AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE
LAST MONTH WE ANALYSED THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON THE UK TRI COMMUNITY. NOW IT’S TIME FOR THE INTERNATIONAL SCENE. WILL WE BE FLYING TO RACES IN 2020? WHAT IMPACT HAS IRONMAN FACED? AND WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR PRO AND VIRTUAL RACING? WE FIND OUT…
riathlon might be making its C ovid-defiant sociallydistanced comeback in the UK, but if responding to an unpredictable virus and an uncertain domestic government isn’t easy, what happens when racing stretches beyond these shores?
Should triathletes step on to international flights and accept quarantines? Do we understand how attitudes to the pandemic fluctuate as much as infection rates? Or is the answer just to sit tight and wait for a vaccine?
Not everyone has that choice. If UKfocused race organisers face tough calls, spare a thought for the global brands that rely on competitors jetting in from all over the world, and perhaps even a rare slither of sympathy for the sport’ s corona virusravaged behemoth that is Iron man. Here we take a look at the potential for triathlon to return to the big stage and, as M-Dot CEO Andrew Messick must be praying for every night, maybe even the Big Island.
A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE
Top Canadian Ironman Lionel Sanders is on a mid-season break. More a training break really, because like almost every other triathlete, his competitive itch for 2020 – save virtual salvation via Zwift – is yet to be scratched. Together with wife Erin, he’s taken a road trip from his base in Tucson, Arizona, to Utah to play golf and recce the Ironman North American Championship course at St George, rescheduled for 19 September, and a chance for the Canadian to book his Kona berth.
“I went through Snow Canyon – a state park – and had to pay the 10 bucks,” Sanders explains. “The guy said: ‘You can drive another way to get around for free’, but I told him I was here to see the Ironman course. He replied: ‘You don’t think that thing’s going to happen, do you?!’ This is the park ranger calling it. It’s hard to get hopeful about Ironman being able to put a race on.” At time of press, the race was still on but Sanders’ predicament encapsulates the situation for triathletes the world over right now, particularly when it comes to headline events that rely on attracting international fields.
The International Triathlon Union’s World Series, the elite showcase of the short-course triathlon, didn’t even reach the curtain raiser in Abu Dhabi. Its watered-down return has Hamburg pencilled in for the first week in September – world team mixed relay and all – just days after Germany’s summer ban on mass gatherings is eased. Mayor Peter Tschentscher’s office has made noises about being unable to socially distance a
crowd. He doesn’t, understandably, want the tag of his city sparking the next Covid-19 outbreak.
Ironman looks prepared. It’s released online tutorials showing athletes what to expect at races – health screenings on arrival, grab ’n’ go aid stations and ‘notouch’ finish line celebrations – but the stream of postponements paints a different picture. Cancellations and rescheduling have hit 52 of its events in Europe, Africa and the Middle East,
43 in North America, 22 in Asia and 10 in Latin America.
The big one is, of course, Hawaii. Caught between lava rock and a hard place, October’s Ironman World Championship was optimistically pushed on to February, shadowing 1982 when there were two Ironman World Championships in the same year. That plan is now aborted.
For the first time since inception in 1978 there will be no Kona, with its little brother, the Ironman 70.3 Worlds, a promised two-day festival in Taupo, New Zealand, following suit. Ironically, the Kiwis have been transmission-free from Covid-19 for weeks, but it appears the commercial realities of retaining the event with a mainly domestic field bit hard. Ironman hopes it may return to the North Island for 2022.
Back in the US, just as it seems the pandemic might be relenting, another outbreak flares up. It’s had over 3.5million confirmed cases, more than 140,000 Covid-related deaths and spiked since mid-June as an increase in testing has revealed an ugly truth, and made the notion of mass participation unpalatable.
“Every day I start getting hopeful and then they cancel another race,” Sanders says. “We went to St George because I was thinking, ‘Ok, the season is finally going to start’, but the cases are on the up everywhere. I was holding out thinking Texas and Florida would have races, but for those states to start to reimplement lockdown procedures, it has to be bad. There’s probably nowhere in the world that is less keen on lockdowns! Even when I think of Challenge Daytona, it’s hard to wrap your head around internationals being able to come.”
RAY OF HOPE
Challenge Daytona offers a ray of hope – or a deluded obstinance – for racing, depending on your perspective. Scheduled for the first weekend in December as a high-profile collaboration between the Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO), USA Triathlon, race organisers Challenge and the host venue, Daytona International Speedway, it bucks the trend in beefing up its profile since the pandemic struck.
And one man who believes he has wrapped his head around it is PTO chief executive, Sam Renouf. Billed as the PTO
World Championship with a £1million prize purse, matched by media spend to make it a broadcast spectacular through the technological clout of Nascar [motor racing series], and with amateur and pro racing from Friday through Sunday, Renouf knows it’s a high-octane gamble.
“The uniqueness of this venue is why we’ve chosen to do this,” Renouf says. “Nascar are pretty much back in business. They had an event this weekend with 25,000 spectators, they are ahead of the game with Covid prep and we’re following their guidelines.” Plans are to turn the Daytona arena into a “bubble” – temperatures will be taken on arrival, wristbands issued and no readmittance without re-passing the protocol.
Other organisers will be intrigued to see if this Floridian Petri dish becomes the
international blueprint, but there’s no little risk. The location sums up the dilemma facing triathlon everywhere – only more so. At time of press, the Sunshine State is becoming the epicentre for the coronavirus. According to analysis by Reuters, if it were a country Florida would rank fourth in the world for most new cases in a day. But its economy is also built on tourism. Take nearby Walt Disney Resort in Orlando. At peak Covid, it has chosen to reopen.
