Challenge Roth serves up an impressive 2020 Pro line up

ALL of the 2019 Kona podium to race in Bavaria

When you’ve been around the sport as long as I have, hearing “best ever” / “best race” / “most-anticipated”… I’ll be honest, it wears a bit thin as (usually), I’ve heard it before. Several times over.

I don’t blame the events – it’s their job to promote themselves, their athletes and their sponsors etc… it’s called marketing!

And yet… one of the common complaints within our sport (much quoted by the objectives of the Professional Triathletes Organisation), is the lack of times when we truly get to see many of the best athletes racing each other.

Rather than several ‘Majors’ (along the lines of Tennis, Golf, Snooker to name three), we effectively have one ‘super-Major’ (Hawaii) when, injuries aside, absolutely everyone is there. For the rest of the year (there have been exceptions), we don’t typically see the best-of-the-best going head-to-head outside of the Big Island.

Well, there can be few complaints from today’s news from DATEV Challenge Roth for their 220 Pro field:

• Both reigning IRONMAN World Champions – Jan Frodeno and Anne Haug
• ALL of the podium finishers from Kona 2019 – Frodeno, Sebastian Kienle, Timothy O’Donnell, Haug, Lucy Charles-Barclay and Sarah Crowley
• Two further Kona top-10 finishers from 2019 – Cameron Wurf and Joe Skipper
• Both defending champions – Andreas Dreitz and Lucy Charles-Barclay
• Five of the six Roth podium finishers from 2019 – Dreitz, Jesper Svensson, Wurf, Charles-Barclay, Crowley
• Previous Roth podium finishers, including Laura Siddall (2nd, 2017) and Joe Skipper (2nd, 2016 & 2017)

Sure, this doesn’t constitute an ‘everyone’ is there field (Daniela Ryf will be racing IRONMAN Switzerland for example), but it really is a strong roster of athletes.

Challenge Roth 2020 takes place on Sunday 5th July 2020 – and should be well worth watching.