Triathlon has been bumbling along in Australia for
the best part of 30 years. In that 30 years Australian athletes have won:
- 19 Triathlon World Championships
- 4 ITU Long Distance Triathlon World Championships
- 8 Duathlon World Championships
- 2 Aquathlon World Championships
- 10 Ironman World Championships
- 5 Ironman 70.3 World Championships
- 1 Gold, 2 Silver and 1 Bronze Olympic Medals
Yet…unless you’ve reached peak triathlon geek (like I have)
I doubt you knew that.
How about I run some names past you…Greg Welch, Michellie
Jones, Emma Carney, Miles Stewart, Natalie Van
Coevorden, Peter Robertson, Emma Snowsill, Emma Moffatt, Emma
Jackson, Erin Densham, Loretta Harrop, Craig Alexander, Ashleigh Gentle, Aaron
Royle, Felicity Abram, Liz Blatchford, Melissa Hauschildt, Pete Jacobs.
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| Let's make triathlon take-off...literally |
Again unless you’re a triathlete you won’t know anything
about the majority of them. You may have heard the names of some of the others
in the mid to late 1990s but believe it or not every one of them has at a minimum
a World Cup podium to their name; most of them are World Champions, some even
have Olympic medals!
From that simple experiment we can reach a worrying conclusion…triathlon
is pretty much invisible. Yes invisible and yet in 2013-14 more than 180,000
race starts were made by across the country by 20,500 registered athletes and
many one-day license holders. How do we harness the power in those numbers for
the good of the sport? How do we grow triathlon?
What is triathlon and what sort of people are triathletes?
If you ask the Collins English Dictionary the definition of
triathlon reads:
triathlon
/traɪˈæθlɒn/
noun
1. an athletic contest in
which each athlete competes in three different events: swimming, cycling, and running.
Yet if you ask any competitor it’s more than that. I
conducted a quick social media survey the other day and I received a variety of
answers:
- “I actually see it as one event containing three disciplines” –An accountant
- “The chance to race, working in a team to compete a mission that includes being tethered and tortured together, lasting about an hour and 20 minutes. When the triathlon is over the team crosses the line for their victory banana! I say to myself why the hell did I participate in that pain? I have a yack then enter into another one” –A para-triathlete
- “Great memories, great pics, great people and it's my babies sport so I just love it!!” – A triathlon mum and international competitor
- “It's sport reflecting life. It can give all the joy in the world and can quickly and cruelly cut you down to size. It teaches you discipline, commitment and respect. You meet all sorts of people. It just happens in a shorter time period and you get to relive it time and again.” –Long Course international competitor
- “It's the epitome of the agony and ecstasy, madness and insanity meeting clarity and exhilaration. It’s family spirit developing from the most eclectic bunch of individuals and an opportunity to continually challenge your limitations and grow and develop as an individual and part of a team... I may not race, but I love it” –Triathlon Mum
- “Family, Friends and finish lines! There’s no better feeling than running up Finish Shute at Port Macquarie Ironman. When you hit the wall at 32kms on the run, friends and family racing against you and supporting you cheer you all the way across the line!! bring on the 3rd of May 2015” –Ironman competitor
- “triathlon. n. Event for people who don't realise that one sport is hard enough” –Short course competitor.
And what about those competitors; who are they? In short
triathletes represent probably the most diverse range of people competing in
any sport in the country. They come from the city and the bush, the lower
socio-economic areas to the wealthiest regions, from 5 years olds to 90 year
olds, from brickies to pilots and nurses and doctors and everything in between.
They come in all body shapes, have all manner of abilities and have, apart from
a penchant for lycra, a shared love of a challenging sport.
In effect what we have is a mass participation sport with
little to no public penetration. It’s invisible in the media and whilst
everyone knows somebody who does triathlon few know what that actually entails.
