Is There a Future Where Indoor Triathlon Racing is a big deal?

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Originally published at: Is There a Future Where Indoor Triathlon Racing is a big deal? - Slowtwitch News

Photo: Petko Beier/Supertri

We’ve already talked a little bit about last week’s news that the Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO) would be partnering with the Lievin Triathlon World Cup this year. That race will take place a week before the Supertri E World Triathlon Championship in London, setting up a fun couple of weeks of indoor racing for the sport’s elite racers. Based on a chat with PTO CEO Sam Renouf last week, there wasn’t any vision of trying to create an indoor series or circuit, but it does seem like it will be a good opportunity for “really” short-course specialists to earn some money and World Triathlon ranking points over a couple of weekends.

According to Renouf, part of the reason the PTO wanted to get involved in the race in Lievin was because many of the organization’s broadcast partners expressed interest in the event. And you can see why – shorter, action-packed events are much more likely to attract a television audience than a two-hour race. (And, in all seriousness, if you weren’t a true triathlon fan, can you see yourself sitting through three, four or even eight hours of swim, bike and run viewing?)

If you’re trying to make money off pro racing, heading indoors makes a lot of sense, too. Unless people buy a ticket, they can’t get in – a completely different scenario to even races like the Olympics last year – there were lots of people who just lined up on the streets and got a pretty awesome show. Television coverage is considerably easier, too – you’re not chasing athletes through multiple kilometres (OK, miles, if you must) of racing. And you don’t have to keep things exclusively to pros, either – the Lievin race includes age group and kids races, while the Supertri E race will offer free tickets to children.

Supertri E World Triathlon Championship

Since it was announced first, we’ll begin with the Supertri race. Both Supertri and the PTO have deals with World Triathlon to put on world championship events – Supertri started with its E worlds a few years ago with the Arena Games, but over the last few years the world championship has been decided at just one race in London.

The news out of this year’s worlds is that the final will follow the new Supertri format of three continuous rounds of 200 m swim/ 4 km bike/ 1km run – the heats will consist of two rounds.

“The change to the race format will make it even more compelling for viewers and seamless across the Supertri family of events, which perfectly showcases the drama and unpredictability of triathlon where the athletes must bring their absolute best from start to finish,” said Supertri CEO and co-founder Michael D’Hulst.

Cassandre Beaugrand competes at the Supertri E World Championship 2024. Photo: Petko Beier/Supertri

The first athlete Supertri announced would be attending the race was French Olympic gold medalist Cassandre Beaugrand, who was second to Beth Potter at last year’s race. Next up was defending men’s champ, Chase McQueen, seen below on his way to the Arena Games win in Montreal two years ago.

The list will no-doubt continue to grow over the next few weeks.

T1 Indoor Triathlon World Cup

The race in Lievin, France, differs from the E triathlon event in that there are no trainers or treadmills in the mix – the races include a 200 m swim in a specially built pool inside an indoor track, a 2.8 km bike around that 200 m track, followed by a 1 km run around the track, too.

2024 World Triathlon Indoor Cup Lievin, Photo : @by_wout

The race was a World Triathlon Cup last year, and for the two years before was a Europe Triathlon Cup race, so the format has been tested a few times and has obviously worked. In addition to the World Triathlon ranking points (500), the race will offer a prize purse of US$60,000. The race will have 120 athletes (12 in each heat) in a race format that will include heats, semi-finals, repechage and finals.

“We are excited to be partnering with the Professional Triathletes Organisation to take indoor triathlon further on the global stage,” said Lolo Szewczyk, the president of the Lievin Triathlon Club, which puts on the event. “This has been a project of passion for our club over the past two years, working closely together with World Triathlon, which has been warmly embraced by the global triathlon community, such as last year’s champions Vetle Bergsvik Thorn and Mixed Relay Olympic Gold medalist Laura Lindemann. In adding the involvement of the PTO together with World Triathlon, we are excited for this year’s Indoor World Cup event, we declare ambitions to make Indoor Triathlon a fixture of the professional calendar – and Lievin as its spiritual home.”

The Future of Indoor Triathlon?

Which brings us back to our initial question. Is Szewczyk’s dream of making indoor triathlon racing “a fixture” realistic? I was in Montreal a few years ago when Supertri hosted an Arena Games event there, and it was a very exciting event. (Believe me, no one was more surprised that I would say that than me. And, for all the Lionel Sanders fans out there, his mobilized fan base certainly helped both fill the place and keep the noise level up.)

But … since then we’ve seen Supertri do fewer indoor events each year. And there aren’t a bunch of venues building temporary pools to put on more indoor World Cup races.

What’s great is that World Triathlon, Supertri and the PTO are all putting their hats into the mix to at least try to ensure these events can be successful. How long they’ll be willing to continue that support if these events can’t start making money will be the big question.

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What was old is new again…It will be a novelty race and would be surprised if it became a popular part of the sport globally…Just like when they tried it more than 30 years ago. The French seem to like them though.

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That Bordeaux race was awesome with Brad Bevan saving T2 time and just rolling barefoot and being a lap ahead!!!

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Triathlon as a spectator sport is boring enough. I’m not going to even think about competitive treadmilling.

