It wasn’t to be five wins out of five for WTS leader Flora Duffy in Montreal, as she has to settle for second place behind Australian Ashleigh Gentle, who wins her first her first ever WTS race. Andrea Hewitt of New Zealand finishes the podium in third place.
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It was the first time a WTS race has been held in Montreal and it came just a week after WTS Edmonton where Duffy won her fourth WTS race of the season.
American Katie Zaferes led the swim from the start, followed close by Carolina Routier (ESP) and Emma Jeffcoat (AUS).
Zaferes managed to get a small gap of a couple seconds as she exited the waters, but was chased and caught soon after transition by a group of strong bikers, which included Duffy, Hewitt and Kirsten Kasper.
When it came to the run, Gentle pushed hard from the first metre, being the fastest of the field this season in the Olympic distance, to leave all of the other athletes behind.
Gentle got a lead of nine seconds in the first lap, with only Duffy, Hewitt and Kasper keeping up with the frantic speed on the Montreal streets. With every pacing lap that lead only grew and eventually as she hit the bell it was enough to allow her to cross the finish line, stopping the clock on 1:59:04.
Second to the finish line was Duffy, 23 seconds behind, while Hewitt took third and her 20th podium of her career.
The second place keeps Duffy at the top of the Series leaderboard with 3940 points, while Gentle climbs up to second place with 3286 points, followed by Zaferes with 3192.
After the race, a bursting in tears Gentle said: “I had so many things on my mind coming into this race… I needed to focus on the little things rather than the results, and I did. I made it. It has taken me six years to get on top of the WTS podium, six years of up and downs, a few second places… and I finally made it”.
Duffy was also “very happy for my second place”, but “really happy for Ashleigh. I knew this was gonna come at some point”.
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Hewitt said: “I’ve been in this city 10 days training and I think that this has helped me a lot today. I loved the city and the course, and to be back to an Olympic distance race”.
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It was an elite field in Montreal with Spaniards Mario Mola, Javier Gomez and Fernando Alarza, and Brit Jonny Brownlee in the mix. With the Spanish making up the first three in the WTS rankings they have certainly been dominating the 2017 season but although he may not have a chance at the title Jonny Brownlee wanted a win and to start with it looked like everything was going his way.
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As predicted Richard Varga (SVK) led the non-wetsuit swim, followed by Brownlee and Ben Kanute (USA) with current WTS leader Mario Mola (ESP) 53secs behind the leaders when exiting the swim.
Aussie Aaron Royle joined the trio of Varga, Kanute and Brownlee out of T1 to form a leading group of four. However they were soon joined by Javier Gomez, Norwegian Kristian Blummenfelt and Seth Rider from USA.
Over the next nine bike laps this group of seven kept the lead between 40 and 55secs and entering T2 they were one minute ahead of the chasers.
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Out on the run Gomez, Blummenfelt and Brownlee made their move and strode away from the remaining four. Then at 3km Gomez increased his pace, not wanting it to come down to sprint finish, and Blummenfelt and Brownlee were unable to respond. From then on a win for the 34 year old never looked in doubt and his winning time was 1:47:50.
Blummenfelt then strode away from Brownlee to take second place. While after some fantastic running South African Richard Murray made his way through the field up to fourth place and with just under 2km to go challenged and overtook Brownlee to take the final place on the podium.
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This 14th WTS victory from Javier Gomez was his meant he has become the oldest man to have won a WTS event.
It was an elite field in Montreal with Spaniards Mario Mola, Javier Gomez and Fernando Alarza, and Brit Jonny Brownlee in the mix. With the Spanish making up the first three in the WTS rankings they have certainly been dominating the 2017 season but although he may not have a chance at the title Jonny Brownlee wanted a win and to start with it looked like everything was going his way.
Advertisement
As predicted Richard Varga (SVK) led the non-wetsuit swim, followed by Brownlee and Ben Kanute (USA) with current WTS leader Mario Mola (ESP) 53secs behind the leaders when exiting the swim.
Aussie Aaron Royle joined the trio of Varga, Kanute and Brownlee out of T1 to form a leading group of four. However they were soon joined by Javier Gomez, Norwegian Kristian Blummenfelt and Seth Rider from USA.
Over the next nine bike laps this group of seven kept the lead between 40 and 55secs and entering T2 they were one minute ahead of the chasers.
Out on the run Gomez, Blummenfelt and Brownlee made their move and strode away from the remaining four. Then at 3km Gomez increased his pace, not wanting it to come down to sprint finish, and Blummenfelt and Brownlee were unable to respond. From then on a win for the 34 year old never looked in doubt and his winning time was 1:47:50.
Click Here: liverpool mens jersey
Blummenfelt then strode away from Brownlee to take second place. While after some fantastic running South African Richard Murray made his way through the field up to fourth place and with just under 2km to go challenged and overtook Brownlee to take the final place on the podium.