It starts local
Grassroots sport. In NSW the sport is built around local not
for profit clubs. They are the untapped resource to promote the sport. They
hold their own local races (perfect opportunities to get acquainted with the
sport for cheap), they train together, they provide a support network and they
develop cross generational, cross gender and cross ethnic friendships.
I’ll talk about the NSW Club model in another post but I
want to focus here on how at a grassroots level clubs can generate their own
publicity.
Have a dedicated Publicity Officer
I believe every club should have a publicity officer. They
don’t need to be Max Markson but they do need to have several skills. They must
have a nose for a good story, they must have good story telling and writing
skills and they need to be willing to put significant effort in. More
importantly they need to be knowledgeable about the sport, approachable,
contactable, convincing and aware of what’s going on in the club. It’s a very
good idea for them to be on the committee too so that they can be fully abreast
of your club situation.
Local Media-easy pickings
When was the last time you read something about triathlon in
your local paper? Oh you didn’t? Why was that? Simply it’s because you didn’t
put it there. Local newspapers are always looking for good stories to tell and
you can fill their pages. Did you have a club race? Good…write a media release
telling how many people came. Emphasise the number of children who competed. If
you’ve got a particularly strong women’s programme, tell that story. Did you
compete at the Club Championship? Write about the team work, it doesn’t have to
be results success to be newsworthy.
If it seems easy that’s because it is. When I took over the
Publicity Officer role for Macarthur Triathlon Club in 2010 I had a blank
canvas. The first thing I did was ring the local newspapers and talk to the
sports editors. I spoke to them and let them know who I was and a bit about the
club. Once that initial connection had been made I put their direct email
adresses on my media release list.
How do I know this? I made a success of it by trial and
error. During 2013 I had 10 separate articles published by the Macarthur
Advertiser plus a couple in the Macarthur Chronicle. This year I’ve run a few
less stories but the past two weeks have seen Macarthur Triathlon Club featured
twice in the Advertiser in two weeks in stories the newspaper journalists
chased down themselves.
I can’t promise you that every story will get a run. It’s
quite possible that your story may not be interesting enough or may get buried.
The more time you spend doing it however, the quicker you’ll ascertain the
times to avoid in your local community. As a general rule give football finals
a wide berth and avoid Olympics or Commonwealth Games periods unless you have
an athlete from your club competing in either. If you persist at it long enough
you will get to the enviable situation where the local journalists start to
come to you for stories. This is not the time to get complacent though, this is
the time to build on your success.
Finally, if you have a photographer who comes along, ask
them to help you. Media Releases are generally easier to sell with quality
photos attached.
Social Media-are you social?
In the digital age social media is a major selling point for
any organisation. I manage social media for Macarthur Triathlon Club across
facebook, twitter and instagram. There are many methods of doing this; one
colleague I spoke to in Queensland
said that she posts different things for different days, e.g. random
motivational stuff on Mondays. I don’t have a rigid technique to how I post on
the club’s social media accounts but I do have some rules:
- Don’t bombard daily. Occasionally you may need to post multiple things on a day, don’t do it on consecutive days.
- Pictures stand out when people scroll through timelines. Use pictures where you can to make a point. Get your club members to send you photos and use them. Letting Instagram post to your facebook wall and twitter account kills three birds with one stone!
- Do tag people where appropriate, especially frequent social media sharers and any elite/professional athletes you have in your club. I don’t allow a free for all on tagging to avoid potential cyber bullying.
- Keep it professional; avoid using colloquialisms, nicknames or anything slightly controversial. You do not want to appear cliquey.
- Rope in your most vocal social media users to comment, like and share. This ensures your message gets out. If you have one or two, others will follow.
- Keep internal documents, emails and race reports internal!
- Do share appropriate things from Triathlon Australia and your State/Territory Triathlon Association (STTA). Don’t share everything; most people who ‘like’ your club will probably have seen it anyway.
- When people go away to race encourage them to send your social media admin photos, quotes and stories. These help to personalise your club and share the adventure amongst friends.
