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Triathlon’s unsung heroes. Meet the people who keep our sport fair and safe

Behind the scenes with the sport’s MVPs - the officials.

Yan Therrien’s day started well before dawn last June 23, as he prepared to mentor a first-time head referee for the Ironman 70.3 Mont Tremblant race. Triathletes who had competed in the short course event the day before had raced in perfect weather, but Sunday was a different story. The rain was sheeting down as volunteers headed out to evaluate the state of the lake.

“The team captain for the swim said the lifeguards were not even able to stay standing on their paddleboards because the waves were so high and choppy,” said Therrien, who has officiated at 18 events at Mont Tremblant over 11 years, including the 2014 70.3 world championship. Closer to shore, the water was calmer.

“The race director, the medical team and other officials made the right call,” when they decided to shorten the 1,900-metre course to 1,100 metres, Therrien said. However, by the time the pros and the faster age-group swimmers were out of the water, the wind had picked up, and the lake was getting more and more choppy.

“Athletes were stopping at the buoys and hanging onto them, trying to catch their breath,” said Therrien. Others were treading water, hearing the voices of swimmers calling out for help and watching kayakers struggle to keep their boats afloat with five or six triathletes grasping for a handhold.

Officials stopped the swim with 600 triathletes still on the beach, turning their race into a duathlon.

Did anyone see the ark? Photos from a rainy Ironman Pro Series race in Mont-Tremblant

It was all in a day’s work for Therrien and his fellow officials — the unsung heroes who give up their weekends to make the tough calls to keep the sport safe and fair.

Therrien estimates he has officiated in one capacity or another at some 160 events in the 17 years since he first volunteered to watch for drafting at his club’s triathlon in Saint-Lambert on Montreal’s South Shore. By then he had raced every distance from a sprint up, starting with his first triathlon as a junior RCMP officer posted in British Columbia in the mid-1990s, and he was keen to give something back to the sport. But, between his paid work as a Mountie and his own training for Ironman Lake Placid that summer, his schedule was full.

“I decided to kill two birds with one stone,” he said, helping out race organizers and still getting in his long training ride as he looped the bike course. “By the end of the day, I got my 100 kilometres in, and I got my race T-shirt and my meal paid for.”

He enjoyed the experience so much, he signed on to represent officials on the board of Triathlon Quebec and took courses to become a provincial, then a national technical official. Today, he is one of just eight Canadians officiating at the international level. The sport has taken him to every corner of the globe, from Glasgow to Australia’s Gold Coast for the Commonwealth Games, to the Pan Am Games in Toronto and Lima, and to seven world championship events in London, Chicago, Rotterdam, Cancun, Abu Dhabi, Montreal and Pontevedra. The weekend after Ironman 70.3 Mont-Tremblant last June, he was again out in the rain at dawn, this time at the Olympic Basin on Montreal’s Île Notre-Dame for the last qualifying event before the Paris Paralympics. By the time you read this, he will have caught up with many of those same para-athletes in Paris in September, where he was assigned to be chief official on the run course.

Yan Therrien officiates at the Paris Paralympics.

It is a grueling schedule, and clearly not something you do for money or glory. Technical officials get their gas or airfare and accommodations paid for and often receive a small honorarium, but they’re motivated by more esoteric things: their love of the sport, the rush and inspiration they get from being with the athletes, the desire to give back to their community.

“I work to play,” said Brent Chan, one of the officials standing in the rain at the finish line at the Para Series event in Montreal. An IT agent for the B.C. government, he’s competed as an age-grouper at world championships in Auckland and Chicago and at Challenge Roth in Bavaria. He had been in San Francisco earlier in June to act as motorcycle draft marshal at the T100 World Triathlon Series race, and he was taking holidays in late August to be head referee at Ironman Canada in Penticton.

“Just seeing these people fight these conditions” was reason enough to relish being in Montreal in such dismal weather, Chan said. “You know, there’s wind and waves in the swim, and now the rain and cold — just seeing the commitment of these people, accomplishing their goals, it is really inspiring.”

“I’m kind of a data-driven person, so that’s why I enjoy it,” said Hugues Bonin, an age-group triathlete and tri- and cycling coach from Montreal who was in charge of registration at the ParaSeries event. “Being involved as an official is a good opportunity to give back to the sport.”

If Therrien, Chan and Bonin share one trait, it is that they are sticklers for the rules, obsessive about keeping triathlons fair and safe. Every technical official I have spoken to worries about making the wrong call. They also all seem to be finely attuned to human nature.

No one, you understand, ever drafts in a triathlon. It is always some other cyclist. And sometimes, the officials have to take the heat.

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“You recognize in the moment, everyone is on adrenaline. They’re all fired up. It’s never personal. They see you as this faceless referee,” said Chan. “They may get upset at a penalty and feel they don’t deserve it, but I have had people come up and apologize afterwards, after they’ve had a calm moment.”

Another trait triathlon officials share is boundless energy. Who gives up an opportunity to sleep in, every summer weekend? As for the rest of the year, well, Therrien has also found time to coach his teenage son’s baseball, soccer and hockey teams, to teach swimming and equestrian (he’s a past member of the RCMP Musical Ride), to play hockey three times a week and to go downhill and cross-country skiing in the winter. Tired yet? He’s also the founder and organizer of the Tough Mountie Challenge, a trail run and obstacle course based on police training programs that takes place on the slopes of Mount Royal every October. So far, Tough Mountie has raised $700,000 for pediatric research.

Not long ago, Therrien got a swim-bike-run tattoo emblazoned with the words “Never give up.”

“I’m hard core,” he admits. No matter what role he has as an official, from draft marshal to head referee, he gives it his all.

“I want to share my experience. I want to go and make sure people are going to learn. I want to make sure the race is going to go the proper way. I’m always going to try to do everything right, because I care about it.”

Loreen Pindera is a triathlete and freelance journalist from Montreal. This story originally appeared in the Sept. 2024 issue of Triathlon Magazine.