Advertisement
This 14th WTS victory from Javier Gomez was his meant he has become the oldest man to have won a WTS event.
On the 18th hole of the final match on Kiawah Island in 1991, Bernhard Langer stood over a six-foot putt knowing to sink it would retain the Ryder Cup for Europe. The atmosphere was as tense in the packed galleries as it was nail-biting in homes either side of the Atlantic.
Advertisement
“I think it’s around 230 million,” Patrick Hunt, the competition’s chairman boasts of the audience for the biennial showpiece that has stretched to over 160 countries with viewing numbers to rival the Super Bowl. “It’s certainly the most widely covered golf event there is.”
Given world-class golfers thwack little white balls down fairways all year round, how does the appeal of a three-day team competition between Europe and the USA transcend golf enthusiasts? And if a nervous Langer had held his putter with the same grip as the event captivated its viewers, might he have holed the damn thing?
While history cannot be rewritten, the answer to the first question is fierce rivalry, according to Charles Adamo, the chairman of the Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO), that is adapting the Ryder Cup template for swim, bike and run in the form of the Collins Cup.
CHANGING THE STATUS QUO
When I first met Charles last summer he was new to multisport, and like many fresh to this nook of the endurance world, was marvelling at how dedicated its elite performers were, and bemused by how poorly they were paid.
In trying to change the status quo, he impressively outlined the plan for a three-team international competition raced over middle distance and built around engaging fans and improving the lot of professional triathletes.
The Collins Cup: a new Ryder Cup-style team competition for long distance tri
Named after Ironman pioneers, John and Judy Collins, the concept loosely mirrors the Ryder Cup singles’ match-play format except it will – in keeping with proud triathlon tradition – include both genders. Its chief aim is to build the profile of long-course professionals so they’re better remunerated.
There is work to do. Both the Professional Golfers Association (PGA) and the PTO work as not-for-profit entities, but the former wields considerably more influence. Golf’s US Masters paid out $11,000,000 in prize money in April, compared to the total purse for the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii in October of $650,000. The 30-40% of revenues that filter back to golfers is way above the percentage claimed by Ironman professionals. The difference in power share between the organisers and participants is stark.
Consider the impact if Jordan Speith and Rory McIlroy, for example, decided to sit out a major because of a pay dispute. All sides understand the damage the sport’s profile would receive. In contrast, if professional triathletes decided to boycott Kona, would Ironman just fill the pier with more amateur racers? Given professional fields have already been axed at many Ironman events, the perceived value of the pro racer is negligible. And, perhaps, with some justification.
Unlike golf, triathlon has yet to prove it can draw a crowd for professional long-course racing, and plenty will argue that watching swim, bike and run for hours – however adept its proponents – will never hold an allure for a large-scale audience. Adamo believes triathlon’s protagonists have yet to harness their collective power and spin an engaging enough narrative. There have been previous attempts. The Professional Triathlon Association in 2009, and then the Professional Triathlon Union (a precursor to the PTO) in 2015 both failed to gain traction, and the hope is that the Collins Cup finally provides a platform – albeit a self-generated one – to prove their worth.
DRIP-FED DEVELOPMENTS
So will it work? Adamo’s presentation was clear in pointing out the Collins Cup would chase the biggest names to give it the greatest chance of success. Confidence was bolstered by the backing of Wasserman, the sports media group, worth upwards of $115million according to Forbes. But it was also conceptual; an untested event to be shoehorned into an increasingly cluttered calendar. And it was independent of the International Triathlon Union and WTC, the sport’s two big players. It was hard not to be impressed by the ambition, but putting that plan into action was the real challenge.
In the 12 months that followed, the PTO has drip-fed developments, including naming the six captains, announcing a new rankings system for selection and finally revealing the location. For dyed-in-the-wool triathlon fans, it should have hit the spot like flat cola on the run. Regional skippers such as Dave Scott, Simon Whitfield and Chrissie Wellington and a host venue of Roth for its debut in 2018, show that the PTO wants the Collins Cup to be taken seriously.
Roth is the obvious – and correct – choice. Up to 260,000 turn up every year in the small town in southern Germany for the Challenge race, a fan-base that dwarves any in long-course triathlon and rivals Hamburg on the ITU circuit. It’s bringing the Collins Cup to those with the biggest appetite for non-drafting racing, and to a nation that, led by Jan Frodeno and Sebastian Kienle, provided five of the top seven men’s finishers in Hawaii last year.
Yet it brings no guarantees of success. A new venture in a niche sport a year hence proved a predictably difficult sell to mainstream media, and while the hype probably wasn’t overbearing ahead of the first Ryder Cup match in 1927, Adamo et al were hoping for a bigger impact.
The Collins Cup may also take a while to bed in (Dave Scott, the US men’s captain and six-time Ironman world champion, loves to tell of how all he received for his early Kona wins was a t-shirt), however a more fundamental issue might be the duration of competition.
