I've been in the sport of duathlon since the mid 1980's and have seen the rise and fall of the sport from its heyday in the late 80' and early 90's to its less than stellar showing currently.
I think there are a number of factors involved in this decline in popularity, the first being the marketing giant that is Ironman Hawaii. Ironman is etched upon the populaces memory as the ultimate feat of endurance with visions of people crawling across the finish line utterly spent and all the special interest stories and sensationalism that would make a reality TV producer salivate.
The Ironman ranks are filled with a plethora of type A personalities that have grown weary of yet another marathon so for them Ironman is the natural progression for putting another notch on their things to achieve list.
Can duathlon compete with this? Should it even try?
I think one needs to look to when duathlon was popular and try and regain some of that once again. The distances were short, typically a 5k run, 30k bike and a 5k run which with some training is achievable by almost everyone. Of course there were big time sponsors involved such as Coors and Dannon and maybe we need to find another company bold enough to take a chance on duathlon. I dont think it is realistic to think that you are going to have a field of 2000 plus athletes even it the larger metropolitan areas but I think 500 or so is a real possibility and if one markets it correctly that should be achievable. I think even shorter distances such as 2 mile, 12 mile, 2 mile may even be more popular.
Currently "short course" duathlon is 10k, 40k, 5k and is quite a daunting task for a beginner. Thats almost 10 miles of running not to mention 24 miles on the bike in between. To compete in such a race will take quite a bit of training and commitment that most either don't have the time or the desire to do.
Why cant duathlon be like the 5k is to the marathon. If someone has the time and money train for an Ironman, if someone has more modest fitness goals a duathlon could be just the thing they are looking for.
Anway, I think this article can be put in the "to be continued" catagory for now but I would welcome your thoughts.
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2 comments:
I don't think we need to make duathlon the "5k" compared to the marathon. I do think we need the "5k" duathlon. It needs to be accessible. At the same time, look at the popularity of the Ironman and Half-ironman distance. People are not afraid of the challenge.
Thanks for your comment.
I just feel at this time maybe duathlon should concentrate on shorter more "doable" distances for normal folks.
Maybe in the future longer du's will become popular again?
There is Powerman Zofingen which is arguably more difficult than IM Hawaii and used to offer the most prize money of any multisport race but due to the loss of major sponsors and declining popularity of duathlon the race almost went belly up a few times.
I just think that duathlons niche at the moment is on the shorter distance "grassroots" level.
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