Where is triathlon going?
As things currently stand, the Olympic Games represent the centrepiece of the sport, the apogee for athletes that race the Olympic distance and below to aspire to. With the Olympic distance and now the Mixed Relay locked into the Games, World Triathlon has a great foundation from which to continue to grow the sport.
The current dynamic, however, creates both a short-term challenge and a long-term challenge.
The short-term challenge will be to reconcile the competing demands of the Olympic and Mixed Relay distances. As much as some athletes are successful in this dual-specialisation, it may not be in the interests of the sport for this to be the norm.
The examples of other sports, as well as research in the field of physiology, would indicate that athletes might not actually be able to compete to the best of their abilities in races of around 15 minutes and close to 2 hours in the space of the same week, or in the same Olympic Games. This suggests that the zenith of the sport is actually being compromised by making athletes spread themselves across multiple distances.
The obvious solution would be to re-orient the sport to have a greater focus on the Sprint distance with triathlon at the Olympics could be contested over the Sprint distance and the Mixed Relay. Athletes could then either step down to the Mixed Relay or Super Sprint or up to the Olympic distance as necessary while focusing on the middle ground. In 2016, World Triathlon President Marisol Casado indicated that this could be a route of interest.
However, this may not be the best scenario and is too much of a compromise.
This short-term challenge ultimately gives rise to the long-term challenge which will be to further optimise and professionalise the sport going forward. Currently, the layout of triathlon at the Olympics and in the World Triathlon Championship Series presents structural problems.
Not only are athletic performances compromised by the competing demands of disciplines, but the array of distances that the athletes are expected to compete over makes the sport feel muddled. Outside of the Olympics, the Mixed Relay can come across like too much like an add-on to the Olympic distance without having a character to call its own.
Virtually everyone within the sport can talk about how great the Mixed Relay is. But what about the viewers beyond the sport where potential growth lies?
Take out the intrigue of the mixed gender format and the relay layout, which are the interesting aspects of the Mixed Relay, and the event does not actually bring anything new to the table. This is in large part a result of having the same athletes race over the two events making it just another medal opportunity for the same group of athletes. At best, it is an event with tremendous potential that is being under-utilised.
In light of what has been written so far, here is our proposition.
Instead of letting the Mixed Relay feel like an add-on at the Olympic Games, the goal for World Triathlon should be to separate the Super Sprint and Mixed Relay entirely from the Olympic distance.
The proposal would thus be to have a separate version of the WTCS for the Super Sprint distance, one that can develop ultra-short distance athletes for the sport that can specialise in the Mixed Relay and Super Sprint. Existing Olympic distance athletes can choose to race at whichever distance suits them best, whether that remains the Olympic distance or is actually the Super Sprint. The best of each distance could then meet at the World Sprint Championships.
The benefit of separating out Super Sprint and Mixed Relay into its own version of the WTCS with its own athletes would be to develop true specialisation and professionalisation at either end of the Olympic spectrum. At the Olympics, the Mixed Relay would have athletes dedicated to that discipline while those competing at the Olympic distance would not have to compromise their training.
Separating out the Super Sprint format would not be unprecedented. In rugby, rugby sevens is a shortened version of rugby union, which itself is distinct from rugby league, and has developed an entirely new breed of player. In cricket, the shortened Twenty20 format has an entirely different skillset and athlete profile to the traditional Test cricket.
In athletics, track and field specialists (such as 5000m runners) seldom focus on the marathon in the same competition block as triathletes are currently expected to do so with the Mixed Relay and Olympic distance. Likewise, track cyclists do not take on the Tour de France. It is common across elite, professional sports for athletes to specialise at different disciplines and distances.
By contrast, the current status quo in triathlon speaks to a lack of depth and a lack of broader moves towards professionalisation.
Given that the Olympic distance itself long ago established its independence from long distance triathlon, it is not unprecedented in the sport to seek out this division. The Mixed Relay series could be moved from its current position as an add-on to some WTCS weekends to run in tandem with a dedicated Super Sprint World Series.