AT ODDS WITH CURRENT THINKING
It’s at odds with the current thinking that to make triathlon coverage more engaging the format needs to be shorter and sharper. The introduction of the lightning fast-paced, and viewing public-friendly, relay event into the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 as well as an increasing number of sprint races being added to the annual World Series, suggests the ITU might be leaning towards shorter distances in the not-too-distant future. Even more dynamic was the recently launched Super League Triathlon, a mixed bag of made-for-TV racing, pioneered by Chris McCormack, and a throwback to the Australian Grand Prix series in the late 90s. Instant gratification rather than a slow burn seems to be in vogue.
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Anything longer simply hasn’t worked. The NBC Sports Ironman World Championship show is an annual staple, but it is also a highlights package broadcast weeks after the event with producers including human interest stories for added frisson. The live online stream for Kona has limited production values, although is at least an improvement on the epic tussle between Jan Frodeno and Javier Gomez at the 2014 Ironman 70.3 world title showdown in Mont Tremblant, which could only be followed via an online tracker.
The PTO believes it’s time for this young sport (the first ITU world championships were held in 1989, Ironman made its bow in 1978) to grasp the nettle. It’s helped that the proliferation of global media and the rise of digital broadcasting allows dedicated channels to comprehensively cover more events. The Collins Cup will still be over in the time it takes to play a round in the Ryder Cup, and consider that NFL games last over 3 hours on average with just 11 minutes of on-field action. If nothing else, it allows for a lot of ad breaks.
PACK A PUNCH
Triathlon may not have matured enough for these comparisons, but it can pack a punch. Two years ago 1.4million viewers tuned in to German broadcaster ARD for live coverage of the Mixed Relay World Championships in Hamburg, more than the Tour de France that was running concurrently.
It’s also a laudable, perhaps necessary, ambition to put professional wellbeing at triathlon’s heart. If you don’t try to build the profile of its elite performers it will forever remain a fringe sport with a mainstream Olympic focus once every four years.
As for the format, while it might seem an obscure distance of 3km swim, 120km bike and 25km run, not too much stock should be placed in this. Whether a golfer shoots a 65 or 75 in the Ryder Cup, what matters is how he fares against his opponent, and it’s this drama that the Collins Cup head-to-head format is trying to capture.
One boon of the distance is its appeal as a carrot for short-course racers to step up (each team has four wildcard picks), which leaves the door ajar for the likes of Olympic medallists Javier Gomez, Nicola Spirig, Gwen Jorgensen and the Brownlees, with 220 understanding organisers have already contacted Alistair. The Yorkshireman has ruled himself out for the rest of the year due to hip surgery, but the biggest name in the sport has long broadcast his desire to test himself at all distances. If the money is right, it shouldn’t be ruled out.
THE THREAT OF IRONMAN?
There are also logistics to overcome. It’s a coup for the PTO to take the Collins Cup to Roth on the same day as the established Challenge contest, not least because of the readymade crowd it will bring. But while the team event is planned for the afternoon, Roth typically has competitors out on the run course until late into the evening, and, as was seen from Challenge’s inaugural ‘Championship’ venture at Samorin in Slovakia, it can be confusing to have fast-moving professional triathletes dodging tired age-groupers on the course at the event’s climax.
How the PTO is accepted by Ironman, the ITU and Challenge is another hurdle. Adamo is clear the PTO favours collaboration and Challenge, in opening up Roth, has shown its hand of accessibility. The ITU will be ambivalent at best. Its focus is on growing the sport, and, at elite level, the World Series that underpins the Olympic qualifying programme and sees many competing athletes funded by national bodies via, for example, the national lottery in the UK.
Ironman is the threat. The professionals are not its core market – as underlined by its refusal to up the number of female pro slots, so there’s parity of genders in Hawaii. With some amateurs paying up to $100,000 for a start, those extra places on the Kona pier are golden tickets for CEO Andrew Messick keen to impress his commercial stakeholders at Chinese-owned parent company, Wanda Group.
Consider how Ironman lays siege to Challenge’s largely franchise model. It buys its races from local organisers or schedules rival events in nearby locations. It’s a confrontational approach by any measure, and if the Collins Cup looks like it might prove successful, it will be judged with the same hostility. WTC could, for example, up its prize purses at Ironman Frankfurt, a race that takes place in close enough proximity in both time and distance to the action in Roth. A step on, but it could also tie professionals into more lucrative contracts for the full year, dissuading them from taking part in ‘rival’ events (the paradox being that even the notion of the Collins Cup could then works to the PTO’s ultimate aim of boosting the professionals’ earning power). Whatever happens, history suggests that a commercially-hardened WTC will be no friend of this new format because it has no stake in it.
