#131: Venice > Long Beach

And other discussions of the week.

issue #131: April 16, 2025

All, apparently I accidentally turned off comments here. (Oops.) So that is why none of you commented about what your predictions are for Alex Yee’s London Marathon debut (my guess is still 2:09) or how we feel about the PTO. Comments should be back on now, so go nuts! (Except don’t really go nuts, because my brain is not in a place where I really want to deal with nutty internet comments.)

The shifting things around on the back-end was all part of a move to ultimately transfer this weekly newsletter over to our Feisty Media system, expand our weekly coverage more into endurance business coverage generally, and move triathlon articles on athletes & races & “topics” to our new website. But in the meantime, you know, it takes all my energy to just, like, write this. And not mess things up.

- Kelly

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What does Ironman know about women

Turns out they know whatever can be learned from asking 10,000 women ‘what do you think about triathlon.’ Which is probably as much as anyone can know from asking people what they say they think (which is always different from what people actually think or from what they do).

As part of another press release about the amazing demographics of the sport, so great, Ironman announced yesterday a wide-reaching initiative focused on increasing female participation across a range of programs. It seems to be fairly top-to-bottom (which is good) and includes everything from a commitment to start time gaps for the pro women’s field to “women’s specific facilities” in transition to the standard visibility + resources type of stuff.

I know a lot of work, actually, really, for real, went into this, and if it is implemented across the spectrum of places and ways it could be implemented, then good for them.

An aside: I will say there was this whole paragraph about how 53% of women train by themselves, but 71% of all triathletes (presumably men & women) say community is important. And then 63% of non-Ironman athletes actually do train with other people. So therefore, we must give triathletes more community things. Even though right above that paragraph there’s all this other stuff about how women say time is the biggest limiter for triathlon training.

Which makes this feel a little bit like me saying ‘yeah, sure I’d love to train with other people if it fits my schedule and training plan and I like those people and it works out within my incredibly complicated life’s tetris-style logistics.’ What I need in that situation isn’t another group to join. It’s kinda the same as when corporate offices knew they needed to address work-life balance, so they made an after-work yoga program and created a “fun” Slack channel. Or, how all the doctors right now have gotten the memo that post-partum mental health is important, so they keep sending me surveys on how I feel and giving me speeches about “self-care.” Like, I don’t think these solutions are solving for the thing you think they’re solving for.

But, separate from the regular reasons women don’t do triathlon (time, childcare, time, cost, time, dudes, facilities & accommodations, vibes, time), there was one stat in the data that jumped out to me: Men’s participation has rebounded to 91% of pre-COVID levels, but women’s participation has only returned to 71% of pre-COVID levels.

Earlier this year there was also a lot written about the latest U.S. national report card that showed students still super behind post-pandemic on test scores — but, even more than the broad brush panic, a number of education experts pointed out that the biggest problem in those numbers is the kids who were behind before are even more behind now. The gap has grown. Wealthy kids, kids with lots of support and resources, they’ve pretty much mostly caught up back up. Kids without those things, who were just trying to find stable internet and reliable places to do virtual school, they’re more behind than ever.

Is this an analogy? You betcha. Women (as a whole) bore the brunt of the pandemic, in childcare, in job loss, in medical care, in stress. Of course they’re still not doing triathlon in the numbers they were before.

Photo: Jan Hetfleisch/Getty Images for IRONMAN

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Poll: Is it acceptable to criticize the PTO or should we all just be grateful?

Discuss.

Last week, the PTO announced a new date for the French Riviera race and a combined weekend with WTCS. The weekend will now host a PTO T100 race as well as a brand new WTCS race. I am unclear how athletes — both Taylors, Morgan Pearson, Hayden Wilde, etc — will decide which race to race. But, maybe that’s a fun problem for someone else to have ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Original 2025 T100 schedule:

• April 12-13: Singapore

• May 16-18: French Riviera

• May 31: San Francisco

• Aug 2-3: London

• Sept. 27-28: Ibiza

• Oct. 25-26: Lake Vegas

• November: Dubai

Current 2025 T100 schedule:

• April 5-6: Singapore

• May 31: San Francisco

• June 13-15: Vancouver

• Aug. 9-10: London

• Aug. 30-31: French Riviera

• Sept. 20: Valencia

• TBA: Lake Vegas

• Nov. 15-16: Dubai

• Dec. 12-13: Qatar

Yes, some of these dates and locations have changed multiple times. Maybe being a global mass participation race company is harder than people think. Should we put another shrug emoji here? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Honestly, both things can be true: It is true that Ironman wouldn’t be putting on the IM Pro Series if the PTO hadn’t created its series and the PTO has wildly increased the amount of support and money for pros. It is also true they are a bit of an organizational mess.