- When people compete at World Championships follow their entire journey. Update their results, get in touch and get photos. Scour official social media to see if they pop up anywhere because World Championships are amazing events and you should share success.
Develop a two way relationship with your elite athlete
I have a separate blog post to come soon about how you
should develop relationships with elite athletes but I’ll save that. Suffice to
say, keep them close. Invite them to events. Write about their achievements in
your media releases and on your social media. They can do as much for you as
you can for them and writing about them often gets that initial foot in the door
with the local media.
Keep friendly
The club’s committee needs to be personable and on the
ground at club functions. Go out of your way to welcome new people; don’t leave
them on the sideline. Follow up all electronic enquiries as soon as possible
and ensure everyone knows what’s happening in your club. And, most importantly,
hide your animosity. Nobody likes a grump so keep it to yourself and deal with
grievances in private-well away from anybody else and well away from your
social media!
Each state must pull its weight.
Beyond the local level there needs to be support from the
STTAs. One of the fundamental tasks of the state association is to promote the
sport as well as sanction events. Combine a diverse events calendar with a
handful of friendly journalists and you can generate significant media exposure
at little cost. The key to this though is having marketable events.
Building a network of friendly journalists
When the STTA organises an event it is their responsibility
to organise and maximise the media exposure they can generate. This goes beyond
a post race media release, this requires the STTA (which has paid employees) to
be proactive. Talk to the sports editor at your capital city daily papers,
specifically invite them along. Do the same with the television news. You may
not succeed but it’s worth the try. Talk to the clubs in the local region of
the race to find out who to contact in local media. If nothing else,
comprehensive coverage in local media is some exposure for the sport.
On event day have a dedicated, friendly, knowledgeable and
patient person to look after the media. That person must realise that the media
probably doesn’t know anything about triathlon so explain the sport
simply-always talk about the no crawling rule because it always gets a giggle.
Take the media all around the race course and explain some of the challenges of
each leg and transition. If you can, stick them on the back of a marshal’s
motorbike so they get an idea how fast athletes are actually moving. Line up a
cross section of competitors and make sure these people are introduced to the
media to show the diversity of what it is you’re trying to sell.
Create stand alone State Championships
Each state should have stand alone state championships over
Sprint, Olympic and Long Course as well as in Aquathlon and Duathlon. These
races should not count toward any series points and should be independent.
These races should be the focus of the state calendar and sanctioning should be
refused for any other races on the appropriate weekends (including club races)
The aim of these events should be to capture as much of the
competing population as possible so the same event should be scheduled for the
same day in each state as happens with all the European countries and their
national cycling championships. The events should also happen toward the end of
the season so that elite athletes are in the country and in preparation before
their international season. Combined with a requirement in high performance
contracts to compete if the athlete wishes to be selected for any Australian
team this will help bring star power.
Promoting Elite Athletes
This is not just the job of Triathlon Australia. Each
STTA has a junior development programme and most states have at least one elite
athlete supported by their State Institute of Sport or the National Talent
Academy. What these
athletes do matters. The STTA should be promoting these athletes in regular
media releases to both the state-wide and the local press. The latter then
reinforces the effort made by clubs.
National level
Triathlon Australia
has under CEO Anne Gripper made significant improvements to its public image
but still needs to do more and as the national federation there is plenty they should
do. There was a time in the late 1990s when Triathlon was a major televised
sport with a fast paced sprint series across the Eastern ‘J Curve’ sponsored by
companies like St George and Kia. Regaining this sort of coverage should be a
major aim for the organisation.
One of the unique aspects of our sport is the integration of
events into the World Championship. The Triathlon World Championship is the
only sporting event in the world where elite athletes, developing elites
(juniors/under 23s), elite athletes with a disability and the world’s best
amateur able bodied and disabled athletes compete for their respective title at
the same time in the same place. Having been to the last three I’ve seen how
special it makes the atmosphere, a team environment where elite athletes are as
interested in your racing as you are in theirs! This is an idea we can hijack
to our advantage in our national championships.
