too bad, fun race, but then my knee is injured and I'm out of state so I can't complain.

Seems that several of these local races are coming to an end. I know a 70.3 in N. Alabama has announced that they will no longer hold the event after this year. They mentioned that the new Chatt 70.3 was an influencing factor in their decision.

The biggest take away, when looking at this announcement and the racing landscape as a whole is that the trend towards WTC being The Brand/Race(s) where people go is that the local race scene, those mom and pop races are dying out/ drying out.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
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Riverbluff (formerly NashVegas) used to run Sprint, Oly and Half. They had already nixed the half for this year based on infrastructure construction which dropped the participation by quite a bit. As disappointed as I am (in the middle of peak week), I'm kind of not surprised based on how few had signed up.

I raced the Oly the first and third year. I believe this would have been their 5th running? I really enjoyed the race and they seemed to have a good turnout. The bike course was different both times I raced; I wonder if they were having problems with that?

Lets be honest, this was a poorly run and attended race. There were issues each year so it really shouldn't come as a surprise. I thought it would make it as a sprint and Olympic. Just another loss for middle tennessee athletes

Hmm I don't know that I would go that far. For a local race it seemed to get a decent turnout; yes I know it was spread across three distances. I think they had a delay due to fog on the river the two years I raced, but I can't blame them for that. I didn't witness any other problems that suggested it was poorly run. What happened in 2012 and 2014?

Compare it to Music City and the turnout was rather poor. 280 sprint racers, 150 Olympic athletes and 95 half racers last year. Music City was 415 & 290 this year.

I have been at the race every year except the first one in support of S2F and hoping the race would make it. I just found it to be lower quality for the S2F standard. For instance, with 3 races going on, transition was ALWAYS open. You had two way traffic coming and going in the middle of a race. No one was keeping the path clear for athletes. On more than one occasion, there would be a collision when a clueless athlete didn't realize someone was racing. The mount/dismount line rarely had anyone stationed there, much less anyone to keep the crowd from encroaching. I manned that station a number of times due to concern for athletes and spectators.

The path coming in and out of the park was ridiculous congested due to the three races. At times you would have a biker leaving transition, biker returning to transition, runner leaving transition and a runner returning all on the same street with just a few cones thrown out there. The bike courses were a nightmare, hence they were changed each year. One of the first years, when you descended by to town from the east, traffic was so backed up that it cutoff the athletes. People actually had to dismount to get around cars. I think in the third year there was only 1 bottle exchange on the half course and it was at mile 25 ish. It was really hot that year. Heck, I think it was just last year that they were informed either night of or morning of that they didn't have permits for the roads. Ashland City Highway crosses into Davidson County at some point. IIRC, they didn't have Davidson Co permits. They managed to salvage the course by making it two laps, I think.

Some of these are minor issues but the logistics are a big one. I am very forgiving in a race's first year in production as the management team and the city begin working together. But several years later there just seemed to be very common sense errors. I personally expect more from a production company like S2F. I never felt like the race got any better.