The Weekend Wrap: Norseman and Racing in Milwaukee
Photo by Alexander Koerner/Zalaris Norseman
August officially kicks off silly season in triathlon, and arguably the busiest of those weekends was this one. It made for some decent spectating, but also meant that we lost sight of one of triathlon's most iconic events. Let's dive into it.
Norseman 2023: Mother Nature is Undefeated
Let's lead off with the icon, the one and only Norseman, which celebrated its 20th anniversary this year. Typically Norseman drives one of our most popular threads in the forum, for both comments as well as page views. This year, despite being a part of Sebastian Kienle's retirement tour, there wasn't even a thread — instead, most discussion centered on the US Open.
My, how times have changed.
Jon Breivold took his third straight win this weekend, passing the aforementioned Kienle on the bike before continuing to build his lead on a modified run course. With cool, damp conditions and significant thunderstorms roaring across the valley, race organizers used their non-mountaintop finish in the interest of athlete safety.
Afterwards, Kienle was full of praise for the Norseman team. “I'm officially a Norseman ambassador after this experience in Norway. The people, the Norseman crew, my support team, Team BOB, and the other supportive athletes were amazing,” he said. “This was my first race with support, and it was great. In retrospect, I should have done races like Norseman earlier in my career, so my advice to up-and-coming pros is to try races like Norseman and experience something completely different in a very positive way.”
Slowtwitcher Allan Hovda took third.
In the women's race, Flora Colledge bided her time on the bike before launching herself on the run through the field, arriving to the front of the race at Zombie Hill and solidifying her margin of victory.
Meanwhile, in Milwaukee
Photo: Brad Williams / Precision Fuel and Hydration
Of course, the reason that Norseman wound up being more quiet than you would have typically seen was because of the PTO US Open. Ultimately, the professional racing was pretty compelling — and more on that in a moment.
But that's nowhere near the most important story coming out of Milwaukee this weekend. Instead that honor goes to USA Triathlon's National Championship events. Because it gives us an indication that triathlon might be healthier as a sport than IRONMAN's recent calendar moves have made some feel.
USA Triathlon announced that there were more than 6,000 athletes participating this weekend. That number initially did not pass my smell test — it felt like that was probably the total count of entries across all of the events taking place this weekend (combined, there were age group Olympic and sprint distance events, along with youth and junior races). We did some digging, and then got confirmation from USAT that the 6,000 figure was indeed all entries combined. The total of unique entrants was less than that.
It's roughly 5,400 unique athletes racing at USAT Nationals this weekend.
That's frankly a staggering number, given the doom and gloom that has been pervasive online over the last few months. Demographics were also more promising, with nearly equivalent numbers of athletes from M30-34 through M55-59, and F40-44 being the most popular women's category, at least for the Olympic distance event. What it shows, in this author's opinion, is that athlete's are still willing to put forth a chunk of vacation time for a destination race venue. It's just that they may not be doing that multiple times in a given year, like they had previously. And that's where IRONMAN's schedule reduction makes sense, too — it probably does not make sense to have ~15 full distance races and over 60 70.3s when athletes are filling out their calendar in a more diverse way.
We just might be healthier as a sport than we think. And, as it turns out, fast is in fact fun.
Grading the US Open
Photo: Brad Williams / Precision Fuel and Hydration
Some quick hits out of my notebook:
Jan Frodeno Woke Up and Chose Violence: Frodeno had a chip on his shoulder all week, even comparing Kristian Blummenfelt to "the boy who cried wolf" for the number of races Blummenfelt had said pre-race he would win this year, and has failed at doing so. And then Frodeno entered full "f*ck around, find out" mode after he was hit in the swim by one Blummenfelt.
“When Kristian punched me [during the swim] on way to the first buoy, I was like, dude, you can have the changing of the guard, but the throne will stay with me," said Frodeno post-race. And that he did, sticking to the front of the race and then easily distancing himself during the run. If this is the Frodeno we're getting in Nice for his finale, toss out the record books now.
About Blummenfelt: KB continues to prove to be mortal, cramping again coming off the bike, then again midway through the run. It seems like the strategy of being a jack of all trades with distances and bike positions may be turning him into a master of none. This particular episode felt more self-inflicted than others; tactical choices on the bike, along with positioning on board, seemed to lead to the first round of cramping. Then again a tactical choice trying to lift pace to pass Mathis Margirier, when he was already outrunning him, saw him cramp again.
Jason West: World Class Runner: Step aside, Patrick Lange and Gustav Iden. Make room for West, whose 56:21 run at this distance would have translated to an otherworldly 1:05/1:06 half marathon split. That's just absurdly fast. Unfortunately we didn't see much of West's first few laps of the run as he began charging through the field, but we did see him catch Blummenfelt and then snap the elastic in the final 300 meters to take second place.
Taylor Knibb's Grand Victory: I wrote in my notebook "Race over" when Knibb built a minute lead on the bike. She's just that damn good. Similar to her other middle distance victories, Knibb came to the front very early on and then controlled the race from there. It's a dominant way to race, and she's still on the comeback trail from surgery to fix a non-union fracture that forced her to re-learn to walk. That's scary for the rest of the women's field.
Ashleigh Gentle and Paula Findlay Also Deliver: Had I done a pre-race prediction article, this was my podium, and in this order. Gentle is another one of the best runners at this distance, and Findlay's a well-rounded athlete who is almost always near the front but is usually at her absolute best with a slightly more challenging course. It was an easily predictable podium; still interesting to watch the race dynamics unfold as to how we got here, but not a shocking result by any stretch.
Broadcast Grade: B- Here's what the PTO gets right with their media product — the looped courses make for easy tracking and monitoring distance left to go; their top 10 leaderboard on screen is strong; the video quality is generally high; and the platform itself seems quite stable and doesn't freeze or lag like, say, an Outside Watch broadcast can from time to time.
But is that really that much of an improvement over, say, an IRONMAN regional championship or above race? Or the quality of broadcast that Challenge had for Roth? Or even what CLASH has had for their Daytona race in the past?
In my opinion, no, it isn't. It's a perfectly acceptable 2023 triathlon broadcast. But if that is the product that was supposed to be a game-changer for triathlon…I'm still very, very skeptical. It's a broadcast that appeals to the existing geeks of our sport (which, count us among them).
My suggestions to the PTO for the Asian Open would be: first, a two-person booth with defined roles would help give the broadcast a little more breathing space (I almost wonder if Jack Kelly and Mirinda Carfrae would make a good pairing alone for that, similar to the dynamic Carfrae has shown with Greg Welch or Matt Lieto this year). Second, use the media budget from producing "hype" videos to create better pre-packaged content that can run during some of the down times during the swim or bike to ease the burden on your commentary pairing. And lastly, please get cameras on the middle of the pack so we can watch stuff like Jason West's charge to the front, rather than the last few minutes of it when he's knocking on the front of the field's door.
Ultimately I want the PTO to get this right and make me eat a healthy amount of crow. Hopefully that will start with a confirmed 2024 schedule sooner than later.
This article has been updated.
