Race Previews

Mixed Relaying: The Future of Triathlon?

Thursday, 02 March 2017 23:10

By Chris Foster (triathlete.com)

After race sherpa-ing for him for six years, Daniel Cassidy's girlfriend finally had enough. "One day she got annoyed with the whole thingm" Casside says. "She said, 'I know you love this sport, but it's boring. All the waiting all the getting up early.'" Cassidy said they came to an agreement--he would go watch her first triathlon from beginning to end.

"It was the first tri that I had ever watched and not raced" says Cassidy, whose girlfriend-now wife-competed at the Sheriff's Sprint in Massachusetts. "It was pretty brutal. I felt like there had to be a better way to watch the sport."...

 Today's triathletes want to go long. Numbers from the World Triathlon Corporation show that 2016 will reach a new high water mark for participation in Ironman and 70.3 events, as USAT -- who sanctions mostly shorter events -- has seen a recent 4-6% drop in membership. But while more people are racing at long course events, the inescapable monotony of actually watching an event for over four hours hasn't changed much. READ MORE