The MBA-types in sports are certainly obsessed with the F1 model after all the case studies they’ve done.
My guess is that it will likely be more like the Abbott WMM where mass participation is the lifeblood and the elites+broadcast product will just be secondary.
USTS switched to 1500/40/10 in 1984. ETU used it for championships from 1986. Then ITU at Avignon in 1989. Before the big push for Olympic inclusion in the early-90s.
Aware. I was looking at the precedent for having 40km as the bike distance and why, in the context of the distances 1.5/40/10 being chosen as 1500m and 10000m were already Olympic swimming and running distances. @Fleck says “the ITT is typically close to” 40km and back in Atlanta et seq was that so? Would 38.5km be any less “typically close”?
All this is zero big deal: they will just press on with T50 and the bike will just be a bit shorter than it has been, within tolerance. Noone takes any notice of bike times in draft legal races (whereas they do look at the run times - so that has to stay at 10km).
World Triathlon Competition Rules:
Section 10: Events
10.8 Bike:
a.) A 10% tolerance margin will be accepted for the distance of the bike segment. In the middle- and long-distance . . . .events, this tolerance is limited to 5%;
Absolutely. Good info. I was saying that 1500/40/10 or “short-course” was already a well established triathlon distance before the IOC got interested slash involved.
I would be much more inclined to watch an Olympic Supertri race than a T100 race.
I know super Tri doesn’t seem to get much coverage here but w Will McCoy announcing and the excitement of the racing- it’s so well suited for the Olympics I feel. Short, fast, quick and can be contained in a small space.
I’ve been a fan of the F1/SuprrTri format since the ‘90s but have to admit the teams thing has me losing a bit of interest……and they geoblocked in on YT here in Oz
Indeed it was. I had merely mentioned that then President of the then ITU had been advised by the IOC that those were the distances to choose if they wanted Olympic Program inclusion!
The animal teams were stupid, but I’ve gradually bought into the team format since they pivoted to the new packaging (and team composition) with one team being U.S.-heavy, one U.K.-heavy, Podium Racing owned by a rich guy who is nonetheless very nice (and plays out good narratives) as well as the Bahrain team. Having read a few of my posts you can guess who the bad guys I root against are, no matter how much I like GTB or Vasco Vilaca 
Got it.
Because the idea that races should be of a standard distance has never existed in road cycling. And that is a good thing. Nobody would think that the Tour de France would be more interesting if every stage had to be exactly 180 km long. Quite the contrary. It would significantly restrict route designers’ choices, forcing them to include pointless detours to bring the length of a stage up to 180 km or to exclude interesting parts because they would require exceeding 180 km.
Organizers of road cycling races have over a century of experience in creating race formats that spectators actually want to watch. And one of the lessons they learned is that variety makes things interesting. Which is why all grand tours will feature stages which favour different types of riders, sprinters, puncheurs, climbers, etc. And the same logic applies to world championship and Olympic races too. Some years, the course will favour climbers or breakaway specialists, in other years it will be a sprinters’ heaven.
In my opinion, triathlon would benefit greatly from applying that lesson too. There is no reason why most triathlon races need to conform to small number of standardized distances. I think PTO missed a huge chance by fixating on 100 kilometres instead of using the opportunity to create a race series which features different courses of varying lengths and ratio between swim, bike, and run. You could have races in the series which features strong swimmers, others for light-weight cyclists who are good climbers, or for trail runners, and so on. Not only would it make the whole series more interesting to watch, it would also bolster their series winner’s claim to be the best triathlete overall and differentiate their series from Ironman’s product. Instead, the ‘variety’ we got is between laps around a parking lot in Dubai and laps around a parking lot in Qatar.
Strongly agree. I’m not a branding guy. But fixating on the number 100 is kinda weird.
After the first 3 or 4 years of the sport, athletes and RD’s became fixated on distances, and it has kept up to this day. Not why anyone is surprised at this, it is why short fast courses are the favored by time chasers. People like to compare and it is virtually impossible if you don’t have standard distances. Of course different venues are going to be fast or slow, but that is easy to account for. And if you want to compare cycling, the old Team trial in the olympics was 100k, a fixed distance.
And I’m with you and Neon, but we are the very small % outliers in this, the majority have spoken, and it has been since the beginning too..
But the T100 was initially established for the pros who don’t care about record times, before they even pivoted to age group racing. Some were even suggesting before that it would great if the PTO tour can partner with Roth, Alpe d’huez, Alcatraz etc. But they placed branding ahead of the actual produdt which is one reason for the Dubai debacle where they had to do some small loops in addition to the main loops just to approximately reach 80km.
Will start by saying that I’m a hard agree on all of your points. Would absolutely love to watch a series with more variety, favouring different skill sets.
But…
If they’re to be believed that broadcasters are more interested in a 3-4 hour product, their hands must be at least a little tied?
Now that they’re focused on being an events company, does an element of standardisation help them create something a little more sellable to the masses? People like to chase a 3-hour marathon, a 1-hour Hyrox, a 10-hour Ironman etc? (change the times to whatever is right for you, but it’s at least consistent across courses)
I would say that the pros never cared about times, it was the rest of the sport that forced time to be a thing. You always get paid for a place, not a time. But media, sponsors, and some RD’s make time a thing, by giving bonuses, pseudo records, and attention. So now some have to pay attention to this moving target, and when you hit some grey area bullseye, that pro will for the moment embrace that time, laughing all the way to the bank…
well a marathon distance is certified an ironman isn’t and neither is a t100 …. what I am saying if you want to make this a bit meaningful than you would have to certify courses for distances .( which in my mind is not a good idea given how hard it is to get permission for bike courses )
how often has he changed that first is was Colins cup Than it was male and female and male races than it was female and male races staggered ie he changes that on the fly and he does not know the answer yet. and he is basically snookered by his own branding …. and to use his favourite the F1 I dint think they have a set distance and neither has golf where every curse is different.
That shouldn’t work against him
What I like about the PTO is that it’s agile, it refines quickly what is not working 100%. It’s not a bad thing
It’s a fair point but certified or not, the T100 distance is definitely more comparable across races than a random assortment of different courses and you can’t deny that most age groupers do tend to show an interest in their best Ironman time etc. Just look at how many people include it in their instagram/ Strava bios.
I don’t think their target customer group is necessarily us/ experienced triathletes. It’s first timers or more casual triathletes, hence the big influencer marketing strategy.
F1 not really a fair example when it comes to selling entry’s to age groupers and golf arguably Is comparable across courses with it’s pars and handicaps…
Agile is not what I would call it. He doesn’t know what works so he just changes to change, and he sells new investors, but not current investors on hope. Only one investor has remained a part of every round and that’s Moritz. At some point he won’t find new investors to keep plowing money in while and they will just bleed out. The pivot to being a pseudo event organizer/event general contractor is to earn race day revenue but not take the proportion of the risk with the most upside (the actual organizing). And he thinks his brand is strong enough to get people to sign up in the thousands. But now people will be at a minimum confused in the short term.