re gonna put out the next Drive to Survive. (Youtube/New York Times)
The new Ironman CEO has officially signed up for his first triathlon. (Instagram)
Congrats to all the triathletes who got married this weekend! (Instagram)
I don’t even understand why Mondo Duplantis (pole vault world record holder) and Karsten Warholm (400m hurdle world record holder) are going to face off in a 100m race, but I love everything about it. (The Athletic)
Sharks off of Brazil have tested positive for cocaine. (New York Times)

One last thing

In jobs that feel like they could be automated, but apparently they can’t be.