PTO won’t announce 2024 calendar until early next year
While Singapore and Ibiza events have been announced the rest of the six-race series still unkown
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PTO
The full 2024 Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO) Tour calendar won’t be released until early in 2024, according to a release today.
“We have been working hard to double our calendar from three events to at least six races in 2024, as we strongly believe that is the way to create a cohesive, season-long narrative about the PTO Tour that will ultimately take the sport to a broader global audience and build a fanbase that drives more money into the sport,” says PTO CEO Sam Renouf. “We are in the final stages of planning with new host locations, however, as several are requiring further government approvals before being publicly announced, we felt it was important to let people know that we won’t be announcing our full calendar of Professional and Age Grouper races until early in the new year. This is a more complex process for the PTO versus most stakeholders in the sport as we mandate to all our host partners that we must have entirely separate racing for Professionals and Age Groupers, which we believe is essential both for athlete safety and to create a compelling broadcast product to grow the sport.”
‘While it’s admittedly taken us a little longer to announce the stages than we expected, we are hugely excited in how things are shaping up and believe it will be worth the wait,” Renouf continues. “Each of the stops of the 2024 Tour will be at iconic locations that provide a backdrop worthy of the highest level of the sport.”
World Championship Tour
Earlier this year the PTO and World Triathlon announced that the PTO Tour would become the “Official World Championship Tour of long distance triathlon,” with at least six races including five Continental Championship in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
PTO and World Triathlon partner on long distance World Championship Tour
The events are all to be over the 100 km distance – 2 km swim, 80 km bike and 18 km run.
After starting as a professional-only organization, the PTO stepped into the world of age group racing with the announcement of the PTO Tour in 2022. That year events were held in Edmonton and Dallas, along with the Collins Cup event that took place in Samorin, Slovakia.
High-profile spokesperson
After her record-setting day at this year’s Ironman World Championship, Lucy Charles-Barclay has provided the PTO with lots of press opportunities, lauding the new series in a number of interviews.
“Now in triathlon there’s a new and really exciting triathlon series from the PTO, which is the Professional Triathletes Organisation, that race lasts for just about 3 hours and is the 100 km distance,” Charles-Barclay said during Channel Four’s Sunday Brunch show that aired in the UK. “So it would be fun to watch and I think people could tune in for that long and it’s really exciting. They want to make it like the F1 of triathlons so that the top 15 athletes will race multiple times a year and they’ll be a World Champion crowned at the end of the year. So that will be my goal going forward.”
The 2024 PTO Tour will feature 20 men and women competing at each event.
With Charles-Barclay no-doubt one of the main draws for PTO Tour events next year, it will be interesting to see how she handles the defence of her Ironman World Championship title in Nice next year – the event is just a week before the PTO Tour race in Ibiza.
Ironman Tour
Just before this year’s Ironman World Championship, Ironman announced that it would be organizing it’s own “Pro Series” in 2024.
That series will offer a US$1.7 million bonus pool to be paid out to the top 50 men and women in the standings. Ironman was able to announce the dates for that series back in October.