Indoor pool, velodrome, indoor track? Maybe. Actually,that sound better the watching IMWC.

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I think it would be quite entertaining and wondered how to enhance what some have clipped as the bordeaux event…I love watching swimming, track riding and indoor formats individually - the challenge having an indoor triathlon is the bike on the track and it not be boring. What if indoor tri (not stationary based) somehow emulated a points race on the track, and applied it to the swim bike and run. There’d be a constant surge and battle for getting the points for the intermediate laps and or the risk of ellimination out the back. If you modelled the madison, there could be a fun relay and mixed relay nature to the racing.

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Sorry. Stop. Did you really just imply triathletes attempting madison racing with starts staggered from the swim.

I think someone else already had this idea and in its current form is known as roller derby…

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Yes I did - I would watch that. With the current indoor trainer format, I get excited by the swim and then enthusiasm fades.

And like I said, it could have a points race approach too

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I don’t mean to brag, well I do, but last year I did a Pro triathlon and a Pro madison, and I don’t think anyone else has ever done that before. It’s not much but it’s something.

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The fundamental problem here is that the only triathlon fans are triathlon participants. There’s not a compelling reason to watch tris unless you’re doing them/have done/want to do them. Slower swimmers, further apart than the Olympics, slower bikers, further apart than TdF, slower runners not further apart than marathons.

It’s a really hard sell saying “I know he’s 2 minutes ahead now, but wait a couple hours, he’s better on the bike”. A race that’s head-to-head but views like a TT is a hard sell.

The future is not indoors. The future is a small contingent of pros shilling supplements to AG triathletes. Any broadcasting spending is done in service of boosting participation. I’m not lambasting the model, it is what it is and the sport is terrible to view in real time. It’s just not a viewership sport and that’s ok. I don’t see any way to make it viewer friendly without fundamentally changing the nature of the sport.

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I think SuperTri is viewer-friendly (not talking about the indoor version). So are the Mixed-team relays.

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I also think that the Olympic distance could be much more viewer-friendly if it shifted to an enduro format (like SuperTri but longer).

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As a poster on Slowtwitch you disqualify yourself from the “average viewer” group. Like I said, the sport is uninteresting to people not participating in it.

Yes, I know this is treading close to a “no true scotsman” fallacy.

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My comment was based on hearing plenty of chatter from non-Triathlon people commenting how great these were after the two mixed-team relays of Tokyo and Paris.

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Nope

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Agreed. It’s not a spectators sport for most people. There are many of these types of sports. Except for the Olympics, when else do you watch the shot put, javelin, or even the “sexy” field events like high jump and pole vault. Most folks won’t watch a 5,000 because for most people 14 mins is just too long to watch people run around in circles.

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have a look at 8 .24 the spectators were ok i would say.
it was a fab race to watch last year

the female final starts around 4 min and was not bad at all
and so was the male race

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I would think the best format to get the most views is a SLT style event that is finished within an hour (or 2 hours for total men/women televast). I think that is outdoors, but if they can get all the bugs figured out with Z racing as bike/run you basically have it with indoor. There is a reason why golf just went with an indoor golf league with the biggest names in the sport. They need better fan interactions, faster play and more high level golf consistently playing all within a nice 2 hour broadcast window vs rounds taking 5 hours to play.

SLT / MTR are basically the same fast action format (20 min max races unless you are doing an enduro that may last more based on distances but still easily within 1 hour broadcast.

That format basically is built on tv friendly competition (you see the athletes all together or within 20s of a group; they aren’t 3 miles in the rear of the leader like IM has it). Of course it “alters” current dynamics because only a dozen or so athletes truly can make that format exciting. The demands of competition is so high in that format that only the best of the best can do it and make it exciting. But in that venue you don’t need or even want 75 athletes. You basically want 20-30 at most. Maybe you do heats-finals and only the finals is “tv” broadcast, etc.

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But if your talking what will get the most broadcast views, a 1-2 hour broadcast event will crush any triathlon event that is 3-4 and don’t even get started on IM.

It may or may not actually draw numbers to make it sustainable product which we all prob agree upon it wouldn’t. But if you’re talking about creating a product for the express intent of drawing the most viewers- basically ~1 hour total telecast will be the overwhelming winner (so 2 hour for both races) . MTR covers 2 gender races in basically under 90 mins. That fits nicely into a 2 hour window with front end/ back end commercials + interviews for a broadcast window.

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What if we went with a pool swim in a 50m pool, ideally inside a 400m track straight to a short run on the track ending the run outside the track/stadium to bikes, that are loops of where the track is (ex Stadium), back to run into stadium where track/swim is and finish on the track…or do the second track run and back into the pool and start left to right swimming up one lane down a second lane up third and so on and make the finish lane 3 wide so there is room for a sprint and wall touch. Like 500m swim, 1600m run, 5000m bike, 1600m run, 500m swim.

You could do this wherever there is a running track that you can put down a temporary pool like in the Bordeaux 1992 example, but you don’t need the velodrome

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Hayden Wilde has just announced he’ll be in Lievin this year for the race, so that’s a decent name for the start list.

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