Each year we crown Australian champions, age-group and
elite, in Aquathlon, Sprint Triathlon, Triathlon, Long Course Triathlon, Cross
Triathlon and Duathlon. Do you know who any of the current champions are? I can
tell you that Gillian Backhouse is the reigning champion in both draft legal
triathlon distances and Jaz Hedgeland the junior champion but I haven’t got a
clue who the others are. If I don’t know, how the hell is anybody else going to
know?
One of the reasons is that the Australian championships are
invisible! Did you know that the Australian Sprint Championship was buried in
the midst of the Gatorade Series in Melbourne
last season? The Olympic Distance championship was buried in the Oceania
Championship in Devonport. This obviously doesn’t work so I have a plan based
on my aforementioned suggestion for state championships.
Making National Championships the jewel in the crown
What follow is my suggestion based around the Australian
Sprint Distance Triathlon Championship:
- 7:30-12:00 Open Para/Age-Group Sprint Triathlon Championship
- 12:15 Elite & Junior Women Sprint Triathlon Championship
- 13:30 Elite Para-Triathlon Championship
- 15:30 Elite & Junior Men Sprint Triathlon Championship
- 12:00-17:00 Live TV Coverage
- Introduction, sport explanation, course description
- Women’s race live
- Age-Group highlights including naming all Age-Group champions
- Para-triathlon, slight delay
- Men’s race live
- Podiums and wrap up.
- Compulsory elite license holder participation for selection in World Cup, World Championship, World Series races (with an extenuating circumstances policy)
- Elite athletes to race in state colours with ITU compliant race suits with state code replacing AUS. Age-Group athletes encouraged to race in club suits. Elite athletes encouraged to wear club logo somewhere on their uniform.
- Championship race to be a stand alone event.
- Guaranteed World Championship selection for top 5 in all age-groups.
- No clashing races anywhere in the country on the weekend of a National Championship
Share our pool of athletes
Many triathletes train with swim squads (MSA or SA), some
race with Cycling Australia and others spend their spare income on athletics.
Yet for many athletes with a love of several sports cost simply prevents them
from getting involved with more than one. Triathlon Australia needs to have an
arrangement with Athletics Australia, Little Athletics, Swimming Australia,
Masters Swimming Australia and Cycling Australia for significant membership
discounting. This works both ways-it provides an incentive to keep Triathlon Australia
members because it reduces costs and the need to choose between sports and it
also helps to provide a low cost opportunity to bring more athletes across to
triathlon.
Continued integration of Para-triathlon
There exists a little bit of tension between elite and open
para-triathletes (this can be seen on social media). Triathlon Australia needs
to ensure that everyone understands open para-triathlon athletes are
age-groupers who happen to have a disability. Further to rectify this problem a
transparent pathways to elite document needs to be published to allow
open/age-group athletes a clear understanding of what the minimum criteria are
for elite selection.
There remains (as in cycling) a problem with finding
suitable guides for PT5 (vision impaired) athletes. Triathlon Australia needs to develop a pool
of suitable guides and train them appropriately for elite competition and also
ensure that there is a list of people willing to guide open competitors too.
Triathlon Australia
needs to work with clubs to help them understand para-triathlon. Clubs need to
be educated in how to work with disabled athletes and how to adapt their race
procedures to suit these club members. I recommend a register of ‘Centre of
Excellence’ clubs be developed for para-triathlon to give interested people a
good place to start from. (A similar idea for junior athletes wouldn’t go
astray either).
Finally, Triathlon Australia needs to develop a
culture welcoming of ‘les autres’ athletes. There are many disabled people who
would like to race triathlon but do not fit into one of the modified categories
established in 2013. Obviously these athletes will be ineligible to compete
internationally but there is nothing stopping Australia introducing a PT6 ‘les
Autres’ category to domestic racing to allow those other willing participants
an opportunity.
