The Local triathlon race scene continues to erode…The numbers for early season races dont look good. Lost another 25% easily…
I tried google trends to see what it showed and it doesnt look good.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%2Fm%2F07rlg
What is everyone else seeing?
Like 4-5 races permanently cancelled in my area, but on the other hand some of the remaining races getting sold out.
I’m confused sometimes. Bottom line is my age group(50-54) is damn competitive no matter what.
In BC this past weekend:
Victoria 70.3 - 2000 participants
Oliver Half Iron / Wine Capital Tri (sprint/standard) - 300 / 500 participants
Good numbers, but you can see the extraordinary bias towards the M-DOT race.
Triathlon is booming in SE Asia and seems to be doing well in the Oceania region.
Not sure if it’s a chicken or the egg thing. I’d love to do non-M dot races, but trying to bury myself for a half iron distance race completely alone for a large part of the day isn’t appealing at all. I can swim in the neighborhood pool, drill myself on zwift, and run as hard as I care to from my own house and it’s the exact same thing.
The decrease in Sprint and international distance races is a completely different story though and who knows what’s caused that.
We’ve only had three local events for years. This year we lost the cities biggest sprint-only triathlon (the other two offer the sprint distance as part of multiple distance event). So we declined 33% this year.
Participated in the Colorado Tri Sprint this last weekend, which also held a Du, Aquathon, Relays, and Oly Tri…and they ran out of bike racks & people were parked against the barrier fences around the transition. It has clearly grown bigger & bigger and races are selling out all over. Does “Google really know all??”
The Los Angeles area has 2 new Sprint/Oly races this year. Anecdata for sure, but…
The Colorado Triathlon this weekend had the most entries ever - over 800 - and more than 130 in the first timers wave. Growth seems pretty good here…
Escape the Cape in NJ was sold out 2055 spots in the bike racks.
Great event.
I’ve never used “Google Trends” before, pretty sure I’m going to be going down a rabbit hole for the next hours…
Interesting how cyclical it is. I tried playing around with some other terms. ‘Ironman’ gets messed up due to the superhero/movie and isn’t of much use. Marathon has a gigantic spike in April 2013 (the bombing at Boston) so you can’t really see if there have been any trends. ‘Cyclocross’ has trended down a bit, depending on how you type it in, ‘ultra marathon’ is either flat or down. ‘Slowtwitch’ peaked around 2012 and has headed mostly down since. ‘Gravel bike’ is through the roof lately, so we got that going for us, right???
I have been keeping a list of races and total number of finishers from home state over the past 10 years. For the most part numbers peaked in 2012 and have dropped significantly since then. Sever races that existed around 2010 are gone. Others are struggling. Bike racing is in a much worse spot. It’s almost impossible to find a road race, I think there are maybe 2 or 3 now. And the fields are ridiculously tiny, it’s basically a small group ride. I haven’t looked too closely at running races yet (5k-marathon).
I think two things are killing the local scene: IM & ITU. Thanks to ITU, all the Oly talent is competing in draft-legal events trying to OQ. These are designed for TV/Spectators vs. having solid pro fields in mass participation shorter events (like the old Bud Light series). If you want to do a race with a high profile and a top field, you have to do mDot races (70.3+) or a few of the high-quality competitors (Challenge, etc.).
Also, if this chart really indicates triathlon participation, how do we explain triathlon participation peaking in 2012 at about double what it was in 2004 when google says triathlon peaked?
Is the new renaissance of triathlon in Alaska? What am I missing here?
Mid Atlantic area seems more popular than ever
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Is the new renaissance of triathlon in Alaska? What am I missing here?
Too cold to race so they spend all their time on the internet looking up things they could be doing if they weren’t in Alaska.
Not sure if it’s a chicken or the egg thing. I’d love to do non-M dot races, but trying to bury myself for a half iron distance race completely alone for a large part of the day isn’t appealing at all. .
As the story goes there were 15 men who started the original Ironman, 12 finished.
However, the untold story is the 15 who didn’t start because it wasn’t branded so they had nothing to tattoo on their calf to show to their friends. And like you they were afraid to not race with 2000 other people in a gigantic draft pack because then it would be lonely. These are the true legends of the sport. We salute them for waiting it out and making sure something was popular before doing it.
Triathlon is booming in SE Asia and seems to be doing well in the Oceania region.
Agreed. We have more athletes signed up for next summer than we’ve had the past 10 years.
Growth seems pretty good here…
Don’t let council hear you say that.
Cue freak out.
The Colorado Triathlon this weekend had the most entries ever - over 800 - and more than 130 in the first timers wave. Growth seems pretty good here…
To be fair, there are a limited number of Triathlons in the Denver metro, and the CO Triathlon is the first one of the season (and a week before IM Boulder, assuming some of the competitors are using it as a tuneup?). Outside of the Ironman 140.6 and 70.3, you have the Without Limits series, the Boulder Sunrise/Sunset and one in Longmont in September, along with a few women’s only races (Lame…). This will be my 2nd year doing the Without Limits series (Lance, the RD does a great job, plus it’s actually affordable), however I will admit that it would be nice to have a change of scenery.
IMHO, it’s strange to me that there isn’t a tri at Aurora, Cherry Creek or Chatfield. Living across the street from Chatfield, I can easily map out a 14 and 21 mile bike route, along with 5k and 10k out and backs for the run.