- What's up, Trainiacs?
Welcome to this week's Triathlon Newsday Tuesday.
We got a heck of a Newsday today.
In this week's edition of Triathlon Newsday,
the company that owns Ironman IPOs and it flops.
Brutal.
Triathlon is declining all over North America and
unfortunately, we had another death in a race.
All over the place.
Very sad story.
Stick around.
(upbeat techno music)
what's up, triathletes?
Welcome to this week's Triathlon Newsday Tuesday
where every single Tuesday, as long as I'm not traveling
and there is news to talk about in the triathlon world,
we go over what's gone on over the past week.
As always, if you're new here,
make sure you stick around 'til the end
where everyone's favorite part
on Triathlon Newsday is shared.
That's a story from the trainiac commute.
We got a heck of a good story this week that was submitted.
And as always, full links to everything
we talk about will be in the description below.
Let's start off with Wanda Sports Group.
That is the company that owns the company that runs Ironman.
So, Wanda Sports Group owns World Triathlon Corporation.
World Triathlon Corporation puts
on all of the Ironman events.
Now, Wanda Sports Group IPOd last Friday.
They were targeting an $8 per share IPO.
It opened at $6 per share, before shares even traded,
and it already declined by almost 30%.
As I'm recording this right now,
it's declined even more and trades at $4.80 a share
making it the second worst IPO of the year on the NASDAQ.
Not a very good indication.
Further to this, even though Wanda Sports Group
is going to make $219 million off this IPO,
it values the company at $705 million
which is a very, very far cry
from the $1.85 billion that Wanda Holdings Company paid
to acquire World Triathlon Corporation in Infront Sports
which is what makes up Wanda Sports Group now.
So, we're talking more than a 50% decline since 2015
showing just how tight, how kinda unsuccessful,
how not makin' it rain the world of triathlon is.
This then relates to the next story that USA triathlon
announced that over the past five years,
their membership numbers have declined by 25%.
In addition to that, the oldest age category
that they have membership numbers for
is much older than it used to be
and it's the male age 45 to 49.
Now that puts USA triathlon in a very precarious spot
because all of these athletes are getting to that stage
in their life where they're thinking
about slowing down, spending less.
Triathlon is a very, very expensive sport.
Thinking about retiring.
Spending time with grandkids.
All of these things that I saw
back when I was a professional curler
decimated the club ranks in Canada.
I think I should actually do a full
video on the decline of Triathlon,
what I'm seeing right now.
Make sure you're subscribed if you want to see that.
I think I gotta do that.
Now related to USA triathlon,
they announced that in 2020, in 2021,
Milwaukee is gonna be the host city
for the USA Triathlon Age Group Nationals.
This was the host city back in 2013 to 2015.
Apparently it was really, really popular
with a lot of the age group competitors there.
And it seems to be that kinda small-ish to care sort of city
but big enough to make a big deal about it
and have good crowd support.
It's like the sweet spot for a lot of
the best triathlon venues all around the world.
We think about Penticton and
all the surrounding communities.
Lake Placid and the surrounding communities.
Coeur d'Alene and all the surrounding towns.
When you can get a town that is large enough
to draw really big crowds and small enough
to get a lot of volunteer support,
that's what makes a great race.
Roth, perfect example.
So, if that's the case with Milwaukee,
very happy that it's going back to a city like that.
Now in some unfortunate news,
another athlete was killed during an Ironman race this time.
It was 44-year-old Kristen Oswald
who during the bike portion of half Ironman Ohio
was reported to have ridden off of the controlled area
of the course into traffic, getting hit by a semi-truck.
And the patrols that were on the scene
ended up stating that the driver
of the truck is not at all responsible.
The event with her husband who is
out on the course at the time
and even after she was pronounced dead,
he didn't know it.
He was out on the course because
they had to take little while to
track him down to inform him.
Yeah, it's all just very, very sad.
It's an unfortunate reminder that we have to get,
more frequently it seems like,
that even though we are on a race course,
we have to take our safety very, very seriously.
We can't just turn our brains off
and think about nothing but power and watts.
It's our responsibility to keep ourselves safe.
Not to say that Kristen didn't
but that's a message to everyone here
so my heart goes out to Kristen's family.
I'm very sorry for what you're going through right now.
Oh, let's run through some of the results.
There were some great ones out there.
Matt Russell made a big comeback with his first big win
winning full Ironman Lake Placid
in the men's only pro field.
This is I believe his first...
Is it?
