With Lucy Charles-Barclay expected to dominate Ironman France, we’re back to the old days of racing
The top pro triathletes have lots of opportunities to make money right now without facing off against each other on a regular basis
Photo by:
Kevin Mackinnon
Earlier this year, when the Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO) triumphantly announced its new T100 Triathlon World Tour, Ironman world champion Lucy Charles-Barclay served as the shining example of how triathlon racing was going to change. Gone were the days when we’d have to wait until Kona (or Nice, now that the men’s and women’s races have split up) to see the world’s best long-distance triathletes compete against each other. Now we’d have the opportunity to see that happen eight times a year as the world’s top athletes would all be contracted to compete at the new series. At that point, Charles-Barclay was “all in” on the T100 series. She would return to defend her title in Kona in 2025, but for 2024, she was gearing up to compete against the top women at the T100 series.
Lucy Charles-Barclay changes course and looks to defend Ironman World Championship title in Nice
Make no mistake – the T100 racing has been exciting this year, and the concept makes lots of sense. As PTO Chairman Chris Kermode puts it, the model will follow that of tennis (Kermode is the former head of the Association of Tennis Professionals) to create an exciting series of races. It appears, though, that it’s going to take a bit of time for things to play out before we truly get to see the world’s best competing against each other on a regular basis. Ironman’s Pro Series has proven to be an attractive option for some of the sport’s best, while many of the PTO-signed athletes, including Charles-Barclay (after the surprise announcement last week that she would be racing at Ironman Nice this weekend – see above), appear to be hedging their bets by fulfilling their T100 contracts, but also competing at Ironman events in order to secure their spot to the Ironman World Championship – be it Nice or Kona.
The end result has been a bunch of pro races that include the world’s best athletes, but not featuring the head-to-head racing between the “big names.”
The next few weekends are a perfect example. This weekend in Nice, Charles-Barclay is expected to dominate. The website trirating.com predicts that Charles-Barclay could win the race by as much as a half hour. While athletes like France’s Julie Iemmolo (sixth in her first Ironman in Hamburg two weeks ago), Sweden’s Sara Svensk (2022 Ironman Cozumel champ) and Belgium’s Alexandre Tondeur (runner up in Nice in 2022) all have decent Ironman credentials, an on-form Charles-Barclay is at another level. 2019 Kona champ Anne Haug will be in Nice, but she’s competing in the 70.3 race as a way of checking out the Nice course as she prepares for the world championship there.
You can see the full Nice professional start list here.
Charles-Barclay and Haug were two of the contracted T-100 athletes who skipped the San Francisco race last weekend. Another who passed on the Alcatraz event, Chelsea Sodaro (the 2022 Ironman world champ, who lives in the area, made the tough decision to pull out in order to prioritize her “mental and physical health”), has joined what is proving to be a very competitive field at Ironman 70.3 Mont-Tremblant. Sodaro will take on defending Tremblant champ Tamara Jewett and fellow Canadian T-100 contract athlete Paula Findlay. Other big names in the 46-woman pro field include American Sarah True and Aussie Ellie Salthouse. (The men’s field in Tremblant is also really strong – we’ll have more to say about all that next week, but for now you can see the list of both fields here.)
Braden Currie takes Ironman Asia-Pacific Championship Cairns in record-setting style
While all that is happening in the northern hemisphere, we’re here in Cairns, Australia, for the Ironman Asia-Pacific Championship, that was supposed to feature American Sam Long, who is leading the PTO World Ranking right now. The race in Cairns was supposed to signal Long’s attempt to excel at both the T100 series and in Kona later this year. After a tough day in San Francisco last weekend, Long decided to cancel his trip to Australia.
“I have canceled my trip to Australia,” Long wrote on Instagram. “This year has started off so perfect that I began to get greedy and want to chase it all. The top of the World Rankings, the top of T100, the IM pro series and Kona. Yesterday was a (needed) reminder of the need to focus and specialize. To pursue a goal with all of our being. The T100 is simply too competitive and too strong to do otherwise.”
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That hardly means we won’t have a competitive race to cover in Cairns this weekend – we’ll have more after today’s press conference in Cairns. But it is yet another big name skipping out on a big race.
There’s never been a better time to be a pro triathlete, with the PTO handing out US$7 million in contracts, prize money and bonuses, and Ironman forking out over $6 million through it’s Ironman Pro Series. This weekend’s race in Cairns will divvy out US$150,000, along with valuable Ironman Pro Series points and four pro qualifying slots each for the men and women. And, while we are getting lots of exciting racing – last weekend’s men’s sprint in San Francisco will truly go down as a race for the ages – we’ve not yet seen all the biggest names in the sport racing against each other.
That time could come – even as soon as the T100 race in London at the end of July, but while that event could feature all of the sport’s biggest long-distance names, it certainly won’t include the winners from last weekend’s race as both Taylor Knibb and Marten Van Riel will be in Paris at the Olympics.
Will we get to the point where we’re seeing big “showdowns” multiple times a year? Whether we do or not, we are seeing a lot more opportunities for pro athletes these days, which can’t help but improve the level of racing in the sport. Will that be enough?