Renewing our approach to the relay
Like it or loathe it (and I’m headed more toward the latter
than the former) the ITU is committed to the 4x Mixed Relay. As a Commonwealth
Games event it has medals on the line and is therefore a part of the mix when
it comes to medal performance funding from the Australian Sports Commission. The
Australian teams have not finished in the World Championship medals since 2009
and with the strength of triathlon in Canada, England, Wales, New Zealand &
South Africa there is no way we can guarantee a Commonwealth Games medal in
current form either. If it’s an event we need to raise its profile.
My solution to this problem is three fold.
- Develop a programme that in pre-event camps can be utilised to get the team used to working together. Swimming and Athletics race relays all the time and there’s a lot that can be learnt from their training methods.
- Consider training a few super sprint athletes focussed on the relay distance and using them in major competitions.
- Introduce the 4x Mixed Relay to national, state and club events. By introducing an age requirement it would be easy to make this into an event that could be conducted alongside the state and national sprint championships. Alongside the existing gender rules I suggest adding an age rule, i.e. that you must have one athlete <25, one athlete 26-39, one athlete 40-54 and one athlete 55+ in each team. There would be very few clubs in Australia that would not be able to field a team for a race of this nature.
Focussing on Juniors
I’m exceptionally proud of the junior programme within
Macarthur Triathlon Club. Thanks to the dedication of Juniors coach Guy Creber
we now have a three tiered programme, the introductory TRYStars programme, the
regular MacTri Juniors and the South West Sydney Academy of Sport programme for
our high performance athletes. It is without a doubt one of the most
comprehensive junior programmes in the country and it’s paying off; more than
50% of our club membership is under 18 years of age.
The push to develop similar programmes needs to come from
above to spread this kind of junior outreach. The expansion of regional
academies as a part of the ASC Winning Edge programme is a good start but the
sport also needs to entice kids who aren’t going to win. Why do we have so many
kids competing in Weet-Bix Tryathlons, Ironkids and the like yet not have that
many involved in clubs? Where do they come from and where do they disappear to?
Most of this blog has been about image issues or the
distinct lack of public knowledge about the sport. This is not the only reason that
junior numbers don’t grow. There are clubs (I could name several in Sydney, but I won’t) who
for various reasons choose not to support juniors. I find this daft because
today’s juniors are tomorrow’s seniors. Catering for kids is not hard and to
Triathlon Australia’s
credit the TRYstars programme is a good start. But it needs to go further.
There are junior triathlon events run by several
organisations (Weet-Bix, Elite Energy, Ironman Asia Pacific) across this
country that have little to no integration with the rest of the sport yet these
are the same juniors that are targeted by TRYStars. Triathlon Australia needs
to target specific clubs with capacity to run a TRYstars programme locally in
the lead-up to these events, especially in areas where clubs don’t run local
racing for juniors to make a start. Further I believe Triathlon Australia needs
to find a way to reduce the price of the TRYStars programme, even if it means a
slightly garish corporate sponsorship. If Little Athletics can pick up Jetstar
why can’t Triathlon Australia
pick up Virgin Australia as a junior athlete partner?
Under the National
Talent Academy
and other high performance programmes we often hear about athletes stolen from
other sports. Sometimes they work out, sometimes they don’t. This is all very
well and good but when was the last time a high performance coach went talent
scouting in a triathlon club? I’ve been involved in Macarthur Triathlon Club
for 4 and a half years and I’m yet to see one and that’s despite the fact that our
club gave the world Erin Densham, Keira Pride and Natalie
Van Coevorden! Stealing athletes from other sports with
promises of gold medals and the like also sells our sport short. The attitude “we’ll
teach you how to ride a bike and then you’ll swim and run to gold” is factually
incorrect. No athlete can compete successfully in this day and age if they’re
not the complete package in short course racing which is where our high
performance funding is targeted.
