PENTICTON JOINS SUPER LEAGUE

After the hugely successful inaugural ITU World Multisport Festival that took place in Penticton last August (including six world championship races over a 10-day period), the city will continue to host a big weekend of triathlon racing in 2018. Penticton has been a major player on the world’s triathlon map for decades, although, until this year’s multisport festival, the participant numbers had paled in comparison to the thousands who competed at Ironman Canada. The city hosted the Ironman event from 1986 until 2012, then gave up on the Ironman license and became a Challenge event. (The race actually started in 1983 and became an official Ironman qualifying event, along with Ironman Japan and Ironman New Zealand, in 1986.)

After seeing fields as large as almost 3,000 over the years, the Challenge event struggled to attract even 1,000 participants. Race director Michael Brown decided to forego the Challenge series in 2018 and has decided to put on a Super League Triathlon event. Super League Triathlon Canada will take place from Aug. 17 to 19.

Super League Triathlon, the brainchild of two-time Ironman world champion Chris Mccormack, started in March of this year with a pro-men’s event on Australia’s tony Hamilton Island. A men’s and women’s event took place in September in Jersey, an island in the English Channel. The events feature some innovative triathlon formats with names like enduro, equalizer and triple mix.

The Penticton Super League Event will have a much larger age group component that the first two events in the Super League series. The events, which will all feature closed courses, will start with a 10 km time trial down Penticton’s Main Street on Friday. Saturday will feature a swim (300 m), run (2 km), swim (300 m), bike (16 km) and run (2 km) event. Sunday’s Enduro race will feature the traditional swim/bike/run format, but will be completed twice in a row. The age group athletes will head out in the morning while the elites will race in the afternoon. (The elites will have a shorter bike distance for a more spectator-friendly course.)

“There are a few places in the world that hold the history of triathlon like Penticton,” says Brown. “We are excited for the next chapter that includes Super League Triathlon. Super League has shown a commitment to push traditional triathlon boundaries and Penticton is the perfect place to showcase this new format of racing.

“Age groupers will race the same course as the pros in the morning and be able to sit back and watch the pro’s in the afternoon,” Brown continues. “Nothing like this has ever been attempted on Canadian soil and we are excited to be on the leading edge of this triathlon movement.”—km