Race Coverage

A Few Words About Tri West

Saturday, 29 July 2023 00:10

Photo by MinnCam

MTN is a lifestyle promotion website, not a journalistic one. As a rule, we don't write negative stuff about people or races. If a race has serious problems, we won't cover it. We don't want to contribute to a race's demise, or stand in the way of its recovery. We want problematic events to bounce back. This said, we won't pretend that yesterday's Tri West wasn't flawed and that eventual results were unreliable. But we will say that in spite of what happened, this event deserves to continue. Its venue is terrific, especially the way it was set up this year. Its attendance increased for 139 in 2022 to 244 on Sunday. That suggests that triathlon is starting to see a post-pandemic rebound...

The race that was unfolding before run course issues intervened was truly exciting. The field featured many of our state's elites, both at the front--Preston Youngdahl, Josh Blankenheim, Joe Adriaens, Andy  Zabel, Samuel Hauck, Dillon Williams, Elena Hengel, Christina Roberts, Diane Hankee, Bridget Tetmeyer, Andrea Myers and others--and in the AGs - Sean Pickle,18, Noah Mahoney, 17, Isabel Mahoney, 15, Jan Guenther, 64, Beth Hassler, 67, Chuck Hengel, 59, and others. And they were putting on a great show.

Our point is this: to us there is more to love about Tri West than there is to dislike about it. We truly hope that it will continue and that athletes don't shy away. Problems get solved, and we are confident that Tri West's issues will be resolved and it will live up to it's potential as one of Minnesota's premier swim-bike-runs.