Finally it was suggested at the 2014 Triathlon Australia
National Conference by TNSW board member Glenn Schwarzel that Triathlon
Australia should seek to get Tier 1 recognition for triathlon in the school
sporting programme. I have nothing else to add to that except bravo, do it now!
Chasing Corporate Dollars
A better marketed sport with more media exposure will
provide opportunities for greater sponsor involvement. Triathletes, as a rule,
are one of the wealthiest sporting constituencies in the country. This is
fertile ground yet where is the sponsorship? 20 years ago we had companies
climbing on top of each other to be involved yet in 2014 we have a small
(although high quality) clothing provider, a bike insurer, a suitcase company
and pretty much nobody else apart from the Australian Sports Commission. This
really isn’t good enough and the TA team really need to chase some significant
blue chip money. When niche sports like Volleyball can take in huge amounts of
sponsorship from private companies like Hancock Prospecting you have to ask,
where are we going wrong?
Recognise Age-Group athletes in all events
Triathlon Australia’s
social media tends to skew toward two areas, elite ITU competition and long
course racing. The former is completely natural as that is where the majority
of funding for TA comes from and is where sporting glory comes in the form of
World Championships, Commonwealth Games, Paralympic Games & Olympic Games.
Long Course racing is too, by its sheer duration, a naturally impressive
spectacle. But this strategy neglects the fact that many athletes are not in it
to race elite or win Ironman. For many athletes an enticer race is a
significant achievement. I have a saying in our club publications, “to me your
significant race is as important as theirs.” In our club newsletter I want to
tell everyone’s story be they doing an Ironman, a club race, their first ever
outside event or the World Championship. Triathlon Australia’s social media should
reflect that too and TA staff should be just as visible at Noosa as at
Coomealla or Busselton. All athletes need to be recognised.
Make the Annual Awards Dinner affordable!
The Triathlon Australia Annual Awards Dinner looks to be a
magnificent and enjoyable evening. I say looks because I’ve never been
fortunate to attend. I’m never going to win a national or world championship so
I’m never going to be invited yet I’d like to go. Every year I think it would
be good and then I see the price and I just about have a heart attack. Yes many
people in our sport are wealthy but many of us do it on a shoe string too and I
think it’s only fair the rest of us get the opportunity to attend too!
If you’re going to do compulsory membership, go the whole hog
One of the adverse effects of compulsory membership was a
loss of club members who only otherwise raced Ironman events or similar once a
year events. If you want to make people join, make one day licenses
prohibitively expensive for Ironman races…$250 should do it.
Reward National Champions
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| A National Champion Trisuit idea |
Regardless of whether my proposal for national championships
takes off I feel that National Champions deserve to be recognised. Just as a
cyclists gets to wear the national champion’s jersey, triathletes should be
entitled to a national champion’s trisuit. I haven’t got a specific design in
mind but I feel that elite and age-group athletes should get special
recognition for the 12 months in which they are the reigning champion. Surely
as a part of the uniform deal with Scody our Australian Champions should
receive a custom made tri-suit (complete with name and country) in the (to be
determined) national champion’s colours with the athlete’s choice of front zip,
back zip or two piece suits.
Thirty years old and still going
Triathlon is a magical sport. I absolutely adore it. I’ve
met amazing people, had amazing experiences, made amazing friends, been
selected to represent my country at three World Championships and been treated
like royalty by athletes of a much greater calibre than I. I consider myself
incredibly blessed. I found the right club, the right people, the right environment.
I found a sport unique, growing and yet with untapped potential.
If you got this far, full marks to you! I don’t purport to
have all the answers but I do have quite a few ideas. If this blog can become a
starting point for a conversation then I have achieved my goal. A modified
version is being sent to the CEO and President of both Triathlon Australia and
Triathlon NSW and I hope we can make something of this!
