Collegiate Triathlon Nationals Improvements

USAT, and USAT Collegiate Club Triathlon could easily fix one its biggest issues with nationals by making a few simple changes.

The racing has become less competitive because there is less at stake for teams. Teams need a reason to go. Right now it is just an individual event, that happens to be tied to teams. UCLA and Wingate are perfect examples, both teams do really well on the individual level (Edoardo winning etc), but are completely irrelevant in the teams competition, where as

1. Move back to a 3 day event
2. Limit participation for each athlete to 2 events
   • Racers can only do 2 racers, not all of them at the event
   • More detail in Participation Limit
3. Day 1: MS style elimination race, Day 2: Olympic Day 3: DL & MTR

4. Have an actual prizes.

Collegiate Club Triathlon is one of the main ways to grow the sport. its fun, competitive, but also doesn't take itself too seriously. if USAT wants to grow the sport, making it more accesibility and get more young people into it, doing fun things at Nationals and throughout the year, while also supporting the teams more could definitely do it.

3 Day Event

When I first started racing collegiate triathlon in the 2021-2022 season, my first nationals was at Lake Lanier Georgia, and was a 3 day event. DL on the first day, Olympic 2nd and MTR the morning of the 3rd day. This gave time for results to be compiled, corrected and ready well before awards, and since MTR results are relatively easy to implement, rewards could move faster, and be on time.

The 2022-2023 season moved away from this model, and as far as I am concerned Nationals has been somewhat of a mess ever since. Awards are consistently delayed, and often time results are wrong and need to be corrected DURING the ceremony which should not be happening at a nationals level competition.

Moving back to a 3 day event would solve a lot of this. Scores, times etc could be posted at the end of the day each day so athletes and coaches can verify the results, and contest anything, as well as just know where they stand (extra motivation for following days).

Participation Limit

This is the main thing that would hopefully increase the competition between teams. Limiting racers to only participating in a few of the races instead of ALL of them, might make a difference in the competition. Many teams, (Queens, Navy, CU Boulder) are consistently dominant; and many times have their top athletes compete in all 3 of the current events, and many times win or finish top 10 of all of the event (Queens). If athletes were limited to participating in only 2 of the 3 events it would mean teams would have to choose who to put in the MR, DL, and Olympic, and might lead teams to choosing less optimal MR teams, or have their weaker racers do the Olympic while their better athletes do DL and MR. This would eliminate the overall athlete winner award that we have currently. But I feel as that competition is not very interesting anyways, and the average racer at nationals does not care at all about it, and instead other more interesting awards could be given.

I haven't had a chance to go through the results yet to verify how this would impact results actually.

This could be be additionally interesting with the addition of an elimination race, with 4 races, teams would really have to optimize who races what.

## Elimination and DL Racing It is pretty widely agreed that DL racing is under utilized and is not available to most athletes throughout the US. Assuming the two other notes are implemented I see two options. 1) A fully separate Elimination event is added. For a 3 day event there is no reason a fully new event couldn't be added, and with a full day of road closures etc lots of athletes could participate in this new format. This would allow more people to access DL racing that would not normally race it at nationals. Having the fully new event on one day, with the final in the afternoon would create a large energy throughout the day, making the final even more existing. 2) Us the elimination race to weed the field for the DL race on day 3. This would open the draft legal racing to more people, who would not be competitive in the normal DL race, but give them people to race against, while giving the more competitive racers a preview of the course and allow them to size up the competition.

Actual Prizes

Right now the team competition is not super fun. it is a known 3-4 teams in competition for the win, everyone else is just trying to get top 10. If there was some actual benefit to participating in the team competition it could really help to motivate teams to take it more seriously.

I am not entirely sure what to do to make it more competitive without disproportionally benefitting teams that are already competitive (CU Boulder, Queens, etc). Those teams already have good funding, coaching and motivation, where as teams like UCLA, MSU, CSU are all developing and could use additional help. It could be treated like professional drafts, where the best teams get the least help, whereas teams that are worse get increased help. For many collegiate athletes the cost of triathlon is a limiting factor in participation, so providing financial assistance to teams for race participation could be benefitial for some of the less competitive teams. easy things like free race entry into conference championships, nationals, etc could help, or USAT providing a nutritionist to the team (virtually) for a year or something could also be super helpful

With all the data collected on these races it seems crazy to that USAT would not be able to identify what teams need and help provide it to them.

Financial support is always useful, but there are other things, sponsorships, access to testing, and nutritionist could be super helpful for many teams.

This portion is definitely the hardest to implement as how to distribute the prizes fairly, while focusing on being competitive is difficult.

Additionally, from what I have heard, there used to be lots of prizes at nationals, not all of them have to be serious. It seems like it would be really fun to add lots of prizes and awards for people of all skill levels.

some I believe should come back are: Fasted T1+T2 Combined ->
Slowest T1+T2 Combined -> Wins a lawn chair

Other Notes