TIME TO FIND ITS FEET
The PTO has also launched a new qualifying points format that differs from Ironman’s Kona Points Ranking and a separate pro money list pulled together by Challenge. The sport’s leading statistician, Thorsten Radde, has been recruited to make it work, and while the logic of building drama as athletes strive for qualification is sound, when the pro list is based on ‘propriety algorithms’ it’s all getting rather wonkish. For the record, Sebastian Kienle and Daniela Ryf are the current chart toppers.
The Collins Cup World Ranking System
Another challenge is that its first television broadcast does not garner the interest demanded by its media partners – missing the dreaded ROI or KPIs of marketing speak. The format could be a masterstroke, yet the race could still fall flat. Triathlon is at its best when there is ebb and flow between competitors. Think Mark Allen v Dave Scott in the epic Ironwar of 1989, or Chris McCormack v Andreas Raelert reliving that experience 21 years on. But sport is also unpredictable, and while the format might be captivating the event could be skewered by simply being a mismatch, and a landslide victory for Europe. Consider Frodeno, Gomez, Brownlee, Kienle, Ryf… it’s a formidable European union that looks a lot more secure than the one Jean-Claude Juncker is currently presiding over.
It needs patience. The Ryder Cup limped along from 1927 with USA thumping Great Britain and Ireland on a regular basis until it expanded to include the rest of Europe in 1979, and six years later Tony Jacklin’s side beat Lee Trevino’s in an epic contest at the Belfry. The Collins Cup does not have 52 years to bed down, but, like anyone who has ever stumbled out of T2 with jelly-legs knows, it does need time to find its feet.
Advertisement
What next? The Collins Cup has its qualifying system, its captains and its venues and is currently looking to confirm broadcast rights. Then it’s all set for race day and while it will take a big effort for either Europe, the USA or the Rest of the World to win the inaugural contest on July 1 next year, the bigger triumph will be if the hearts and minds of sport’s fans really buy into this brave new venture.
On the 18th hole of the final match on Kiawah Island in 1991, Bernhard Langer stood over a six-foot putt knowing to sink it would retain the Ryder Cup for Europe. The atmosphere was as tense in the packed galleries as it was nail-biting in homes either side of the Atlantic.
Advertisement
“I think it’s around 230 million,” Patrick Hunt, the competition’s chairman boasts of the audience for the biennial showpiece that has stretched to over 160 countries with viewing numbers to rival the Super Bowl. “It’s certainly the most widely covered golf event there is.”
Given world-class golfers thwack little white balls down fairways all year round, how does the appeal of a three-day team competition between Europe and the USA transcend golf enthusiasts? And if a nervous Langer had held his putter with the same grip as the event captivated its viewers, might he have holed the damn thing?
While history cannot be rewritten, the answer to the first question is fierce rivalry, according to Charles Adamo, the chairman of the Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO), that is adapting the Ryder Cup template for swim, bike and run in the form of the Collins Cup.
CHANGING THE STATUS QUO
When I first met Charles last summer he was new to multisport, and like many fresh to this nook of the endurance world, was marvelling at how dedicated its elite performers were, and bemused by how poorly they were paid.
In trying to change the status quo, he impressively outlined the plan for a three-team international competition raced over middle distance and built around engaging fans and improving the lot of professional triathletes.
The Collins Cup: a new Ryder Cup-style team competition for long distance tri
Named after Ironman pioneers, John and Judy Collins, the concept loosely mirrors the Ryder Cup singles’ match-play format except it will – in keeping with proud triathlon tradition – include both genders. Its chief aim is to build the profile of long-course professionals so they’re better remunerated.
There is work to do. Both the Professional Golfers Association (PGA) and the PTO work as not-for-profit entities, but the former wields considerably more influence. Golf’s US Masters paid out $11,000,000 in prize money in April, compared to the total purse for the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii in October of $650,000. The 30-40% of revenues that filter back to golfers is way above the percentage claimed by Ironman professionals. The difference in power share between the organisers and participants is stark.
Consider the impact if Jordan Speith and Rory McIlroy, for example, decided to sit out a major because of a pay dispute. All sides understand the damage the sport’s profile would receive. In contrast, if professional triathletes decided to boycott Kona, would Ironman just fill the pier with more amateur racers? Given professional fields have already been axed at many Ironman events, the perceived value of the pro racer is negligible. And, perhaps, with some justification.
Unlike golf, triathlon has yet to prove it can draw a crowd for professional long-course racing, and plenty will argue that watching swim, bike and run for hours – however adept its proponents – will never hold an allure for a large-scale audience. Adamo believes triathlon’s protagonists have yet to harness their collective power and spin an engaging enough narrative. There have been previous attempts. The Professional Triathlon Association in 2009, and then the Professional Triathlon Union (a precursor to the PTO) in 2015 both failed to gain traction, and the hope is that the Collins Cup finally provides a platform – albeit a self-generated one – to prove their worth.
