***The red dots indicate a year over year decrease and the green dots indicate a year over year increase.****
2018 GRASSROOTS 70.3 MILE DOWN 29%. 2018 was a bad year for grassroots 70.3 mile races with decreases in the total finishers (-29%). Comparatively, WTC’s Ironman did well by only being down -10% at the 70.3 mile distance and down -5.5% at the 140.6 distance. WTC’s acquisition of Rev3 hurt the results while Motiv’s Wildflower return in 2018. Sadly, Wildflower has already been cancelled for 2019.
Several years ago the 70.3 mile distance was selected to track as the “canary in the coal mine” because there were enough of them to track without getting overwhelmed with all the sprint & Olympic distance races. Only finisher data was used as announced participant numbers are typically inflated. Races only 50 finishers or above are included. A handful of bandit races or those found to be unsafe are not included in the data.
Grassroots events are typically family owned and operated and run in places that wouldn’t be economically viable for corporate interests. Quite often the race director and the athlete know each other. Athletes that prefer staying at a B&B versus a national hotel chain should also enjoy grassroots racing. Those race producers are typically located in the community and they either get supported or your little part of the world might become a triathlon desert.
US Grassroots 70.3 mile distance races by the numbers
Total Races -28%
2017 = 80
2018 = 58
Total Finishers -29%
2017 = 12830
2018 = 9058
Total Races With 50 Or More Finishers -33%
2017 = 70
2018 = 47
Total Finishers For Races With 50 Or More Finishers -31%
2017 = 12488
2018 = 8644
Total Finishers for the top 20 Races -15%
2017 = 7381
2018 = 6308