British triathlon chief says the sport needs a long-term fix for disjointed calendar as Paris 2024 Olympics ‘just paper over cracks’

Friday sees the resumption of the WTCS less than a couple of months on from the Paris 2024 Olympics.

Most of the Team GB big hitters are in Weihai, China, chasing points as they seek a world title – including individual gold and bronze medal winners from Paris, Alex Yee and Beth Potter.

That duo have both been involved in supertri – in Boston, Chicago and London – in the intervening weeks, with Yee admitting he has felt “mentally tired” since the Olympics and Potter saying much the same in a recent interview on the supertri Face to Face series.

And it’s similar story on the middle and long-distance front – more opportunities than ever but with those come additional challenges.

Britain’s Kat Matthews for example was a superb second in the IRONMAN World Championship in Nice on Sunday and just six days later she’s scheduled to line up in the T100 Ibiza this Saturday against a stellar field.

In opposition against her will be the likes of Taylor Knibb, Flora Duffy and Taylor Spivey, who were all in action at the Olympics.

It’s a situation that Mike Cavendish, British Triathlon’s Performance Director at both the Olympics and the Paralympics, feels the sport needs to address.

‘Papering over the cracks’

In an in-depth interview with TRI247, when asked if the spectacular races in Paris had done enough to keep the fire burning for Olympic-distance triathlon, he told us: “No, I don’t think Paris has done enough. I think, if anything, it will potentially paper over some cracks that we have to solve in the sport as a whole. 

“And this is very much my opinion talking [but] somebody just needs to get hold of all the different stakeholders and to properly, strategically, think about a programme for the next 10 years that has windows for the PTO, windows for supertri and windows for WTCS.

“We also need events and venues that are genuinely sustainable with courses that athletes want to race, which can be financially viable and environmentally sustainable as well. And that’s the thing, in my opinion, that is missing at the moment. 

“We’ve got some brilliant innovation across PTO and supertri and I just don’t think we’re maximising it.”

‘There has to be a better way’

And it’s the stars of the show – the athletes – who Cavendish feels could suffer most: “They, unfortunately, are at the moment having to pick between the races on offer. And there is a conflict to such an extent that their off seasons are getting more and more squeezed, which means that we’re going to get athletes that are developing slower because they’re not being able to get the long off seasons that you need young athletes to have. 

“They’re going to be targeting races to earn money at the wrong times of the year and they’re going to get injured. So we’re going to potentially have a generation of athletes who have a pretty disconnected competition programme that doesn’t maximise the product. And you’re also not going to maximise the athletes because they are going to be at the wrong races at the wrong time, in my opinion.”

Cavendish also feels that it’s additionally tricky for someone like Yee, pointing out: “There’s no prize money at the Olympics. So when you’re someone who’s just won an Olympic gold medal, you have to maximise your moment in the sun, as it were, particularly for a sport like ours, that is less visible in the intervening years to the general public. 

“But there has to be a better way, and in my view, it probably falls on World Triathlon just to really grab all these stakeholders and bring them together and figure out something longer term.

At the moment it feels perhaps a little bit short-term and fragmented.

Reasons for optimism

It’s something that former British Triathlon CEO Andy Salmon spoke to us about last year – and his ideas around collaboration were strongly supported by supertri.

Cavendish continued: “If we got them all together, the narrative and the product, from super short-distance racing to the PTO’s 100km and even longer, the stories there could be absolutely incredible. But we’re just missing somebody or a group to properly lead on it.

“Investors are not going to continue investing in supertri and PTO forever more without being able to see the best athletes racing at a time that works for them and ideally, obviously, also linked to those that are competing in the biggest show on earth, the Olympic Games. 

“I don’t actually think we have a lot of conflicting interests here. I think everybody’s generally trying to move in the same direction. The trouble is people are moving at different speeds and not talking to each other in a way that allows us to all move at a similar pace and give everybody what they need. 

There are other sports out there that are crying out for the investment that’s going into PTO and supertri but it will be wasted if we can’t get them all on the same page at the same time.

“And if we can just do that, I think the sport’s got a fantastic opportunity in the future.” 

Hopefully the link between World Triathlon and the PTO around the T100 Series will start to move things in the right direction but it’s a thought-provoking insight from Cavendish and over the next couple of weeks we’ll also be chatting to him in detail about the GB performances at both the Olympics and Paralympics.

We’ll also get his views on two of the big talking points around Paris – the GB selection dilemma before the Olympics and then the water quality in the Seine and how that impacted all the athletes at both Games.

Finally, we’ll throw everything forward and find out what sort of shape he feels GB are in four years out from Los Angeles.