DRIP-FED DEVELOPMENTS
So will it work? Adamo’s presentation was clear in pointing out the Collins Cup would chase the biggest names to give it the greatest chance of success. Confidence was bolstered by the backing of Wasserman, the sports media group, worth upwards of $115million according to Forbes. But it was also conceptual; an untested event to be shoehorned into an increasingly cluttered calendar. And it was independent of the International Triathlon Union and WTC, the sport’s two big players. It was hard not to be impressed by the ambition, but putting that plan into action was the real challenge.
In the 12 months that followed, the PTO has drip-fed developments, including naming the six captains, announcing a new rankings system for selection and finally revealing the location. For dyed-in-the-wool triathlon fans, it should have hit the spot like flat cola on the run. Regional skippers such as Dave Scott, Simon Whitfield and Chrissie Wellington and a host venue of Roth for its debut in 2018, show that the PTO wants the Collins Cup to be taken seriously.
Roth is the obvious – and correct – choice. Up to 260,000 turn up every year in the small town in southern Germany for the Challenge race, a fan-base that dwarves any in long-course triathlon and rivals Hamburg on the ITU circuit. It’s bringing the Collins Cup to those with the biggest appetite for non-drafting racing, and to a nation that, led by Jan Frodeno and Sebastian Kienle, provided five of the top seven men’s finishers in Hawaii last year.
Yet it brings no guarantees of success. A new venture in a niche sport a year hence proved a predictably difficult sell to mainstream media, and while the hype probably wasn’t overbearing ahead of the first Ryder Cup match in 1927, Adamo et al were hoping for a bigger impact.
The Collins Cup may also take a while to bed in (Dave Scott, the US men’s captain and six-time Ironman world champion, loves to tell of how all he received for his early Kona wins was a t-shirt), however a more fundamental issue might be the duration of competition.
AT ODDS WITH CURRENT THINKING
It’s at odds with the current thinking that to make triathlon coverage more engaging the format needs to be shorter and sharper. The introduction of the lightning fast-paced, and viewing public-friendly, relay event into the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 as well as an increasing number of sprint races being added to the annual World Series, suggests the ITU might be leaning towards shorter distances in the not-too-distant future. Even more dynamic was the recently launched Super League Triathlon, a mixed bag of made-for-TV racing, pioneered by Chris McCormack, and a throwback to the Australian Grand Prix series in the late 90s. Instant gratification rather than a slow burn seems to be in vogue.
Anything longer simply hasn’t worked. The NBC Sports Ironman World Championship show is an annual staple, but it is also a highlights package broadcast weeks after the event with producers including human interest stories for added frisson. The live online stream for Kona has limited production values, although is at least an improvement on the epic tussle between Jan Frodeno and Javier Gomez at the 2014 Ironman 70.3 world title showdown in Mont Tremblant, which could only be followed via an online tracker.
The PTO believes it’s time for this young sport (the first ITU world championships were held in 1989, Ironman made its bow in 1978) to grasp the nettle. It’s helped that the proliferation of global media and the rise of digital broadcasting allows dedicated channels to comprehensively cover more events. The Collins Cup will still be over in the time it takes to play a round in the Ryder Cup, and consider that NFL games last over 3 hours on average with just 11 minutes of on-field action. If nothing else, it allows for a lot of ad breaks.
PACK A PUNCH
Triathlon may not have matured enough for these comparisons, but it can pack a punch. Two years ago 1.4million viewers tuned in to German broadcaster ARD for live coverage of the Mixed Relay World Championships in Hamburg, more than the Tour de France that was running concurrently.
It’s also a laudable, perhaps necessary, ambition to put professional wellbeing at triathlon’s heart. If you don’t try to build the profile of its elite performers it will forever remain a fringe sport with a mainstream Olympic focus once every four years.
As for the format, while it might seem an obscure distance of 3km swim, 120km bike and 25km run, not too much stock should be placed in this. Whether a golfer shoots a 65 or 75 in the Ryder Cup, what matters is how he fares against his opponent, and it’s this drama that the Collins Cup head-to-head format is trying to capture.
One boon of the distance is its appeal as a carrot for short-course racers to step up (each team has four wildcard picks), which leaves the door ajar for the likes of Olympic medallists Javier Gomez, Nicola Spirig, Gwen Jorgensen and the Brownlees, with 220 understanding organisers have already contacted Alistair. The Yorkshireman has ruled himself out for the rest of the year due to hip surgery, but the biggest name in the sport has long broadcast his desire to test himself at all distances. If the money is right, it shouldn’t be ruled out.
THE THREAT OF IRONMAN?
There are also logistics to overcome. It’s a coup for the PTO to take the Collins Cup to Roth on the same day as the established Challenge contest, not least because of the readymade crowd it will bring. But while the team event is planned for the afternoon, Roth typically has competitors out on the run course until late into the evening, and, as was seen from Challenge’s inaugural ‘Championship’ venture at Samorin in Slovakia, it can be confusing to have fast-moving professional triathletes dodging tired age-groupers on the course at the event’s climax.
