#76: Wildcards & wild speculation

Presented by Precision Fuel & Hydration

Feb 28, 2024

∙ Paid

Upgrade to paid to play voiceover

issue #76: Feb. 28, 2024

Welcome to all the new all-sporters! This is your weekly free Wednesday morning newsletter on all things triathlon-ish. (I’m Kelly O’Mara, and I also do a lot of triathlon-ish things.) The audio version/voiceover of this newsletter is available for paying subscribers, mostly for their convenience so they don’t have to actually read. They also get a Sunday evening newsletter that’s usually a Q&A or roundup or archival story.

Book Club: I opened up the discussion thread about our current Book Club book, ‘What Made Maddy Run,’ because I’m curious what you all think about how the pressures and mental health challenges have changed for college athletes since you were in school. The numbers are bad, so what can be done to fix it?

We’ll also have a Book Club Q&A for paying subscribers on March 27 @ noon PT/3 p.m. ET. Mark your calendars.

Now, this week’s newsletter is a couple of shorter items as we get into race season. And our thanks to the most helpful nutrition company around, Precision Fuel & Hydration, for their continuing support.

- Kelly

Wild wildcards

Next weekend is the first of the new PTO’s T100 races in Miami. (The race will also host a Continental Cup, the final Paralympic qualifier for the U.S., and CLASH Miami for the age-groupers. Lots going on.)

Obviously, all eyes gonna be on Florida. And the start lists are definitely going to be fire emoji (based on expectations and news from some of the athletes). But we don’t know for sure yet who will be on that start list, because it hasn’t been announced…

[[At least, as of writing this at 10 p.m. last night. Maybe they’ll announce right now.]]

How T100 Works: A Refresher

20 women & 20 men are signed to (lucrative) T100 contracts
Eight 100km races are announced for the year
Each athlete has to do 5 races + the Grand Final; those who are racing the Olympics only have to do 4 + final
To fill out the start lists in each event (given there will be some contracted athletes missing from every race), the PTO will invite additional wildcards
Four races count to your series total; final is worth more
$250K prize money on the line at each race + $2M for the series

So, who is racing in Miami? Definitely Daniela Ryf, Kat Matthews, Paula Findlay, Magnus Ditlev, Jason West — based on IG posts. We could probably wildly speculate and infer some more from the list of contracted athletes (probably none of the Olympic athletes are racing, probably not Chelsea Sodaro, guessing Ash Gentle is starting her season in Singapore).

The big question, then: Who will get the wildcard spots?

Haley Chura, who *is* racing on a wildcard, explained the process she went through a little bit at the start of last week’s Ironwomen episode. Sounds like the PTO reached out to all athletes per rankings based on how many spots there were to fill (8 for the women in Miami) and then rolled those spots down.

I have also heard, though, that—because the PTO is partnered officially with World Triathlon—the wildcard process in the future may involve an official World Triathlon start list, whereby the national federation will maintain the waitlist of names and athletes will have to go through their respective federation. You can imagine that this is complicated, especially for long-course athletes who do not regularly operate through their federations and (in some cases) left short-course specifically to not have to operate through their federations. And since the PTO is still nominally an athlete org, we’ll see how that plays out. For right now: Miami!

Of course, what we love most about the PTO is the super intense racing and the funding to try big new things. But we are 100% here for all the drama, too.

As you get ready for your own tri season — which, I think, is really truly upon us now — it’s worth checking out all the triathlon case studies from Precision Fuel & Hydration (including Kyle Smith’s win at Taupo 70.3). They also have a pretty in-depth knowledge hub and planner for your own races. My favorite piece: A short history of sports nutrition and how carbs became king

If you want to test it out yourself, get 15% off your first order here.

So, what happens to Roth?

There’s been a lot of talk about which pros are picking the PTO T100 series (basically all the ones who need/want the money) and which pros are picking the Ironman Pro Series (anyone who can do both or wants to win the world champs). But, it occurred to me that lost in between those: Who is picking Challenge Roth?

Of course, Roth will still draw huge age-group crowds. Of course, it’ll still be an awesome event. But, I’m curious what the pros will do.

It was already hard to fit Roth into your schedule if you also needed to knock out a qualifying Ironman(s) + the Ironman World Champs — but it was worth it. Now, though, it’ll be extra hard to fit another full in with the 100km races stacked on top of that. I’m sure Roth will still pay record bonuses and whatever appearance money and take care of their pro athletes. And, technically, the 2024 date doesn’t conflict with any other major race. But, at some point, there’s simply a limit on the number of miles you can pound out in a year. So if Roth doesn’t count towards Ironman qualifying or the Ironman Pro Series (which, of course, it doesn’t) + it doesn’t count towards the PTO T100 races (which, of course, it doesn’t), then it has to stand on its own. So who will pick it?

