This may only be of interest to local racers, but I wanted to share the news just the same. The news coming out about TriColumbia, otherwise known as the Columbia Triathlon Association is mixed. Possibly even conflicting.
I just wanna know if I have races to run!
So, first, there’s this. World Triathlon Corporation (who own Ironman) is going to take over the majority of the CTA races. Basically, they couldn’t buy out CTA (you can’t buy a non-profit), but they could buy all of their races. So they did.
Unfortunately, this means some really cool people may be out of a job. I hope many of them can transition over to WTC.
And this news is good: “All entry fees paid will be honored; all entries are valid for 2014; all races on the 2014 schedule for which entries have been paid are expected to be conducted.”
While I missed it due to choir rehearsals, apparently a CTA board member came to our tri club meeting. Turns out it’s not so cut and dry. CTA has the permits. CTA will, of course, give up said permits, but other people/groups have already put in for permits. WTC will also put in for permits, but apparently, it’s a first come-first served sort of deal. So it’s possible that a competing company could have put in permit applications to screw over all of the athletes registered for these races. Or they could hold onto the permits, do nothing in 2014, then hold their own races in 2015 (because I guess the permits are renewable or something along those lines).
Awesome.
So there are no real answers. And some cool people are out of jobs. Oh, the joys of triathlons.