"Without more of a commitment, triathlon could face the same fate as women’s archery, badminton, squash or handball, all former emerging sports that never caught on"

Really? That's a fair comparison. Triathlon participation at the youth level has to be about 10X those sports combined. 200X when you add in swimming cycling and running. A better comparison might be women's Crew. I don't know the whole history and timeline, but from what I can tell, it's doing fairly well.

Another way to dramatically build the sport is the get youth programs into the high school level. The challenge there is the liability of cycling training. You probably have to do most of your training indoors on the bike and focus on the swim/run aspect.

The best way to sell the sport to elite athletes, is that it's another path to the summer Olympics if your very good runner and swimmer, but will never be in the top 3 to qualify.


Finally, if USAT wants to build up the sport, they should team up with USA Swimming to further broaden youth swim programs. I think similarly USATF should foster youth soccer programs. Sounds strange, but I think that's one of the best paths to identify and develop running talent at a young age in a way that's more fun that running in circles.

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