jhammond wrote:
Ai_1 wrote:
vonschnapps wrote:
I hope I'm wrong, but it doesn't look good. Look at golf and tennis as examples, along with triathlon they are not appealing to younger generations. I remember waiting hours to get a court, and not even playing golf on some days as you could never get a tee time (now there is never a wait for either). Ten years ago there were often multiple choices for triathlons in my area, in July I could do one on Saturday, and one on Sunday. Looking through the race calendar, most of those are gone. I think there will still be big races around, but what we are probably looking at is fewer races, higher fees, and hopefully people not talking about triathlon in the same conversations as darts, and bowling.
I don't think there should be much mystery to triathlons modest appeal to younger athletes.
Most races are populated mostly by athletes in the 35-50 age range. That alone will likely put off most 15-25 year olds.
On top of that there's the focus, in some spheres (ST especially) on equipment and data. This is not what most younger athletes are looking for in their sport. I'd expect the vast majority of younger athletes to be unable to compete in terms of equipment since they will typically have considerably smaller budgets. I'd imagine that could be a bit off-putting, even if the reality is that their youth facilitates much bigger performance gains than fancy equipment does!
We've turned the sport into something that can be perceived as rather expensive, exclusive and full of it's own importance. There are consequences.
I think, ironically, that forums like this are public enemy number one when it comes to cost. Most of the posts on the forum are "what XXX should I buy?" and those items generally carry a 4 figure price tag. There's shockingly little here about training or race reports (at least on a regular basis). It also doesn't help that triathlon has become all about Ironman, which has an extraordinary price tag just for entry.
I agree this forum can be quite focused on expensive equipment purchases. I presume that's mostly because people like to get the opinion of others before spending significant money, and this can be a great source of opinion. I also find Americans often seem more purchasing oriented than others. Just my observation from having lived in the US for a while, online conversations, working with Americans, etc. I'm not sure if it reflects the US as a whole.
There is a lot of training discussion on ST. I'm surprised you say there's shockingly little.
Not many race reports, I agree. I'm fine with that.
Ironman is probably by far the best publically known triathlon brand globally but I don't believe triathlon is all about Ironman. Certainly a majority of triathletes I know, focus on sprint, olympic and 70.3 distances, with a reasonable proportion having done one or two 140.6 races; but most see that as an extra challenge to tack onto their mainstay if shorter races. Again, this seems a little different in the US from what I've gleaned here.