Splitting elite triathlon in half like this would also generate an entirely new narrative for the Sprint distance. As mentioned earlier, the World Sprint Championships could be a chance for the best Super Sprint athletes and the best Olympic distance athletes to meet in the middle and go head-to-head.
Olympic distance athletes may have an advantage on the surface via superior aerobic conditioning, but with the professionalisation of the Super Sprint distance we could see the introduction of a new level of speed in Olympic level triathlon, much in the same way that Olympic athletes stepping up to long distance triathlon has revolutionised the 70.3 and Ironman distances and seen records shatter.
The World Sprint Championships could become a major event for triathlon with the best of two disciplines competing with contrasting skillsets.
All of this brings us back to the starting point of this idea: the Olympic Games. In Paris, triathlon will be limited to 55 places per gender. On paper, then, there is not yet space to add these Super Sprint specialists that we hope to see and World Triathlon will have to lobby hard for more spots. Getting more Olympic slots is certainly a bigger challenge than more Olympic medals.
However, getting more athletes into the Olympics could be a better avenue for the sport than simply getting more medals. The proposed Eliminator event is a novelty but more medals without more athletes will just mean watching more of the same. It won’t accelerate the sport if athletes are training for three formats at once; rather, it may compromise it.
Any Olympic distance athletes that qualify for the Olympics could be added to the Mixed Relay teams that qualify. After all, the likes of Hayden Wilde, Alex Yee, Georgia Taylor-Brown and Cassandre Beaugrand are examples of athletes that could realistically do both.
But that likely will not be the norm.
At the end of the day, it would be incredibly exciting to see World Triathlon pioneer the sport to expand into true “triathlete sprinters”.
Take the Mixed Relay at the Tokyo Olympics. The distances were 300m swim, 6.8km bike, and 2km run. It is uncommon (although not unheard of) for the best 1500m swimmers in the pool to have the best 200m, nor for the best 10km runners to have the best 800m. There will some natural crossover, but only the absolute best would even contemplate racing both at the same time, not the majority of the field.
Maybe the 2028 Mixed Relay in Los Angeles could comprise a 200m swim, 4km bike (copying the pursuit distance from track cycling) and 800m on the run for a true fast and furious race. Just as the original Olympic distance took iconic Olympic distances, it can so again can with the Super Sprint and Mixed Relay.
Such distances, with the right athletes, could take about 10 minutes (either per leg in the relay or in total in the individual), and at such speeds every second in transition will be even more valuable. It would be triathlon on the fast-forward button.
Expanding the sport at the Olympics like this will give the sport a greater range of athletes and talent, more narratives for media to pay attention to, and potentially open the sport up to an entirely new type of athlete that could internationalise triathlon to even greater extent. The principle of Faster also fits with both Olympic heritage and the interest of the IOC in engaging viewers with faster content.
How practical is this in reality? Where would the money come from to pay it? And do these amazing sprinter triathletes exist or are we clutching at straws? We won’t know until we look.
National Olympic Committees will give greater attention to the Mixed Relay and Super Sprint if the discipline is truly divorced from the Olympic distance and is a viable avenue for medals. In 2021, Germany held Super Sprint trials for its second Olympic Mixed Relay spots which is a step in the right direction. That can be the norm if the Super Sprint and Mixed Relay are given space to grow in the sport.
Moreover, there will be incentive for NOCs to look for these athletes. Olympic medals are key at the end of the day and if the Super Sprint and Mixed Relay can be truly made into its own thing, then NOCs will be able to pursue them independently of the Olympic distance.
Right now triathlon has a reputation for being long and tough, which we also love. But that won’t capture everyone. Instead the sport could bring in those interested in a ten minute race rather than a two hour one, athletes with natural speed more than natural endurance and athletes that could become a type of triathlete we have never seen before.
It is time for triathlon as a sport to graduate from a 20th century culture of having the fittest athletes in the world to a forward-looking mindset of the fastest and the best athletes. In doing so, it might just solve the puzzle of how triathlon fits together at the Olympic Games.
