Legacy Tri First Step Toward Olympic Triathlon
The City of Long Beach, Triathlon's National Governing Body in the U.S., and the L.A. Olympic Organizers gathered to announce the Legacy Triathlon. The Long Beach, California, event will begin as an Age Group, non-draft, sprint distance race, held July 20, 2019. It is designed to progress into an ITU World Cup event, a rare WTS on US soil, and then finally the 2028 Olympic Triathlon.
With Queen Mary floating in the Pacific behind him USA Triathlon’s Chief Marketing Officer, Chuck Menke, recounted the history of triathlon with Olympic moments from the past along with USAT future stars: Summer Cook, Ben Kanute, and Matt McElroy. The organization’s CEO Rocky Harris, Chairman of the USAT Board Barry Siff, and Long Beach Vice Mayor Rex Richardson all spoke to the effort to bring the Olympic Triathlon to Long Beach. Also present was the CEO of LA2028, Gene Sykes. Sykes is a triathlete, having raced numerous events and distances including the 1982 Hawaiian Ironman.
Pictured from left are Richardson, Harris, Sykes, Siff and Kanute.
The course presented today is the one planned for the age group race in 2019. The course is nearly identical one used for the 2006 US Pro Championships, won by Hunter Kemper and Sarah Haskins. The swim is protected from surf by break-walls well out in the bay. The run from the water’s edge to the transition area is long, at perhaps 300-plus meters, and over half of that is sand. The transition area is a paved beach parking lot. The bike course would be completely flat were it not for a gentle rise over bridge leading to a u-turn in front of the famed Queen Mary. The run is dead flat on a concrete beach path.
This is a USAT race and will be helmed by the USAT Events Director Brian D’Amico. He has been putting on nearly a dozen National Events for years, and this course is not that complex. The event’s production will likely become more challenging when the ITU’s event coordinators get involved for the transformation to World Cup, WTS and, eventually the Games themselves.
Olympic triathlons have never been boring, and the Long Beach course will have the added interest of two triathlon events: the standard distance and the new mixed team relay event. That said, the news of the flat bike course is a disappointment to many. When a hilly bike course is set under a race of great importance the result is more excitement. We saw that recently at WTS Bermuda when a Norwegian few had heard of, Casper Stornes, attacked on Corkscrew Hill and launched himself to victory. Hearts broke on the brutal hill in the recent Olympic course in Rio, and the hill in the Athen’s 2004 Games shattered the fields and left athletes scrambling to form allegiances in smaller groups.
Registration for the Legacy Triathlon is open on Active, entry is $105 currently and the race is limited to 750 for the July 20, 2019 event.
