“I left it all out in the French Riviera. 100KM triathlon on 10 days training… completed. ✔️”
That was boxer and reality TV star Tommy Fury’s Instagram post after his first T100 triathlon on the French Riviera last weekend.
Fury, the brother of former world heavyweight champion Tyson Fury, headed to the south of France to tackle the 100km distance, comprising a 2km swim, 80km bike and 18km run.
And he generated plenty of interest – the clip of him sprinting over the finish line has already had around 250,000 likes on his Instagram page for example.
Roads re-opening an obvious safety issue
However it emerged on Wednesday – via a piece on the Marathon Investigation website – that things potentially weren’t quite as they seemed.
Headlined: “Truth Revealed: Tommy Fury Did Not Finish the T100 Triathlon” the article examined in detail his bike splits which showed he wasn’t logged after the 48km point (the splits were every 6km).
We’ve been chatting this morning (Thursday 4th September) to the Professional Triathletes Organisation – who run the T100 Triathlon World Tour – to try and understand exactly what happened.
The first thing to say is that road closures had been shortened because the bike course for the amateurs had been changed since the event was first announced.
The pros had one 80km loop whereas the age groupers had six laps of around 13km.
And it became clear on the day that some amateurs – not just Fury – weren’t going to finish the bike course before the roads were re-opened.
‘As full an experience as possible’
The PTO told us: “Due to our permit for the road closures in France, unfortunately Tommy and some other athletes in the 100km amateur race were unable to complete the bike course before the cut-off time.
“However, given our philosophy to grow the sport and encourage new athletes, we wanted to give them as full an experience as possible. So they were all given the opportunity to do the 18km run and cross the finish line.”
Hence the reason we saw that clip of Fury at the end of the blue carpet.
Were the subsequent posts – and press release, which hands up we covered – somewhat misleading. Possibly.
But equally the times were not counted in the official results. And Fury and plenty of the other athletes were determined to continue when the bike course roads were re-opened – and did complete the full 18km run.
And in terms of ‘celebs’ racing T100 events, anyone questioning the value of that in terms of making triathlon visible to a wider audience needs to have a close look at the coverage generated by T100 London.
There were two brilliant pro stories that day – Brit Lucy Charles-Barclay winning on home roads and Olympic silver medallist Hayden Wilde crowning an incredible comeback from some horror injuries to take the men’s title.
But the bulk of the mainstream coverage was of Team Ramsay, including Olympic swimming legend Adam Peaty, as they completed the Olympic distance race.
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