There is a curious noise if you listen closely enough within the sport of triathlon. It is quiet and rather intangible, like a soft breeze before a storm comes in. You can feel it but at the same time its so gentle you are not quite sure what it really means, or if it even exists at all.
This noise is not confined to the fringes of triathlon and it can just about be detected in the upper echelons of the sport through to its grassroots as well as beyond its traditional limits. This noise is a whisper, a nagging doubt, that encourages one thing: rescue.
Only last week, one corner of the sport ran an article asking could esports help save triathlon.
Is it not a little premature to ask if the sport already needs saving?
Olympic triathlon in its current guise is one of the youngest global sports and, by most reckonings, one of the most successful new sports in the international arena.
Having only made its Olympic debut in Sydney in 2000 and launched the WTCS in 2009, over 4.5 million viewers watch the 2021 WTCS.
The picture that emerges looking at the development of triathlon in the last twenty years in a promising one. Turn to the World Triathlon Championship Series more specifically, given it is the current pinnacle and focal point of the sport, and the picture looks better still.
The WTCS is incredibly young in the grander scheme of things, as is Olympic triathlon at large. Football is the same product it was thirteen years ago. So too is tennis. Rugby union only became a professional sport in the 1990s and to all intents and purposes has not changed in the intervening three decades.
The need for triathlon to innovate is not all it is made out to be. The sport does not need to be meddled with to any great degree and the revolution can wait.
Where are these whispers coming from?
It seems there are two primary concerns driving the need to modernise or save triathlon. They are the need to make money and the fear that triathlon is boring.
The profit incentive is easy enough to understand. For starter’s there are clear external, private interests circling the sport with varying degrees of involvement that are motivated by profit. A for-profit enterprise by nature will seek to improve upon its returns and the logical way to do that is to hunt viewership numbers and the concomitant advertising revenue, regardless of the cost to the sport itself.
Worries about viewership also extend to a funding level and it is understandable that World Triathlon and other National Federations would be concerned with ensuring the continued growth of the sport. The question there becomes whether steady, natural growth is acceptable or if more accelerated growth must be demanded.
At the end of the day someone has to pay for the sport, that is not in dispute. But the sport is growing. Chasing additional growth beyond that through meddling with the product strikes more as profit chasing than stewardship.
On a basic level, the creeping profit factor in triathlon resembles most, if not all, sports currently and is probably a reflection of the pervasive societal influences of three decades of neoliberalism. People want to make money and that is no crime. The concern is when the need to make money begins to compromise the integrity of the sport itself.
There is a second source of the whispers to meddle in triathlon and this one simply seems sadder philosophically. It comes from the starting point that maybe triathlon is boring.
Maybe it is. The team at TriStats don’t find triathlon boring, nor do the readers and followers on social media. Neither do the vast majority of viewers of triathlon or those that actively participate in the sport. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but then again what sport is?
It is alarming when senior figures in the triathlon community mull inserting the Sprint distance into the Olympic Games over the Olympic distance. That senior figures would even entertain the notion that the sport they run is boring and that the events require shortening for television demonstrates a worrying lack of faith in their own product.
The term boring, though, has a very specific meaning when it comes to modern sports. It runs completely in tandem with the constant modern agonising about the dwindling attention spans of young viewers. As the story goes, young people cannot pay attention for a two hour sporting event; with the development of modern devices and distractions, this concern also extends to their parents nowadays.
This, however, is itself an incredibly flawed standpoint that for some reason endures as a modern myth.
Not only is the research into the attention span myth flawed, but the idea attention spans are shortening is apparently plain wrong. Attention is almost entirely task-dependent and the idea that there’s a typical length of time for which people can pay attention has been debunked.
The next time someone tries to tell you that triathlon is too long for modern viewers to pay attention, or worse is boring, know that the perception of research into attention spans is one of the great misconceptions.
The consequence of this concern with the state of triathlon is an over-emphasis on a shortened spectacle with gimmicks and attempts to artificially inflate the entertainment factor.
Shorter coverage does not automatically mean an improved spectacle. Rather, better coverage means a better spectacle. If improving the spectacle of triathlon really is a short-term concern then there are solutions that do not involve meddling with formats or the structure of the sport.
A good place to start would be to make the WTCS coverage cinematic. There are not a lot of WTCS events per season so each one should be special and afforded the proper build-up. Regarding the race itself, invest the money so that the coverage is at the absolute top-end of international standards.
World-class coverage will be expensive but to make the sport look fantastic it is worth paying. Moreover, there are low-hanging fruit to make this happen.
Improve camera quality (and perhaps fix the shaky cameras on motorbikes as much as possible). Utilise proper tracking of athletes in the swim phase so it isn’t complete guesswork as to the identities of the leaders. Bring in outside voices or even directors/cinematographers to design and shoot the coverage of the races. In a lot of cases, the locations are there, the athletes are there, but the missing piece is marrying the two with truly outstanding coverage. Put all that together and then the spectacle takes care of itself.
On the note of the athletes, they are holding up their side of the bargain. The sport has some of best athletes in the world with some that are pushing the sport to new heights. Are not enough people tuning in to watch Flora Duffy and Georgia Taylor-Brown go head-to-head or Hayden Wilde and Alex Yee to battle because the Olympic distance is fundamentally bad and needs to be shortened?
Or maybe the concern is driven by prioritising market share, advertising revenue and engagement metrics that belie the true, gradual growth of the sport.
The recommendation, therefore, is to breathe. To those in charge at the top of the sport, stop and reflect on how quickly the sport has progressed and acknowledge that surviving its infancy represents a job well done.
The current status quo is by no means perfect and there are aspects to improve upon; the coverage is an ideal starting point if the spectacle is such a concern.
But resist the temptation to meddle. Triathlon is on the right path and the job has been carried out well so far. It would be a shame to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