How the PTO is accepted by Ironman, the ITU and Challenge is another hurdle. Adamo is clear the PTO favours collaboration and Challenge, in opening up Roth, has shown its hand of accessibility. The ITU will be ambivalent at best. Its focus is on growing the sport, and, at elite level, the World Series that underpins the Olympic qualifying programme and sees many competing athletes funded by national bodies via, for example, the national lottery in the UK.
Ironman is the threat. The professionals are not its core market – as underlined by its refusal to up the number of female pro slots, so there’s parity of genders in Hawaii. With some amateurs paying up to $100,000 for a start, those extra places on the Kona pier are golden tickets for CEO Andrew Messick keen to impress his commercial stakeholders at Chinese-owned parent company, Wanda Group.
Consider how Ironman lays siege to Challenge’s largely franchise model. It buys its races from local organisers or schedules rival events in nearby locations. It’s a confrontational approach by any measure, and if the Collins Cup looks like it might prove successful, it will be judged with the same hostility. WTC could, for example, up its prize purses at Ironman Frankfurt, a race that takes place in close enough proximity in both time and distance to the action in Roth. A step on, but it could also tie professionals into more lucrative contracts for the full year, dissuading them from taking part in ‘rival’ events (the paradox being that even the notion of the Collins Cup could then works to the PTO’s ultimate aim of boosting the professionals’ earning power). Whatever happens, history suggests that a commercially-hardened WTC will be no friend of this new format because it has no stake in it.
TIME TO FIND ITS FEET
The PTO has also launched a new qualifying points format that differs from Ironman’s Kona Points Ranking and a separate pro money list pulled together by Challenge. The sport’s leading statistician, Thorsten Radde, has been recruited to make it work, and while the logic of building drama as athletes strive for qualification is sound, when the pro list is based on ‘propriety algorithms’ it’s all getting rather wonkish. For the record, Sebastian Kienle and Daniela Ryf are the current chart toppers.
The Collins Cup World Ranking System
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Another challenge is that its first television broadcast does not garner the interest demanded by its media partners – missing the dreaded ROI or KPIs of marketing speak. The format could be a masterstroke, yet the race could still fall flat. Triathlon is at its best when there is ebb and flow between competitors. Think Mark Allen v Dave Scott in the epic Ironwar of 1989, or Chris McCormack v Andreas Raelert reliving that experience 21 years on. But sport is also unpredictable, and while the format might be captivating the event could be skewered by simply being a mismatch, and a landslide victory for Europe. Consider Frodeno, Gomez, Brownlee, Kienle, Ryf… it’s a formidable European union that looks a lot more secure than the one Jean-Claude Juncker is currently presiding over.
It needs patience. The Ryder Cup limped along from 1927 with USA thumping Great Britain and Ireland on a regular basis until it expanded to include the rest of Europe in 1979, and six years later Tony Jacklin’s side beat Lee Trevino’s in an epic contest at the Belfry. The Collins Cup does not have 52 years to bed down, but, like anyone who has ever stumbled out of T2 with jelly-legs knows, it does need time to find its feet.
Advertisement
What next? The Collins Cup has its qualifying system, its captains and its venues and is currently looking to confirm broadcast rights. Then it’s all set for race day and while it will take a big effort for either Europe, the USA or the Rest of the World to win the inaugural contest on July 1 next year, the bigger triumph will be if the hearts and minds of sport’s fans really buy into this brave new venture.
To celebrate the release of her hotly anticipated new book To the Finish Line: A World Champion Triathlete’s Guide To Your Perfect Race, this September Chrissie Wellington is embarking on a nationwide book signing tour, which takes in London, Manchester, Birmingham and Tenby (Ironman Wales Expo).
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Written in conjunction with 220, the book offers advice on everything, from planning your race season and fitting triathlon training into everyday life, to race nutrition strategies and coping with pre-race nerves, to exercising during pregnancy and how to budget for a triathlon.
Drawing on Chrissie’s own training and race experiences – both good and bad – and packed full of extras, such as recipes, a typical weekly training programme and pearls of wisdom from some of Chrissie’s own advisors, including her former coach and fellow Ironman legend, 220 Triathlon columnist Dave Scott
Chrissie told 220: “The book is something I have wanted to do for a long time and has been a labour of love. I wanted to give something back to the sport I love, which has given me so much, and inspire others to push that bar a little bit higher to see what they could achieve.
“Triathlon is an all-consuming sport and support from family and friends are an important part of any triathlete’s journey. I want readers to feel, through this book, that I am part of that network and help give them the skills, and the confidence, to push through and cross their own personal finish line.”
Chrissie Wellington OBE is an iconic figure in the history of British triathlon. A four-time world Ironman champion, she also holds the Ironman world record, was voted Sunday Times Sportswoman of the Year in 2010, and was awarded an OBE for services to sport and charity in 2015. Her 2012 memoir, A Life Without Limits, also published by Constable, was a No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller.
