SUPER LEAGUE UNDER ATTACK
Chris McCormack’s new Super League Triathlon series received stinging criticism from ITU President Marisol Casado. But is it justified?
Chris McCormack has never been one to shirk controversy. The two-time Ironman world champion had plenty of spats in his career and, in launching the high-octane Super League Triathlon in March (head to 220triathlon.com for coverage), claimed bad blood between competitors only stokes interest.
But while McCormack is used to criticism, he probably wasn’t expecting it from the president of the International Triathlon Union (ITU), Marisol Casado. She was clearly irked by Super League’s showcase on Hamilton Island as she condemned McCormack for failing to drug test athletes or include a women’s race.
It was an unusual step for the Spaniard who rarely courts conflict. She doesn’t need to. With the World Triathlon Series (WTS) holding the golden ticket to Olympic Games qualification, national governing bodies and their triathletes have little choice but to kowtow to ITU’s wishes. Not so Super League, an independent construct packed with enough Australian brashness to almost make it clichéd.
McCormack also did little to ingratiate himself with a comment about the top women being pregnant (both 2012 and 2016 Olympic champions Nicola Spirig and Gwen Jorgensen are expecting) but, as was pointed out by former GB ITU racer Liz Blatchford, none of the men’s Rio Olympic medallists featured prominently in Super League either (Jonny Brownlee was injured, Henri Schoeman finished 11th and an under-par Alistair Brownlee quit after two days).
McCormack blamed logistics and a tight time frame for not organising a women’s contest, but said one is planned for when the season kicks off in earnest in October. Privately he’ll be admitting the oversight and, given his backers include Russian oligarch Leonid Boguslavsky (worth $1.06 billion according to Forbes), it’s hard to argue a women’s race couldn’t have been rustled up.
The lack of drug testing is more contentious. McCormack says Super League followed instruction from the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority and provided testing facilities as requested. No testing ensued, but whether Super League should have paid for its own procedures is a moot point given the conflict of interests of a private race organisation [that wants to promote the series] conducting its own tests and then managing the results [as Ironman does].
As for the coverage, comparing Super League to the first WTS race in Abu Dhabi was like comparing paint-balling to watching paint dry. Super League was a riot and the ITU will be frantically trying to up its game for the WTS. This means two things: broadcast coverage of all short-course racing is likely to improve and Casado’s personal wish of a punchier, TV-friendly sprint-distance format for the Olympic Games looks to be increasingly on the agenda.
“Super League was a riot and the ITU will have to up its game for the WTS”