Pretty sure it's his first win since the
near life ending accident that he encountered
in Ironman Kona two years ago.
In a women's only pro field,
Heather Wurtele won on home soil
at Ironman Canada for last time
that it'll be held in Whistler.
Full Ironman Hamburg had both
a men's and a women's pro field
and the men's race was won by Kristian Hogenhaug
and Susie Cheetham won the women's race
dropping a unbelievable bike split
being the only female to go under nine hours.
Half Ironman Santa Rosa was won by Sam Appleton
and plug for the Triathlon Taren podcast,
if you are an up and coming pro
and you wanna win a race,
do like Chelsea Sodaro did and
many of our guests had done,
come on the Triathlon Taren podcast
and we'll send you off to great things.
Chelsea Sodaro won Half Ironman Santa Rosa
beating legends in the sport
like Mirinda Carfrae, Paula Findlay.
I think that she is a real up and comer
and gonna be one of the favorites
to kind of be the next generation
of Half and Full Ironman athletes out there.
And Half Ironman Distance Challenge Prague
was held with Florian Angert winning on the men's side
and on the women's side, yes, yes, yes.
I will never have to pronounce her name
improperly again which apparently,
I was actually doing pretty well at.
- And he said he can't pronounce my name.
So it's Radka Kahlefeldt and
I think you're doing pretty well.
So, Kahlefeldt.
- She won on the women's side.
Thank you for sending that in, Radka, and congratulations.
Keep winning so we can use that clip.
Now, speaking about the Triathlon Teran podcast,
it is still the most highky ranked
triathlon podcast in the world on Apple podcast
thanks to excellent guests
like Maggie Walsh.
Maggie is a member of the Zwift Triathlon Academy
who in her very first triathlon, first ever,
she ended up winning the overall
female title in a Full Ironman.
Second triathlon ever, did the same thing
beating a ton of the pros.
So we published that podcast this past weekend.
Later tonight, I'm going to be chatting
with Dr. Dan Plews, the coach who trained me up
to challenge Roth and himself as a low carb triathlete
who actually won the Ironman Kona 2018
setting the all time amateur course record.
We got some good ones.
And let's wrap up today with
heck of a Trainiac story that goes,
Hi Teran, my name is Tudor Weeks.
I came out of the military in 1993
and I went on to have a couple of desk jobs
while not doing much exercise.
Obviously, I ballooned as I would always overeat
and drink compared to my energy output.
However, things were made real for me
when I lost a great friend
to an obesity related heart attack in 2012.
It was a shock to my system.
I was approaching my 50th birthday and I weighed 20 stone.
218 pounds.
127 kilograms.
I decided I need to lose weight
or I'd be following a friend who had died.
Over a period of a year, I lost 70 pounds or 31 kilograms.
I remarried.
Jackie is my rock.
I decided to do a triathlon,
so I signed up for an Olympic triathlon in 2013.
I've gone on to compete two Full Ironman races,
five Half Ironman races, and a whole
bunch of Olympic and sprint races.
One weird Centurion distance plus a number
of marathon, half marathon runs.
In 2017, I achieved Ironman bronze all world athlete status.
This guy's killing it.
And was looking forward to full
2018 season of Ironman racing.
Signing up for Ironman Wales and two 70.3
events on either side of that race.
But I have one more hurdle to overcome.
In June 2018 at the age of 55,
I was diagnosed with prostate cancer
with scuppered all of my plans.
However, thanks to a great health plan with my job
and a fit body and mind from triathlon,
I had the surgery in September and have not looked back.
Ironman allowed me to transfer
my 2018 Ironman Wales place to this year
and I signed up to do another 70.3.
That 70.3 is a couple of weeks ago
and I posted a personal best of 535.
I'm now focused on Ironman Wales in September.
And I just want to encourage anyone out there
that it's never too late to make changes
for the good of your health and well being.
I have amazing support from my wife and family
plus a really good mate who's also an Ironman.
At no point during all of this have I felt sorry for myself.
I treated it much the same as a race.
I set a strategy, a rest, slow recovery,
build up, and over a 12 to 15 week period
was just another hill to climb.
Tudor.
P.S. I've included a photo of my dog,
Dennis, who's sometimes my run partner.
We like dogs here.
We like Tudor.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Your message there is great.
It's never too late.
Get out there.
Do an Ironman.
And if you aren't already subscribed
and you like these Newsdays,
hit that subscribe button below.
Plews was texting me about the podcast.
It's gonna be good.
Later, Trainiacs.