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To the Finish Line: A World Champion Triathlete’s Guide To Your Perfect Race, published by Constable, will be out on 7th September
To celebrate the release of her hotly anticipated new book To the Finish Line: A World Champion Triathlete’s Guide To Your Perfect Race, this September Chrissie Wellington is embarking on a nationwide book signing tour, which takes in London, Manchester, Birmingham and Tenby (Ironman Wales Expo).
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Written in conjunction with 220, the book offers advice on everything, from planning your race season and fitting triathlon training into everyday life, to race nutrition strategies and coping with pre-race nerves, to exercising during pregnancy and how to budget for a triathlon.
Drawing on Chrissie’s own training and race experiences – both good and bad – and packed full of extras, such as recipes, a typical weekly training programme and pearls of wisdom from some of Chrissie’s own advisors, including her former coach and fellow Ironman legend, 220 Triathlon columnist Dave Scott
Chrissie told 220: “The book is something I have wanted to do for a long time and has been a labour of love. I wanted to give something back to the sport I love, which has given me so much, and inspire others to push that bar a little bit higher to see what they could achieve.
“Triathlon is an all-consuming sport and support from family and friends are an important part of any triathlete’s journey. I want readers to feel, through this book, that I am part of that network and help give them the skills, and the confidence, to push through and cross their own personal finish line.”
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Chrissie Wellington OBE is an iconic figure in the history of British triathlon. A four-time world Ironman champion, she also holds the Ironman world record, was voted Sunday Times Sportswoman of the Year in 2010, and was awarded an OBE for services to sport and charity in 2015. Her 2012 memoir, A Life Without Limits, also published by Constable, was a No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller.
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To the Finish Line: A World Champion Triathlete’s Guide To Your Perfect Race, published by Constable, will be out on 7th September
Previous studies have found exercise improves brain function and your memory, and that the more aerobically fit you are the better memory you are more likely to have, but until now have not known why.
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To investigate why scientists used magnetic resonance elastography (MRE), a therapy that measures the firmness and elasticity of organs, to measure the firmness and elasticity of the hippocampus, a region of the brain associated with memory, of 51 adults.
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This group consisted of 25 men and 26 women, aged 18-35. They measured the participants’ performance on a memory test as well as their aerobic fitness levels, and used MRE to measure the elasticity of the hippocampus.
They found that those with higher fitness levels also had more elastic tissue in the hippocampus and scored the best on memory tests. Given the many studies showing the association between hippocampal health and memory in seniors and children, which was based on the size of the hippocampus, the results strongly suggest that MRE is a method that reveals that there is also an association between the health of the hippocampus and memory in young adults.
“MRE is a technique that has been used in organs like the liver, where it can assess the tissue stiffness and offers a reliable, non-invasive method for diagnosing hepatic fibrosis,” explains Guoying Liu, Ph.D. Director of the NIBIB program on Magnetic Resonance Imaging. “This study now demonstrates the tremendous potential for MRE to provide new quantitative biomarkers for assessing brain health as it relates to physical fitness. This is particularly significant given the rise in dementia and Alzheimer’s disease occurring in the U.S. and worldwide.”
The work was based on well-established observations of atrophy and reduced size of the hippocampus in cognitively declining seniors and developmentally delayed children. Given that long-known phenomenon, the researchers were puzzled by the fact that in young adults there was a correlation between fitness and memory, but the size of the hippocampus was the same in both groups.
“Most of the work in this area has relied on changes in the size of the hippocampus as a measure of hippocampal health and function. However, in young adults, although we see an increase in memory in more aerobically fit individuals, we did not see differences in hippocampal size,” said lead author Dr. Aron K. Barbey. “Because size is a gross measure of the structural integrity of the hippocampus, we turned to MRE, which provides a more thorough and qualitative measure of changes associated with function — in this case memory.”
The investigators explained that MRE gives a better indication of the microstructure of the hippocampus — the structural integrity of the entire tissue. And it does this by basically “bouncing” the organ, very gently, and measuring how it responds.
The healthy hippocampus is like a firm pillow that quickly bounces back into shape after you press your finger into it as opposed to a mushy pillow that would retain your finger mark and not rebound to its original shape.
Barbey said, “MRE turned out to be a fantastic tool that enabled us to demonstrate the importance of the hippocampus in healthy young adults and the positive effect of fitness.
“And, of course, if these results are more widely disseminated,” Barbey concludes, “they could certainly serve as tremendous motivation for people concerned about getting forgetful as they age, to get moving and try to stay fit.”
