For those of you who have raced IM or other events outside of North America, how much of a barrier does language present? I like to do events in places I wouldn’t normally pick as a destination- Haugesund, Norway for example. I don’t know that I’d ever go there as opposed to say, Cozumel or Nice if it wasn’t for the fact that there is a 70.3. Domestically I’ve been to several states and cities that aren’t high on vacation lists and always found something fun and interesting outside of the race itself. New things and experiences that I wouldn’t have normally have seen, people I wouldn’t have met. Usually when I travel internationally I can get by with translation apps/phrasebooks and the old “point, smile, sign language, butcher-the-pronunciation-and-hope-they-understand” route if English isn’t a strong presence. (I do have a smattering of French and Spanish but no fluency or proper grammar)
But races have athlete briefings, PA announcements, and all of that- some of which are last minute changes or safety issues or quirks of the course that first-timers should know about, right?
Probably depends on the country. I did the Ironman in Sweden last year and had absolutely no trouble, because pretty much everyone spoke English, and while some announcements were in Swedish they always also repeated them in English. It was hardly any different from racing in an English-speaking country.
You’ll be fine. English is typically the second language for athlete briefings/instructions and they use a lot of pictures/signs as well. At least that has been my experience at Florianopolis, Lanzarote, Nice, Cozumel, Goto and Frankfurt (although I do speak German). You may get some funny misunderstandings, though. Had an english speaker in Japan think he was asking for water (mizu), but said “miso,” and dumped splashed hot soup on himself. Then there was the ugly american at Frankfurt who was told in german that he needed to shower (dueschen, pronounced, you know. . .) before getting in the hot tub. That almost started an international incident.
Every ITU, M-Dot, and large non M-Dot event I have been to in Asia have English speaking announcers and/or staff and info written in English.For races that are in the local language it isn’t that hard usually to figure out what is going on.
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I missed a start because of the language barrier. The start got moved up and 15 minutes. Luckily for me I was close enough and it only cost me a short run across the beach. Had I been farther away. It would have really sucked for me.
On a personal account I had a really rough time without Google Translate in Pontevedra, Spain at the ITU World Championships. English speaking folks were rare unless you spied a Team USA or Team Canada member. In places we ate at, we were lucky to have a single member of staff speak English, so revisited those places that did have someone who could. We found that the people who could only speak Spanish, tried very hard to get their point across & were super nice about taking their time in being patient with us. I never had a Spanish class & the languages taught growing up, were more likely to be French, Finnish, German or Polish aside from English. So it was quite hard to talk in most cases.
It was surprising that people did want to talk to us because we were English speakers–a chance for them to practice it if they knew a little, seemed like a rare opportunity.
Not a barrier but I found running distance in "k"s instead of miles frustrating. Trying to convert ks to miles in the marathon took too much brain power at that point of the race.
It was easy when the ks were low!
Not a barrier but I found running distance in "k"s instead of miles frustrating. Trying to convert ks to miles in the marathon took too much brain power at that point of the race.
It was easy when the ks were low!
Oddly enough I find it the opposite and I’m American although I live abroad
I think of metrics as the measurement system for athletes. I have completely lost my sense of miles. I think in KMs. Still think I Fahrenheit though. Mostly
I’ve done a few races in Northern Europe. Normally if the race is small someone will approach me and explain in English. Big races will do announcements and briefings in English and the local language.
My recommendations is to learn the words for water
Energy drink (brand)
Banana
And toilet
I traveled abroad to Canada. The language barriers were a huge concern. They use the word “aboot” for “about” and “boy” for “buoy”. Let me tell you how much dismay I had when I thought the RD hired some kid to wear a red cap and tread at the spot to turn. That was something aboot which to get stressed.
I’m doing IM Norway in two weeks in Haugesund, so I can report back on how it went (going from US). My impression is that most educated folks in Europe can speak English. I know that two of the three race briefings for the race in two weeks are in English.
I’m British and have raced all over Europe (and travelled around most of the world) with no problems.
The ‘worst’ (relatively) situation was actually at ToursnMan in Tours(France) last summer, to my surprise I was pretty much the only primary English speaker in the race - however the volunteers and staff couldn’t have been more excited to have someone from another country there and bent over backwards to help out when we had problems communicating.
Have raced all around the world (a lot in Asia as well) and have not had any issues at a MAJOR race (IM / Challenge). With that being said, some of the “local”/smaller races I have done in Korea, I did find some language barriers there, but usually could find someone to interpret when needed. As long as you are doing IM/Challenge events don’t really see it being a problem.
He’s on these boards so he can chime in