Like 4-5 races permanently cancelled in my area, but on the other hand some of the remaining races getting sold out.
I'm confused sometimes. Bottom line is my age group(50-54) is damn competitive no matter what.

In BC this past weekend:

Victoria 70.3 - 2000 participants
Oliver Half Iron / Wine Capital Tri (sprint/standard) - 300 / 500 participants

Good numbers, but you can see the extraordinary bias towards the M-DOT race.

Triathlon is booming in SE Asia and seems to be doing well in the Oceania region.

Not sure if it's a chicken or the egg thing. I'd love to do non-M dot races, but trying to bury myself for a half iron distance race completely alone for a large part of the day isn't appealing at all. I can swim in the neighborhood pool, drill myself on zwift, and run as hard as I care to from my own house and it's the exact same thing.

The decrease in Sprint and international distance races is a completely different story though and who knows what's caused that.

We've only had three local events for years. This year we lost the cities biggest sprint-only triathlon (the other two offer the sprint distance as part of multiple distance event). So we declined 33% this year.

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Athlinks / Strava

Participated in the Colorado Tri Sprint this last weekend, which also held a Du, Aquathon, Relays, and Oly Tri...and they ran out of bike racks & people were parked against the barrier fences around the transition. It has clearly grown bigger & bigger and races are selling out all over. Does "Google really know all??"

The Los Angeles area has 2 new Sprint/Oly races this year. Anecdata for sure, but.....

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Next races on the schedule: none at the moment

The Colorado Triathlon this weekend had the most entries ever - over 800 - and more than 130 in the first timers wave. Growth seems pretty good here....

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
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Escape the Cape in NJ was sold out 2055 spots in the bike racks.

Great event.

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Dan Kennison

facebook: @triPremierBike
http://www.PremierBike.com
http://www.PositionOneSports.com

I've never used "Google Trends" before, pretty sure I'm going to be going down a rabbit hole for the next hours...

Interesting how cyclical it is. I tried playing around with some other terms. 'Ironman' gets messed up due to the superhero/movie and isn't of much use. Marathon has a gigantic spike in April 2013 (the bombing at Boston) so you can't really see if there have been any trends. 'Cyclocross' has trended down a bit, depending on how you type it in, 'ultra marathon' is either flat or down. 'Slowtwitch' peaked around 2012 and has headed mostly down since. 'Gravel bike' is through the roof lately, so we got that going for us, right???

I have been keeping a list of races and total number of finishers from home state over the past 10 years. For the most part numbers peaked in 2012 and have dropped significantly since then. Sever races that existed around 2010 are gone. Others are struggling. Bike racing is in a much worse spot. It's almost impossible to find a road race, I think there are maybe 2 or 3 now. And the fields are ridiculously tiny, it's basically a small group ride. I haven't looked too closely at running races yet (5k-marathon).

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Matt

I think two things are killing the local scene: IM & ITU. Thanks to ITU, all the Oly talent is competing in draft-legal events trying to OQ. These are designed for TV/Spectators vs. having solid pro fields in mass participation shorter events (like the old Bud Light series). If you want to do a race with a high profile and a top field, you have to do mDot races (70.3+) or a few of the high-quality competitors (Challenge, etc.).

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

Also, if this chart really indicates triathlon participation, how do we explain triathlon participation peaking in 2012 at about double what it was in 2004 when google says triathlon peaked?

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Is the new renaissance of triathlon in Alaska? What am I missing here?

Mid Atlantic area seems more popular than ever

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IG - @ryanppax
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Use code ST5 for $5 off your order

Too cold to race so they spend all their time on the internet looking up things they could be doing if they weren't in Alaska.

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"They know f_ck-all over at Slowtwitch"
- Lionel Sanders

As the story goes there were 15 men who started the original Ironman, 12 finished.

However, the untold story is the 15 who didn't start because it wasn't branded so they had nothing to tattoo on their calf to show to their friends. And like you they were afraid to not race with 2000 other people in a gigantic draft pack because then it would be lonely. These are the true legends of the sport. We salute them for waiting it out and making sure something was popular before doing it.

Agreed. We have more athletes signed up for next summer than we've had the past 10 years.

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http://www.sweat7.com
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Don't let council hear you say that.

Cue freak out.

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36 kona qualifiers 2006-'23 - 3 Kona Podiums - 4 OA IM AG wins - 5 IM AG wins - 18 70.3 AG wins
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To be fair, there are a limited number of Triathlons in the Denver metro, and the CO Triathlon is the first one of the season (and a week before IM Boulder, assuming some of the competitors are using it as a tuneup?). Outside of the Ironman 140.6 and 70.3, you have the Without Limits series, the Boulder Sunrise/Sunset and one in Longmont in September, along with a few women's only races (Lame....). This will be my 2nd year doing the Without Limits series (Lance, the RD does a great job, plus it's actually affordable), however I will admit that it would be nice to have a change of scenery.

IMHO, it's strange to me that there isn't a tri at Aurora, Cherry Creek or Chatfield. Living across the street from Chatfield, I can easily map out a 14 and 21 mile bike route, along with 5k and 10k out and backs for the run.

Flipping to world.. because global... and it's interesting to see the uptick on Olympic years.

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Shane Miller - GPLama
YouTube | Web | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Strava

Cactus Man was crowded as hell...

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Everywhere around me is triathletes.
I hear through the grapevines that the numbers are up.
If you pay attention, they did add St George back on IM list albeit not yearly. Plus one more IM being put on the list of race. My guess is that they will add a couple 70.3’s as well and remove either IMNC or IMMD. But net result seems to be more races on the schedule.

Maybe that's an American thing.

Here in the Netherlands the popularity is growing and rapidly. I do see however a change. The participants for the long distances ar more and more a bucket list to tick off. This quite noticeable during the bike or running leg. Where at the bike leg people have no technique nor speed as with this running leg, people tent to walk quite a bit, including at OD matches. The answer by certain triathlon organizers is to split matches at 'proven'/'estimated cut off times. Recently this was for an OD: sub 2.30 and anything above.

There's also another trend rising in Europe amongst 'elite' triatlethes: The so called 'super triathlons' or super sprint triathlons where the athletes do 3 very fast, but short distance triathlons. As well as the team relay matches. So no, triathlon itself here is not eroding. The style and distance is maybe eroding.

In France, popularity in increasing from what I can tell. A lot of new races in my region (Center of France), and the old ones are sold out pretty fast. The local tri club had an 80% increase in membership in 2018/2019. Some XXL (not ironman brand) appear quite often, I think we now have 11 full distance races. My first full distance was an official IM, but I'm never going to pay those ridiculous fees again.
Compared to what I remember from 10Y ago, the gear is also much better in average but the average performance has decreased. Still a lot of fun and nice people to meet everytime.