The biggest triathlon news stories of 2023
Ironman dominated the world of triathlon news this year
Photo by:
Kevin Mackinnon
As the biggest organization in the sport, it hardly comes as a surprise that stories about Ironman would generate the most interest, and we certainly saw lots of that through 2023. In terms of interest on our site, four of the top-six news stories featured Ironman. The bedlam around Super League Toulouse was another of the top stories, while Lionel Sanders’ reaction to one of his training partners getting caught doping was also in the mix.
Ironman vs Triathlon Ireland
The tragic news that two athletes died during the swim at Ironman 70.3 Ireland generated lots of interest, but when Triathlon Ireland came out with a statement that it had pulled the sanction of the race before the start, Ironman’s response turned out to be the most-read story on our site in 2023.
Ironman responds to Triathlon Ireland statement, disputing the timeline of sanctioning decision
Bedlam at Super League Toulouse
They’ve always liked to shake things up at Super League events, but the race in Toulouse took things to an entirely new level. Our coverage of the race turned out to be the second most read story on the site this year.
Ironman pads world championship entries
Athletes really responded to the news that Ironman had extended invitations to athletes who had missed qualifying at races in the fall of 2022 in the hopes of increasing the field sizes for the races in Nice and Kona.
Ironman looks to pad World Championship entries through “extended slot allocation”
Reaction to Colin Chartier’s doping
The sport was rocked with the news that the PTO US Open and Ironman Mont-Tremblant champion Collin Chartier had been caught using EPO. His training partner Lionel Sanders’ reaction to that news turned out to be the third-most read story on our site this year.
Lionel Sanders: “Was I trying to keep up with a dude who was juicing?”
Death during the women’s race at Ironman 70.3 World Championship
Just a week after the tragedy in Ireland the sport was rocked once again with the sad news of another death during the swim of a triathlon race, this time in Lahti, Finland.
Athlete dies during women’s race at Ironman 70.3 World Championship
Super-shoe ban taken up by Ironman
We’d reported that World Triathlon would be following World Athletics’ lead on running shoe standards, but people really took notice once Ironman confirmed that it would follow suit.
Other stories that generated lots of interest:
In a social media world that thrives on controversy and conflict, it was nice to see that some of the most popular stories of the year were focussed more on competition. Our audience loved our story evaluating how Jan Frodeno would fare against the Norwegians earlier this year, and also jumped on line to read our story on the 5 do’s and don’ts to becoming a better swimmer.
There was lots of interest in our story on Sam Laidlow “lashing out at accusations of cheating” and even more on our story about Canadian Matt Sharpe getting DQ’d for crossing the finish line at Ironman 70.3 Maine with his zipper undone.
We’ll round out our recap with a couple of fun stories – people liked our story highlighting 7 Signs that you’ve finally become a triathlete and one of our favourites, our story on 6’9″ hockey legend Zdeno Chara’s first half-distance triathlon.
