#120: What can we expect in 2025?

Moderately (un)hinged predictions.

issue #120: Jan. 1, 2025

Yesterday, I had CNN’s New Year’s Eve special on around 8pm (West Coast time gets us ahead of Times Square) and they were talking to Diplo in one of the wilder live interviews I’ve seen on TV. Now, in light of Diplo running the L.A. Marathon while on LSD, Andy Cohen asked him what instead was the most conventional normal place he’d ever done LSD and he said ‘right now, on the helicopter on the way here.’

And if that’s not the kind of unhinged chaos energy you’re planning to bring to 2025 what are you even doing.

Happy new year! It’s gonna be a weird one.

- Kelly

P.S. I think we’ll be back to semi-normal newsletters next week, post-holiday season.

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The year’s biggest money earners

When it comes to making money, triathlon is no pickleball, but still it’s not a bad time to be a professional triathlete. Or, rather, it’s not as good as it was at one point (early 2000s?) but there was $4 million more in prize money to be earned in 2024 than in 2023 and there were 41 athletes who made over $100K in prize money (compared to just 29 athletes in 2023).

TriRating has the full prize money deep dive and breakdown for 2024, but a few highlights that stood out to me:

• Kat Matthews is making bank

• This didn’t include any medal bonuses individual countries gave out to Olympic winners (no prize money at Olympics from World Tri), so I think it’s safe to assume the U.S., UK, and French athletes got additional federation funds

• The list also assumed that Supertri prize money, which was paid out to teams, was distributed evenly across team members — but my understanding was that was really not the case, some team members were more equal than others

• It used to be a decently OK rule-of-thumb that what an athlete made in prize money was often roughly equal to what they made in sponsorship (of course not for everyone, you could have an injured athlete who was still hugely popular, or a influencer-style athlete who made significantly more outside of racing, but it was a good rule-of-thumb), but I don’t think this is super true anymore

Overall, the PTO’s influx of cash has been massive, of course. (The list also doesn’t include the PTO’s T100 contract payments, which were guessed to be in the $70-90K range, though varied by athlete.) And the IM Pro Series added and concentrated money into those series races.

Mostly, though, I think it’s key to note: The number of athletes who made any prize money at all didn’t really change from last year. (In fact, it was primarily more short-course athletes who took home some money v. no money.) So it’s not that the increased wealth is spreading; it’s that it’s consolidating at the top. For better or worse.

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Probably a lot of this in 2025. Photo: Courtesy of T100

Moderately hinged predictions

This time last year I was headed to USAT’s Endurance Exchange conference (which isn’t happening this year) and coming out of that I tried to break down some of the data on whether or not the sport was really truly actually making a comeback.

A year later, I’m still not sure we have an answer.

I’ve been given a lot of stats from people in charge that try to argue things are on the up: European Ironman-brand races sold out but there are also fewer of those races, there are more individual multisport races in the U.S. but that’s because RDs added more types of races to an event weekend but there are fewer overall events/event weekends, numbers are going back up but are still down.

I don’t know. I want to think that tri is the future — and the money and attention and media pouring into pro triathlon makes that feel very possible, it’s a great time to be a pro triathlete or fan of pro triathlon — but if I’m going off vibes and external interest, then the grassroots, community, mass participation side of the sport doesn’t seem ready to boom, it doesn’t seem forward-looking (with a few exceptions, of course). The excitement is missing.

My guess is this is deeply regionalized. And here in N. California, tri’s not doing great. I could run a trail 50K every single weekend here if I wanted to, but there are maybe four local triathlons (not the one Ironman-brand 70.3, not Alcatraz) in the whole greater Bay Area. There are tri clubs, sure, but the very well-known hub of group training and spin classes and coaching that I used to go to sometimes is probably not going to make it financially, not realistically. Something is off.

We could say it’s just a very California problem — and, sure, yes, there are some external forces and trends here that made the pandemic effects hit much harder — but the Bay Area is also where algorithms and trends and what you see online that seeps into your consciousness comes from (it’s the much-less-interesting Hollywood of the modern era), so if something feels not on point here it’s hard not to see how that doesn’t trickle out to other places.

The point is: If I was going to make a bet, I’d put all my money on trail running. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Maybe that’ll change, maybe some of the one-off interesting tri things happening will take hold and grow, maybe not.

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But there’s lots happening on the pro triathlon side — so maybe that’ll be what gets people excited about doing tri themselves — and lots of races and investment and huge jumps in performances from the athletes. The sport is drastically changing at the top-level, and that does trickle down eventually. So here are my 2025 pro triathlon predictions:

• Someone will beat Taylor Knibb at the mid-distance. I could caveat this by saying it might not be this year, it might be next year, but it’s coming. The other women will get there.

• The men’s 2025 Ironman World Championships *will* happen in Nice. Bold.

• Kristian Blummenfelt & Gustav Iden will win a bunch of long-course stuff again and everyone will forget that they wrote off “the Norwegian Method.”