“Daytona is a venue that can take 165,000 people,” Renouf explains. “We know we have the physical space to implement social distancing for both agegroupers and pros.” Although understandably US skewed, Renouf says that age-group numbers are already up and they plan to welcome more than 2,000. His remit, though, is the pro side.
“We’ve polled all of our athletes and the majority are keen to race providing their countries allow them to – and that includes going through quarantines,” he says. “As an example, the Australians need approval, which many of them have applied for already. They’ll come over, do the race and when they return will have to quarantine for two weeks.”
In normal times this might seem absurd. Triathletes often lead a lonely existence, but the prospect of a fortnight’s isolation for one race would be too heavy a price. However, with the paucity of racing opportunities, being starved of competition for so long, the bumper prize money paying 20-deep, unrivalled
exposure for sponsors, plus loyalty to the PTO, that has already paid out its ‘yearend’ prize money of over £2million, the decision to opt-in starts to make sense. “We’re pretty bullish about it,” Renouf says. “The general feeling is that if we can put the race on people will come.”
DATES, DILEMMAS & DEBACLES
While Daytona might be promising for the pros, age-groupers who have already forked out a small fortune for flights, accommodation and race entry in 2020 – and seen precious little by way of refunds – could be forgiven for deliberating. Renouf, who previously held management roles at Active, the firm that handles race entry for many of the world’s big events, believes mass participation faces an uncertain future.
“These events are operating on thin margins,” he says. “If you assume that a proportion of the audience do not want to race because of a natural fear of Covid, there’ll be lower numbers combined with higher costs. It’s revealing the difficulty in Ironman’s business model – 80% plus of their revenue comes from age-groupers.”
Ironman is the longstanding, big player here. Barely a week goes by without the brand releasing another email notification of an event being postponed. While it isn’t forthcoming in answering media scrutiny on what happens next (they were approached for this article), any solution looks painful and costly.
A class action lawsuit over their muchmaligned no-refund policy was brought in May, and while the chances of its success seem slim, it further dents the reputation of the debt-laden brand that’s being offloaded by China’s Wanda Sports Group to a joint investment from media business Advance and private equity firm, Orkila Capital. Perhaps the biggest debacle to date came in the Ironman 70.3 Lubbock, which was still scheduled to go ahead well into race week in June, before Texas state governor Greg Abbott intervened by imploring residents to stay home as much as possible. “The Covid-19 headwinds in Texas right now are just too strong,” conceded Ironman CEO Messick.
But for all its troubles, it’s important Ironman prospers, believes James Robinson, chief commercial officer of Limelight Sports that runs the London Triathlon. “Ultimately, it is the one true global brand in triathlon, a key driver for awareness in the space. If Ironman succeeds, I think we all succeed. Their virtual racing seems to have gone down quite well with consumers and been a good example of how the industry can pivot in another direction.”
THE VIRTUAL REALITY
Ironman certainly retains a draw. Over 110,000 have signed up for its Ironman Virtual Club. It claims around 8,000
“IRONMAN’S VIRTUAL RACING HAS GONE DOWN WELL WITH CONSUMERS AND BEEN A GOOD EXAMPLE OF HOW THE INDUSTRY CAN PIVOT IN ANOTHER DIRECTION”
register for its free weekly run-bike-run challenges either outdoors or on the indoor trainer, although actual participant numbers are lower. The format even evolved to offering slots to the aborted Ironman 70.3 World Championship, illustrative of how virtual racing is becoming more competitive, if not perfectly calibrated. Ironman has partnered with the Rouvy bike platform and weeds out dubious performances by a manual checking process balanced against an athlete’s virtual racing ‘biological passport’, a system that scours past results.
Virtual events might not need an uber competitive environment to prosper, though. The Castle Series, that’s seen its own summer roster in the UK decimated, put on a variety of do-it-yourself options and found an appreciative partner in Macmillan Cancer Support. “It’s the law of unexpected consequences,” says Castle Series supremo Brian Adcock. “We ended up raising £30,000 through our first few races and Macmillan is going to sign for next two years on the fact we’ve shown a willingness to do something.
“We started with duathlon, then added aquathlon as swimming venues opened. Now we’ve 30 different races you can do over the course of weekend.” A sliding scale of costs have seen kids take part for £5, up to adults for £30, and 3,000 have bought a finisher’s tee-shirt and medal. “It’s been brilliant for fostering the community and potentially bringing us new customers going forward.”
Where do we go from here? If Ironman’s adjusted strapline, ‘Anywhere Is Possible’, works for the virtual world, the real world can’t seem to make up its mind. Ironman 70.3 Weymouth is currently still on, Wales is off. The Chinese government announced that all the international sport events will be cancelled until the end of the year. In Italy, new Ironman events are being tabled for 2021. It now has four. The much-vaunted Challenge Roth was made the 2021 ITU long course and German national championships, and added 200 extra places. So much for smaller fields and social distancing. The Collins Cup may even eventually happen in Slovakia next May. “It’s our biggest priority, our reimagining of the format” Renouf says.
Perhaps the final word should go to John Lunt, the founder of Human Race, who has since helped to organise races in St Lucia and Dubrovnik, Croatia, and seen most things in the world of tri. “Every country is identifying the risk,” he says. “Like most things in life, it’s about confidence. Are you confident you can get a flight there? Confident you can get a hotel? Confident you can do all the training? There are too many doubts and unknowns for anyone to do anything confidently.”