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JONES: World Triathlon Championships on again for Edmonton

Organizers held a media re-launch Monday to declare the on again, off again Edmonton World Triathlon Championships on again. But as pumped as they tried to appear, it’s not going to be the welcome the world event that they’d envisioned and had been building

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It was one of the great sports event promotional slogans of all time. But, it’ll be no-can-do with “Do North.”

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Organizers held a media re-launch Monday to declare the on again, off again Edmonton World Triathlon Championships on again. But as pumped as they tried to appear, it’s not going to be the welcome the world event that they’d envisioned and had been building.

The multitude of age group races involving more than 3,000 competitors from age eight to 80 and accompanying family members from around the world, including a significant number expected to come from the U.S., have all been cancelled.

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Plans to have 100,000 fans at Hawrelak Park and lining the course are currently called off as well.

“Over the past year there have been lots of moments where we doubted whether this event could happen,” said event manager Stephen Bordeau of the triumph involved.

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Instead of a weeklong celebration for the sport, it will basically be a one-day event on Aug. 21 for the men’s and women’s Olympic fields as well as world U-23 championship races.

The main show that will be telecast to an estimated 80 million viewers around the world will go on. Edmonton will still get exceptional exposure as was unquestionably the case with the NHL Hub City Stanley Cup playoffs and IIHF no-fans-in-the-stands world junior.

“We’re pretty gutted losing all the age group and masters world championships,” said Bourdeau.
“Because those athletes are not elite they do not qualify for exemptions to the country. They are considered recreational travel and with the border closures they would not be permitted in the country.

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“We had a projected economic impact for the whole program at about $34 million. Our new economic impact with the athletes, television and other people involved in the production of the event will be in the area of maybe less than half of that.”

This, understand, is no minor event. As originally projected it had a budget of $13 million. The organizing committee has done a whale of a job salvaging most of it.

“We’ve been lucky because all three levels of government kept their funding and all of our major corporate partners have signed back on. But without all those age group athletes we lose more than 3,000 registration fees.”

As it sits right now, despite the July 1 return-to-normal plans for full stadiums for pro sports events in Alberta, what we’ll be dealing with here won’t be much different than the NHL and IIHF bubble events. And that’s right down to selecting the J.W. Marriott to resume the role of being the bubble hotel for the athletes.

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The Worlds will be held here but it won’t be so you can reach out and touch them.

“We’ve submitted a full bubble event. No spectators,” said Bordeau. “Hopefully as the summer goes on we can start the conversation with Health Canada regarding spectators. It’s a tricky one. What we’ve been told so far is that because our event is an international event, it is still under the jurisdiction of Public Health Canada. The athletes will be in quarantine the entire time that they are here. We moved all four elite races to the same day so we could create a bubble environment and control it.

“With the uncertainty around in-person spectators we are placing a top priority on making the event look fantastic for the international TV audience.”

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Bourdeau says the organizers are “very determined” to bring this event back to Edmonton as soon as possible in order to deliver the event as originally planned.

“We’ve already started talking with World Triathlon and Triathlon Canada about hosting a future World Championships in the next four to five years.

“One of our priorities now is to still give those 3,000-plus age group athletes that were supposed to come a taste of the experience here with the hope that they’ll want to be here four years from now if we’re given the chance to do it again the way we intended to do it in the first place,” said Bordeau.

An interested observer to all of this, of course, is Tyler Mislawchuk the Canadian that won the Tokyo Olympic test event and recently an event in Mexico who attended the event virtually Monday.

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“I think athletes will be raring to go again coming out of Tokyo and I think you’ll see one of the strongest race fields ever. I think you’ll have everyone that is at the Olympics and more so it will be pretty exciting,” he said.

The expectation is that the full Olympic field will be here if for no reason than the Worlds have double points and prize money than a World Series event ($340,000 for both men and women with $42,500 for first, $34000 for second and $34,000 for third).

There will be another $855,000 in championship series bonus pool money (with $83,500 for first, $57,300 for second and $39,200 for third) to divvy up with only two other events, one in Yokohama and the other in Leeds, this year, the Edmonton event will determine where most of that money goes.

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