HI, Looking for help on how to purchase my own insurance policy to allow me to race in the UK.
I signed up for Ironman Wales this year. I’m a UK citizen residing in the US. I’m not able to get a day race pass because I do not reside in the UK. This is from the British Triathlon Federation…
British Triathlon Membership and Race Pass, both of which provide £15m of public liability insurance to race participants, is unfortunately available only to UK residents at the present time.
Non UK residents must therefore source their own insurance, which may come from either;
through purchasing membership from their native National Triathlon Federation. Such membership needs to cover the member for overseas racing in the UK for public liability (or personal liability) to a minimum level of £5m, or
through purchasing their own insurance policy, in a similar way to how travel insurance is purchased.
I’ve contacted the USAT and they don’t provide coverage internationally. Also, I can’t find anyone offering this type of insurance in the US.
My husband and I have personal liability insurance via an umbrella policy that I think would cover this (I’m also a Brit living in the US)… maybe worth checking in with your homeowners/auto insurance company to see if they offer anything.
It’s not necessarily cheap or a temporary thing but might be an option worth exploring?
World triathlon started enforcing a requirement for health insurance competition coverage for age group world championships this year. I bought a United Health Care safe trip policy. It’s not available for every state (NY and CO among the excluded). It’s the state you live in not the country you’re heading to. The health only was cheap (but I head expensive for 60-70 year olds), but I wanted travel too. I got travel, extra bike delay, and extra for “extreme sports coverage.†They decline triathlon as extreme sport, and you don’t get any coverage for in competition claims without it. I don’t think there is anything about personal liability, but if they want competition health coverage, travel insurance companies are where to look.
I live in the U.S. and my umbrella policy, follows me anywhere in the world. They promote that in their marketing materials. Coverage ranges from $1 million up to $10 million. But I also, spoke with my insurance agent about this a few months ago, he confirmed - coverage is good worldwide.
Thanks SilentHunter, I managed, like you, to find health insurance for 60+ years old. Also, I found extreme sports coverage for triathlons as well. The personal liability has stumped me!
I can’t believe that all UK triathlons just have residents participating. How are non-residents doing this? If personal liability insurance is not possible to get, then why are race organizers not telling us this up-front?
Thanks LJ, I saw a few of these on-line from AIG and Chubb for world wide coverage, but did not see that they cover extreme sports. Does yours? Extremely interested if they do.
This has just changed. I read another article on it a couple of days ago.
In the past you could get a day license, and that gave you the cover for the race. But I suspect that the federation has changed insurers and the new one doesn’t offer the day cover. Noting the federation is primarily there to support tri in the UK, and it’s members then if the costs of their old insurer were rising and this was a way to keep membership costs down then it makes a bit of sense.
That said, the need for $5m of personal liability cover as an athlete doing triathlon in the UK is a bit mystifying to me. I’m racking my brains as to exactly what situation would lead to such a claim.
The earlier article I read had a statement from BTA saying they were aware of the issue and that they were looking to get a list of insurers that overseas athletes could get cover from. My personal reading of it appeared that this was a gap they hadn’t realised, for some reason they’d not thought about international athletes racing at sanctioned events in UK when they made the decision to no longer offer day licenses.
"British Triathlon have now updated their guidance to state that all athletes must have some form of public / personal liability insurance in place, but the requirement of public / personal liability cover to the amount of £5 million is now a ‘recommendation’ and is no longer mandatory. "
So you still need to carry your own but it doesn’t need to be 5M GBP. I guess this is some progress, however I haven’t been able to find anyone that offers this type of liability coverage for any amount.