I rarely see Black athletes competing in IRONMAN. The last race I did, I saw one Black male and zero Black females. I have never seen a non-White IRONMAN Race Director. Does anyone see more diversity in triathlon?
USTA did a two-part article on diversity in triathlon a few months ago:
Part 1
**Part 2 **
My training partner:
We were swimming outside in 46 degrees (water not much warmer :-)!)
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I see some in cycling, but not much in Triathlon. One of our club (and city) leaders is African American, we have a ton of hispanic riders, but its still predominately white.
I know total 4 African American triathletes and a bunch of Filipino triathletes.
Not to be pedantic, but Ironman does not equal triathlon. I do see some diversity in our local “sceneâ€. It doesn’t mirror racial demographics, but it seems to be moving in a good direction.
Sorry for the multiple replies. I think we have an obligation to work on this - I will do so more in the future. It can be done, and needs to be done. I think it is important for the future of our sport.
Check out this wonderful human being from a race I put on:
Or these kids from another race I help produce:
Not much…but it makes it easier for my wife to spot me during races.
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Sika Henry
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Whistler was pretty white
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A black guy and I kept battling for position during the swim at Lake Placid last weekend. The whole 2 laps. I really loved it. Don’t know what that means. Maybe I’m a racist. But I don’t think so.
"Not much…but it makes it easier for my wife to spot me during races. "
Ha! Same!
To be fair, I do live in British Columbia, so there aren’t many black people to start with. In a total of 5 smaller local races, I’ve only met one other black athlete, who himself told me out of like…20-30 races I was the 4th of 5th black guy he’d met.
I just did IMC (70.3) and of course the larger field produced more diversity, but not by much. I think 1 female black athlete, 2 males. There were a handful of Indians (or Bangladeshi/Sri Lankan) and another handful of eastern asians.
Unfortunately, it’s a stereotype for a reason, not many black people (that I know) swim…I can see how that and the cost of the hobby could turn a lot away from doing triathlons.
Sorry for the multiple replies. I think we have an obligation to work on this - I will do so more in the future.
You feel you should use skin color to decide who to encourage and help?
No, I think we should encourage everybody regardless of skin color. Sometimes that means reaching out to those who haven’t been reached out to before. Really pretty simple from my vantage point.
Sorry for the multiple replies. I think we have an obligation to work on this - I will do so more in the future.
You feel you should use skin color to decide who to encourage and help?
Agree. Prefer to be colorblind.
Bravo, David, and thank you! I am not able to see the most recent photos you posted. Perhaps I need a different browser. I love the photos you posted (in your first post). I feel the same obligation that you do, though I’m not doing as much as you do. Bless you.
Update: I can see all the photos!
No, I think we should encourage everybody regardless of skin color. Sometimes that means reaching out to those who haven’t been reached out to before. Really pretty simple from my vantage point.
I am white and will be in the tiny minority in most of my events for the rest of the year.
If Diversity is only about color of your skin, yeah I see some. Diversity is not just about the melanin content of your skin or what’s between your legs. It’s also about experience. I could say that the reconnaissance platoon I commanded was one of the most non-diverse work groups I’d ever been a part of. The life experience of most of my men was very similar to mine own. Yes, I graduated from a place that issues a bachelor’s degree and so had my Platoon Sergeant. But to a man, every single one of us grew up dirt poor. Yet, it would appear diverse if you went by skin color.
Update: I can see ALL of your beautiful photos on my phone. Thank you 
Bravo, David, and thank you! I am not able to see the most recent photos you posted. Perhaps I need a different browser. I love the photos you posted (in your first post). I feel the same obligation that you do, though I’m not doing as much as you do. Bless you.
Bravo, David, and thank you! I am not able to see the most recent photos you posted. Perhaps I need a different browser. I love the photos you posted (in your first post). I feel the same obligation that you do, though I’m not doing as much as you do. Bless you.
Update: **I can see all the photos! **
No, I think we should encourage everybody regardless of skin color. Sometimes that means reaching out to those who haven’t been reached out to before. Really pretty simple from my vantage point.
I see none of them. Do you think it’s a browser issue? I see pictures in other threads.
Regarding diversity, I guess I see a similar make up as I did playing ice hockey. Draw your own conclusions on that.
I rarely see Black athletes competing in IRONMAN. The last race I did, I saw one Black male and zero Black females. I have never seen a non-White IRONMAN Race Director. Does anyone see more diversity in triathlon?
USTA did a two-part article on diversity in triathlon a few months ago:
Part 1
**Part 2 **
I have been doing triathlons since 1985 as an athlete (yaay, doing some slowly again after a 4 year hiatus), coached tris for 10+ years and organized races for one year and organized training camps for 15+.
Pretty well, at every tri, since 1985, in North America or Europe, if you are looking for the diversity then you’ll see it at the guy wearing my race number (that would be me).
BUT ALL YOU WHITE GUYS JUST HAVE TO STOP FEELING GUILTY ABOUT DIVERSITY IN TRIATHLON.
Seriously, there are plenty of Black, Chinese, Indian, Latino professionals with plenty of money to join golf clubs, tennis clubs, ski memberships or do tris. There are plenty of them. They all have equal access compared affluent white people.
Its our problem if we don’t do triathlon.
Now triathlon does have an access problem related to finances, but that has nothing to do with not being white. It has everything to do with economics. We might argue that minorities are generally a bit more poor, however there are plenty of us making decent money who can choose to do triathlon.
In my ethnic group, kids get dissuaded from doing sport and just geek out on academics and math and get channelled towards silly corporate ladder climbing (you know because their poor parents who came as immigrants want their kids to do what they could not so they project what they could not do on their kids…sport is not part of the equation…my dad could not care less about my zillion sports forays, endless road to Kona attempts with associated success and failure (more of the latter), but he totally gets off that I am tech startup CEO and totally wants to know every detail about my work life…he’s living that part of his life through me. But as most of you can tell on ST, I get off sport. If my parents gave me sufficient genetics to go pro in sport, I would, but they gave me genetics to go pro in tech…so I do that so I can fuel sport. But, most immigrant kids, we’re not wired to tell our parents off and go do our own life dreams (I just left home and joined the air force in 1983…there was only one other kid like me in our recruit class…the rest all white guys and girls). Here in Canada, immigrant kids don’t generally joint the military either. So my mindset is more like a white middle class age grouper but I’m in an immigrant minority body.
All of this identity politics just pisses me off as you can likely tell.
If minorities want to do tris, they can just go ahead and stop giving themselves excuses. It was the same in 1985…my role models were Scott Molina and Mark Allen in tris, Greg Lemond and Steve Bauer in cycling (Interestingly Alexi Grewal who beat Bauer at the olympics in LA is from my immigrant minority, I did not see as a role model and never liked), Alex Baumann in swimming and Alberto Salazar in running. None of these guys look remotely like me (although we can say that both Alberto and Scott have those immigrant roots, but I just saw them as fast athletes pushing the outer limit of human possibility)