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The L.A. Olympics makes some changes

There were a bunch of additions and adjustments announced to the L.A. Olympics program, primarily adding more medal events (sigh, I dunno, I know I’m supposed to be excited, but it’s just a TV play), a bunch more mixed team events (gymnastics!), and evening up the number of women’s quota spots (ie. 16 women’s teams in the soccer tournament now (finally!), 12 women’s teams in the water polo tournament, additional boxing weight classes, etc).

But they also announced venue changes for a few sports — seems like they learned one lesson from Paris: go iconic — and among those changes was moving the triathlon from Long Beach to Venice.

There are no other details yet. The old L.A. Triathlon used to start at Venice Beach (huge waves!) and then bike through the city and finish downtown. I don’t know if they’ll do that or not, but it is a much more scenic starting location.

And just as I was wondering whether or not this would change Knibb’s mind about racing the Olympics again, she shared the news to her IG stories, so read into that as much as you want.

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From the races

• Brasilia 70.3: Times were really fast. The first two guys (Miguel Hidalgo & Casimir Moine) went 3:31 & 3:32, and the winning woman (Djenyfer Arnold) went 4:01. So I think we’re going to have to assume it was a fast course/day/conditions.

Results: Brasilia 70.3, World Triathlon Africa Championships

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The -ish

And the other things worth knowing about this week in our sports.

• My bad, but last week’s most popular link — on cyclists getting the memo that thinner isn’t faster — had a typo in the URL. Here’s the correct link. (Velo)

• Paris-Roubaix is really about the photos isn’t it? And the goats. And all of the injuries. (Escape Collective/Velo/Cycling Weekly)

• Earlier this week, word spread there was a new 70.3 in Ruidoso, New Mexico and then all the local news stories about the race were taken down (which you can still see in Google results) and the race page on the Ironman site was an error message — but now it’s official: new 70.3 Ruidoso next summer. Ruidoso is also where XTERRA announced it will be hosting the World Championships starting next year. So, we’re all going to have to figure out where exactly it is and how they’re attracting so much new tri business. (Ironman/Google/KRQE)

• You can nominate an athlete for USAT’s annual awards. (USAT)

• That Triathlon Life released a full film about beautiful epic outdoor adventure, which you can watch while riding the trainer. (Youtube)

• Tim appears to be on the ‘try random things’ beat and he went to TriDot’s Swim School and improved his 100m time by seven seconds. (Triathlete)

• Sounds like Javi Gomez got hacked (at least that’s what I assume the post says from my limited Spanish). (Instagram)

• Jan Frodeno started a newsletter. (Frodissimo)

• Sam Laidlow is still struggling to figure out his health issues. (Tri247)

• Fenella Langridge has external iliac artery endofibrosis, which I will tell you is weirdly common in elite female cyclists. I’m gonna go ahead and say maybe none of this is super healthy for any of us. (Instagram/PubMed)

• Lucy CB is racing Lanzarote, Laura Philipp is hinting at her races (which appear to be Kraichgau and Hamburg), and I’m kinda ambivalent about pros’ schedule announcements? (Instagram)

• Beth Potter took 14th in the 10km in the European Running Championships. (Youtube)

• An update on Marion Jones’ triathlon journey: It sounds like she’s aiming for the Honolulu Tri next month? (Instagram)

• The former Diamond League vice-chairman put out a post calling the new Grand Slam Track “Grand Flop Track” — which is both obviously extreme (even for me) and also hilarious. (LinkedIn)

• The Boston Marathon is on Monday. (Citius Mag)

• A couple crazy pieces of information from marathons: A hungover bride-to-be gets third in marathon during her hen do (which is British for bachelorette party), and the Sweat Elite founder was arrested in Japan while there for the Osaka Marathon for attempting to smuggle THC into the country. (BBC/Running Magazine Canada)

• Also this has nothing to do with anything sports-related but it was my favorite piece of information all week: A naked woman was spotted in the window of this Mexico governor's house, but he's married and the naked woman was presumably not his wife, so he claimed it was a ghost and held a press conference about how the place is haunted. AND NOW HE'S GIVING GHOST TOURS. We really have taken our global commitment to post-truthiness to a new level. (Twitter)

• The Strava CEO did an AMA on Reddit if you want to get super in the weeds about feature Qs and details of where the app is going. (Reddit)

• My mom told me I needed to watch this: Jon Oliver explains the arguments around trans women competing in sports. (Youtube)

• New revisions came down today in the House v. NCAA settlement. (USA Today)

• The New York Times gave Bentonville the New York Times treatment: How An Arkansas city became an epicenter of the biking world. (New York Times)

• And I can guarantee this will be this week’s most clicked link, because triathletes: How many carbs do you really need to maximize performance? (Outside)

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One last thing

h/t to Triathlete’s IG, but this appears to be a real thing. A treadmill that moves around as you’re running. Designed originally for trail simulation, but could be used for triathlon? Somehow?