Ironman has no reason to change their business model....

Those are IronMan Championships. Challenge Family has their own. You can create your own, if you feel like.

It's the general market recognition, that constitutes the Kona/Nice to be the 'genuine' world championships.

Are you thinking about today's BIG announcement from the PTO and World Triathlon?

Is there an announcement ?
What is a good source of news in the world of tri ?

13:00 CET in Paris...............keep your eyes peeled.

I’m listening to Jack Kelly’s interview with Sam Renouf right now. Sounds positive to me.

Cool. It just popped up!!

The different approaches reward different things.
Being able to perform in a once a year big pressure event vs consistency over the year. Which might be difficult since a full IM takes a lot out of you and it is hard to have multiple good ones in a year (though some people show that it is possible). I like the PTO approach to factor in 70.3s and other distances.

Lots of sports have a cup and league in parallel. Or League system up to play offs. PTO and IM WC are similar now.

My issue with Kona ist that it rewards a specific type of athlete. Larger frames tend to be at a disadvantage. Would like to see cold races factor in as well. See cycling where cold, rainy conditions are encountered often and decide races.

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Strava

Personally, not a massive fan of the league style world champion that ITU use. Especially with the “grand final” style event scoring extra points. Makes it feel like a middle ground. Either all socre the same or go down the one-off route. F1 tried it back in 2014 with a double points final race, didn’t return next year luckily.

I far prefer the one-off event world tile like Ironman or UCI cycling use, bring so much more tension and hype. Cyclo-cross have a one-off WC event for the jersey and world cup league. That seems the best to me.

On that note, Should Triathlon get a cycling rainbow bands jersey equivalent for the world champion? 🤩

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Reported here:
https://tri-today.com/...-long-distance-tour/

Triathlon *has* rainbow bands -- Jordan wore them after winning ITU LD Worlds in 2011.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

only thing is we have a nice thread we have a singapore thread we dont have a 70,3 worlds thread as more than 50 percent of the people seem to understand that the 3 pto races are higher than the 70.3 worlds or at least equal.

It's still two weeks out.

Let's hold off on making a determination on what "people seem to understand."

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

I try to remain objective, not subjective. I wish other organisations would step-up to the level of IM organisation and/or coverage and/or AGs participation. IM has huge flaws, but they also do many things right.

Lahti IM 70.3 WC are still 1 week after Singapore PTO (so there's time), plus probably 70% of the US-based ST user wouldn't be able to point Lahti on the map.

You're probably not wrong.

FWIW, I'm bringing my kiddo to her summer camp, and then I'm sitting down to write up a front page story on this.

I'll say this much -- they have our 2024 coverage attention.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

..
Here is Macca in his..

Technically they don't, but that hasn't stopped triathletes from appropriating the UCI rainbow bands. technically for the WTCS the symbol that the champions can wear on the kit is in the shape of the series trophy, and if you look at Flora's kits or Mario Mola's kits in World triathlon races, you will see a number of those logos corresponding with their series wins. That said, many athletes, and most of the kit/bike companies still use the UCI world champion stripes for triathletes. Until the UCI who own the copyright on it threaten lawsuits, I suspect the use of the stripes in tri will continue.

In terms of today's announcement: https://www.triathlon.org/...our_of_long_distance

Here's the world tri release about the series format and the PTO/World Triathlon partnership. We'll see how the series goes, but I really like the fact that this moves the main PTO series under world tri sanction and rules, rather than each event operating under national sanction and national rules (to be fair the European open this year was run under world tri sanction, since it was hitched onto the Multisport World Champs). There has been significant discussion about "hinky" calls and non-calls at a few of the PTO opens, that largely relate to national differences in the rules. In order to ensure consistency throughout, moving under a unified sanction and ruleset makes sense, and makes it easier on the athletes.

Interesting though, that instead of switching the existing LD world championships to the 100k distance for age groupers, they are instead offering a separate title for that distance, and keeping the longer distance event as part of the multisport festival and awarding the age group LD world titles there (as best as I can tell from the release). More info to come this fall, but interesting development, and probably not too surprising to many.

Sorry for being thick.....I'm losing track........who is 'World Triathlon'? That isn't WTC, is it?

,
World Triathlon is the old ITU..
World Triathlon

World Triathlon, previously known as the International Triathlon Union, is the international governing body for the multi-sport disciplines of triathlon, duathlon, aquathlon and other nonstandard variations.

Thx!

Link to the announcement.

I'm of two minds on whether this is a game changer. We're probably used to thinking of the Long Distance World Champion title as a fake championship. (By "fake" I obviously don't mean fraudulent - you're a "champion" but you're not close to the best guy/gal.)

Meanwhile we saw the field strengths in Ibiza and Milwaukee, without a WT rubber stamp, and I don't think many will dispute they were worthy of championship status.

So it looks like World Triathlon piggybacking on the back of PTO money rather than the PTO raising the profile of its races.

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"FTP is a bit 2015, don't you think?" - Gustav Iden

Great interview. One of Jack's best

Sam was amazing. This is great news for triathlon. Anxious to hear the PTO haters response to this one.

well objectively no race in the past could have gotten much attention one before the 70.3 worlds , as not many high caliber athlete would have raced it , so given that singapore can do so , and the field is as strong as the worlds .
we can objectively say there is a shift. and in the top 4 middle distance races 2023 , 3 are not ironman. gender wise ibiza was the strongest women field this year and milwauki the strongest male middle distance field.
totality agree we can not yet say objectively how much the shift is but the trend is oblivious going towards pto last year athletes did not get bonuses for pto races this year they do so the industry , recognizes there is a shift as well.