• More short-course stars will forgo much of the WTCS in lieu of T100 contracts and wildcards, and the mid-distance will truly simply become the slightly longer short-distance. I actually wrote this down as a prediction before T100 started announcing their “hot shot” contracts for 2025, which are a who’s who of short-course: Vince Luis, Leo Bergere, Hayden Wilde, Morgan Pearson, Taylor Spivey, Kate Waugh, Jess Learmonth. Surprised they couldn’t get Alex Yee, too. (Now, all we need is to know who’s signed on for the other rankings-based contracts…)

• The T100 will change its race schedule at least three more times. I also wrote this one down before I saw that it appears T100 San Francisco/Alcatraz is no longer on their list of events (despite being announced back in September). In fact, on the Alcatraz website the link to “race with the T100 pros” now just sends you to sign up for the T100 London race. Word has been, from the pros, that the T100 contract requirements were originally stricter than last year but that has since been relaxed to get more of the top 10 athletes to sign, and that the races and dates have changed and moved a couple times behind-the-scenes already.

• SuperTri will buy up some more big city high-profile short-course races. Bring back short-course racing in the U.S.! And, bonus prediction: The New York City Triathlon will actually happen (gonna manifest this prediction into being), but Malibu Tri will not (whomp whomp).

• Marten Van Riel will end up being very very good at Ironman. Shocking, I know. But will he commit to going long?

• Kat Matthews will win Women’s Kona. My wildest prediction. Let’s go for it, the way-too-early no-way-to-really-know Ironman World Championship picks. It’s gonna be a big Kona this year, I expect all the huge names to be fully primed and not half-focused on T100. But Kat seems fully committed to this goal and I think she can do it, even if her best world championship races have come in wetsuit swims. Why not.

From my email inbox today.

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The -ish

Stuff from around our sports worth knowing about this week.

• Holly Lawrence says 2025 is the year she does a full Ironman. I gather Paula Findlay said she might too (but no one knows if she’s joking). I’m guessing we see a few other athletes dipping their toes in the 140.6 as the mid-distance becomes the dominion of the short-course athletes. (Instagram)

• Congrats to Sam Long & Lara Gruden on their wedding! (Instagram)

• And to Beth Potter on her engagement. (And, yes, it is full on gossip season right now.) (Instagram)

• Triathlete did a good overview of the big names who retired this year. I’m gonna guess we see a few more make it through one more Kona this season and then more or less be done. (Triathlete)

• And 220 Triathlon did a good overview of the scandal with the World Tri board elections — though Tim and I disagree slightly on how much you can really prove or show quid pro quo malfeasance, since telling people who you’d prefer they vote for isn’t illegal, it’s literally what election endorsement recommendations are. (220 Triathlon)

• USATF’s tax returns from 2023 have also been published (similar to the USAT ones that made news a month or so ago) and USA track & field had a $5.6 million deficit. So, you know, sames as tri but not. (Runner’s World/Slowtwitch)

• Ruth Astle did her annual ‘how much I made as a pro triathlete’ video, which is always a good watch and especially interesting this year since she had a rough year injury and race-wise. (Youtube)

• Justin Riele also shared his TrainingPeaks training volume as a pro and his progression. And I think he’s probably right that while people over-lie about how much volume they do and over-focus on it, it’s also simply hard to compete at the top level without hitting something in the 16-20 hours/week range at least (probably more, depending on build, goals, history, etc). (Instagram)

• Hoka’s been dropping a lot athletes lately, which includes Courtney Olsen, who just set the 50-mile world record. She wrote a little bit about what that actually feels like and it’s a weird space to be in. (Instagram)

• I’m fascinated by what’s going to happen with Grand Slam Track in the running world and they have a full list of all 48 athletes signed to the league now. (Grand Slam Track/Facebook)

• At the U.S. Track & Field and Cross-Country Coaches Association meeting (long name), the CEO gave an opening speech about how college running’s future does not look good. In so many words. (UTFCCCA)

• More pro runners are moving away from agents, also. (Runner’s World)

• Pat Lemieux was on the Second Nature podcast talking about the business of sponsorship. While I think some of the numbers he throws out are wrong (because I’ve looked them up too), it’s a good look at the industry and how it works. (Youtube)

• Ironman CEO Scott Derue was on the Fitt Insider podcast saying a whole bunch more stuff about elevating the athlete experience — which maybe I’m just a jaded bitch (possible) but I’m pretty tired of hearing this phrase. (Youtube)

• The New York Times went deep on the death of juniors rider Muriel Furrer at the cycling World Championships. Sounds like she was laying on the side of the road for a long time before anyone even realized she has missing and had crashed. (The Athletic)

• France is banning flashing rear lights on bikes. (Matos Velo)

• Beatrice Chebet became the first woman to run under 14:00 for a 5K, to close out the 2024 year. (BBC)

• Allie Ostrander got beat by her weiner dog in a mile race. (Instagram)

• Is canitriathlon a thing now? (Instagram)

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One last thing

If you revised your goals at the end of the year to be realistic. Cute video.

I also want to thank all the Triathlonish partners from the last year: Precision Fuel & Hydration, XTERRA, UltraSwim33.3. And everyone who supported Feisty as we transition and merge these things. Thank YOU!