I searched around the mainstream North American tri media and I could find no coverage of these multisport “classic events”. For the longest time Nice was “the show” until Hawaii got off its high horse and offered prize money. Zofingen has always been a totally awesome race, often dominated by ironman triathletes who have experience racing beyond 6 hours (in the words of non other than ken Souza). So why is it that North American media coverage of these races is almost zero ?
Hey, back in 1994, the podium at Nice was Lessing-Van Lierde and Peter Reid. I remember people saying that besides Lessing, “no one showed up”. That was clearly proven to be false as Reid and Van Leirde racked up 2 Hawaii wins each. I can’t wait for Lessing to show up at Hawaii post Athens and lay down some serious smack. This guy can go sub 8 at Kona. He went toe to toe with Mark Allen for almost the whole race at Nice when he was only 22 years old !
duathlon.com had coverage of zofingen. Nice was covered a bit at triathlon.org. It’s too bad that there is not morecoverage ofduathlons as they are physically tougher than tris IMO.
Nice was covered by ABC years ago when Mark Allen was dominating. It was quite high-profile at that time and actually made claim to being the world championship of triathlon. I still have some of the tapes from the 83-88 era races.
Zofingen has all the ingredients for an event as gripping as Hawaii (weather, beautiful scenery, hard course, fan support) and I guarantee that if it were somehow supported in the way Hawaii is by the mainstream media, it would become equally as popular. For many Euros, it actually has more prestige than Kona. Imagine that event with a starting list that included LVL, Reid, Macca, TDB, Larsen, Waldo, Hellriegel, Zack, Leder…with NBC coverage…and a 250K prize purse…racing in the rain and cold on mountain roads, against a backdrop of Swiss mountains and rabid Swiss fans. Imagine as well how the whole sport of duathlon would be affected…would legitimize it and it would no longer be triathlon’s weaker step sister. I for one would love to see it happen.