Life of Tri Podcast: Witsup’s Stef Hanson

She is the founder of Witsup, a website dedicated to women in triathlon. Phil Wrochna catches up with the Aussie journalist.

Listen to the podcast on Spotify or iTunes

After starting the sport as an age group triathlete, Hanson began writing for one of Australia’s triathlon publications. As she spent more time around the sport, she started to see trends in the industry that she wanted to change:

•  Women’s coverage in race reports and previews in comparison to the men’s was poor;
•  Female triathletes didn’t get as much exposure as many of the men;
•  The women’s racing seemed to be an after thought;
•  The female to male ratio in participation numbers was small – growing over the years, but still between 18-30% depending on the distance of the event, and;
•  The barriers to entry for the sport were high for women especially – anything from walking into a bike shop to swimming in the open water.

“So with my experience, passion, observations and drive the idea of WITSUP.com was born and the rest is history amongst these here pages,” Hansom writes on the “about-us” page on the site. “The concept of WITSUP.com was to provide an informational portal on the glorious world wide web, but more than that it was about creating an online and real life community for women in triathlon. My passion for the sport combined with my sense of humour, commitment to greatness and hopefully engaging personality is obvious throughout the different platforms of WITSUP.com – and that is one of our points of difference.”