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The research was performed by Aron K. Barbey, Associate Professor, Departments of Psychology and Bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, along with his colleagues at Illinois, and with collaborators from Northeastern University in Boston and the University of Delaware. Their results are reported in the March issue of the journal NeuroImage 2017; 153: 179 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.03.061
Previous studies have found exercise improves brain function and your memory, and that the more aerobically fit you are the better memory you are more likely to have, but until now have not known why.
Advertisement
To investigate why scientists used magnetic resonance elastography (MRE), a therapy that measures the firmness and elasticity of organs, to measure the firmness and elasticity of the hippocampus, a region of the brain associated with memory, of 51 adults.
This group consisted of 25 men and 26 women, aged 18-35. They measured the participants’ performance on a memory test as well as their aerobic fitness levels, and used MRE to measure the elasticity of the hippocampus.
They found that those with higher fitness levels also had more elastic tissue in the hippocampus and scored the best on memory tests. Given the many studies showing the association between hippocampal health and memory in seniors and children, which was based on the size of the hippocampus, the results strongly suggest that MRE is a method that reveals that there is also an association between the health of the hippocampus and memory in young adults.
“MRE is a technique that has been used in organs like the liver, where it can assess the tissue stiffness and offers a reliable, non-invasive method for diagnosing hepatic fibrosis,” explains Guoying Liu, Ph.D. Director of the NIBIB program on Magnetic Resonance Imaging. “This study now demonstrates the tremendous potential for MRE to provide new quantitative biomarkers for assessing brain health as it relates to physical fitness. This is particularly significant given the rise in dementia and Alzheimer’s disease occurring in the U.S. and worldwide.”
The work was based on well-established observations of atrophy and reduced size of the hippocampus in cognitively declining seniors and developmentally delayed children. Given that long-known phenomenon, the researchers were puzzled by the fact that in young adults there was a correlation between fitness and memory, but the size of the hippocampus was the same in both groups.
“Most of the work in this area has relied on changes in the size of the hippocampus as a measure of hippocampal health and function. However, in young adults, although we see an increase in memory in more aerobically fit individuals, we did not see differences in hippocampal size,” said lead author Dr. Aron K. Barbey. “Because size is a gross measure of the structural integrity of the hippocampus, we turned to MRE, which provides a more thorough and qualitative measure of changes associated with function — in this case memory.”
The investigators explained that MRE gives a better indication of the microstructure of the hippocampus — the structural integrity of the entire tissue. And it does this by basically “bouncing” the organ, very gently, and measuring how it responds.
The healthy hippocampus is like a firm pillow that quickly bounces back into shape after you press your finger into it as opposed to a mushy pillow that would retain your finger mark and not rebound to its original shape.
Barbey said, “MRE turned out to be a fantastic tool that enabled us to demonstrate the importance of the hippocampus in healthy young adults and the positive effect of fitness.
“And, of course, if these results are more widely disseminated,” Barbey concludes, “they could certainly serve as tremendous motivation for people concerned about getting forgetful as they age, to get moving and try to stay fit.”
Advertisement
The research was performed by Aron K. Barbey, Associate Professor, Departments of Psychology and Bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, along with his colleagues at Illinois, and with collaborators from Northeastern University in Boston and the University of Delaware. Their results are reported in the March issue of the journal NeuroImage 2017; 153: 179 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.03.061
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Andy Salmon has been announced as the new Chief Executive of British Triathlon, to take the sport forward to Tokyo 2020 and beyond.
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Salmon will take strategic lead of the National Governing Body in mid-November and will guide the sport through the Olympic and Paralympic cycle. His role will also embrace executive responsibility for Triathlon England and fulfilment of its objectives of building participation, supporting and increasing membership.
The former Welsh Schools Golfer will bring with him a wealth of leadership experience, having held the position of Deputy CEO and Development Director of Scottish Golf for 9 years prior to leaving the organisation in late 2016. Salmon is currently interim CEO of Scottish Snowsport and Chairman of Triathlon Scotland. Having been involved with a number of sports, Salmon’s broad perspective of the challenges and opportunities facing the sector will be invaluable to British Triathlon.
Salmon said: “I am hugely excited to be joining the team at British Triathlon and Triathlon England. There is so much to be positive about in triathlon and I look forward to building on the tremendous progress made by Jack Buckner and the team as we strive to deliver the 2024 vision.”
Ian Howard, President of British Triathlon, said: “We are thrilled to announce the appointment of Andy Salmon as the new Chief Executive of British Triathlon. We are confident he will drive the organisation towards continued success over the coming years.
“We thank Jack for his contribution to British Triathlon over the past three years, and wish him well in his new role as Chief Executive of British Swimming”.
Current British Triathlon Chief Executive, Jack Buckner said: “Over the past three years, I have witnessed many great successes within triathlon. Grassroots participation figures have increased enormously and we achieved 7 medals during Rio 2016, including the first ever paratriathlon gold.”
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“I’ve thoroughly enjoyed working with Andy in his current role at Triathlon Scotland and believe he will continue to build on our success at every level of the sport.”