I’m crossing my fingers for one of the best triathlons out there.

READ: Two years ago, I wrote about if Roth lives up to the hype

From the races

World Cup - New Zealand: Maybe the biggest news is that Hayden Wilde got beat. And Sophie Linn won her first World Cup.
Normally don’t cover Continental Cups, but: Gwen Jorgensen won in Cuba. Just clicking off those points to get to the Olympic qualifying start line.
Winter Tri World Championships: I’m not totally sure how much this is a thing yet when the fields are still so small and so limited to a handful of countries, but you keep doing you and it could always become a thing. Plus, Sandra Mairhofer won her third title in a row (and she’s won Cross Worlds before, so).

Upcoming races

Ironman New Zealand: This weekend! But I’m 99% sure it won’t be televised because only Ironman Pro Series races are being broadcast and the series doesn’t start until Oceanside 70.3. Still, IM NZ has got some decent names lining up — women’s field probably more so — and if I was going to guess why (in addition to it being the 40th anniversary) it’s probably because it has 3 men’s & 3 women’s world champs spots and that lets athletes get their qualification done early.
Next weekend is huge: PTO T100 - Miami obviously & WTCS Abu Dhabi. And then it’s fully into Ironman season.

We started to update our weekly results page again as the season gets going, in case you want more race details.

The -ish

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

Everyone’s doing running races to get up-to-speed for the start of the season: Cassandre Beaugrand knocked out a 15:34 5K and Emma Pallant-Browne ran a 32:33 10K. (Instagram)
Also, you might have missed this because it was in a collegiate conference relay final, but: First woman to break 20 seconds in the 50y swim. (Pros don’t swim yards that often, but since we do, I thought you’d be able to relate.) (Instagram)
Speaking of college sports: It appears women’s wrestling got approval to move forward as the next NCAA sport; each division now has to sponsor it, then it’ll be voted on at the next annual NCAA meeting in about a year, then it’ll start the season that fall/winter. This made me wonder what about women’s NCAA tri & why it didn’t get approved instead. So I looked up the NCAA stats (pg. 90 of this doc) and it looks like, officially, triathlon is back below 40 schools because of the NCAA sports sponsorship requirements (ie. xx number of athletes from a team have to complete xx number of races, and those races have to have xx number of other competitors in them in order to count). Fingers crossed that’ll pick back up now as some bigger schools have gotten involved. (NCAA)
I’ve been following the new Ironman CEO on Instagram and it looks like he’s been making the rounds to all the events. This week was the Rock n’ Roll Vegas on the Strip race and then over to Singapore. You can begin speculating wildly. (Instagram)
I’m also not entirely sure I believe all the stuff the execs are saying about how the PTO & Super League totally aren’t even mad at each other over the Malibu debacle. (Though, holy hell, no, there is NOT going to be a PTO race in Malibu this year, probably not next year either, maybe never; it’s as if no one saying that has ever gone through a small town permitting process before!?!) I do, though, believe the PTO when they say they want to see celebrities come back to Malibu and make it a J. Lo style event again. (Triathlete)
To that end, they’re making good use of Lucy Charles-Barclay with a profile & T100 story in The Telegraph. (The Telegraph)
Michael Johnson is creating a new track & field league to launch in 2025. EVERYONE IS LAUNCHING NEW LEAGUES IN EVERY SPORT! (Citius)
Courtney Dauwalter won the 126K Transgrancanaria race across the Gran Canaria island. She said it was tough, but, like, I dunno, she seems to transcend toughness? (Outside Run)
The Osaka Marathon was won in a collegiate debut of 2:06:18 — and, most importantly, the winner appeared to be wearing magnets stuck to his neck, which apparently appears to be a thing. So watch that catch on in triathlon next year. (Japan Running News/Instagram)
A deep dive on the history of being DFL at the Olympic Marathon Trials. (Defector)
The Trials are a cornerstone of American running, but they also lose huge amounts of money. Can they survive? (Outside)
Unbound Gravel is adding a qualifier out of its new Life Time event in Europe. Seems kinda like everyone’s adding qualifying systems. Gee. (Escape Collective)
People thought Marianne Vos was done, and then hah, she won Omloop in a four-way sprint. (Instagram)
Craziest story of the week is definitely the team that faked a rider to meet the five rider minimum. Had the mechanic dress up and pretend. (Escape Collective)
The first person has been charged in the U.S. with an actual crime for facilitating doping. (Justice Department)
And tomorrow is the last day to apply for the Ironman Foundation’s Race for Change grant, which is a pretty good deal. (Ironman)

One last thing

Which kind of new shoe-wearer are you: The put them on immediately out of the store person OR the save them forever so they don’t get dirty kind?

This issue was brought to you by Precision Fuel & Hydration. Get 15% off your first order here.

Keep reading with a 7-day free trial

Subscribe to Triathlonish to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.