There have been fatalities in triathlon before, but the tragic events of Ironman Hamburg on the first weekend of June sent shockwaves through the sport like never before.
It was a high profile European Championship with the return of three-time Ironman world champion, Jan Frodeno. The collision was broadcast live on the Ironman stream and German national television, and it was a high speed impact between a motorbike and a bicycle travelling in opposite directions.
It provoked a visceral response from all who witnessed it. The emergency services were on scene quickly, the crash site was secured and rather than the race being stopped, triathletes were instructed to dismount and push their bikes up a grass bank to navigate around the scene.
Misfiring communications
Germany’s ARD ended its race broadcast, Ironman chose to keep rolling, a decision chief executive Andrew Messick has since admitted was a mistake.
As Messick says, the direction from Ironman left its commentators in an “untenable” position. Deleting comments from those watching the live stream concerned about the crash further fuelled the opprobrium in an emotion-charge situation.
But Ironman’s misfiring communications shouldn’t deflect focus from what caused the incident in the first place. A police investigation is ongoing, and its conclusion alongside an impassioned call for fundamental safety changes will hopefully result in the only positive outcome from this wretched situation.
What are these areas to address? Avoiding speculating on the cause of this incident, the place to start has to be the live race environment.
Questions to answer
Is a course fit for purpose for a professional race and 2,000 amateurs? Is the highway wide enough? Should there be two-way traffic? Should there be segregation?
We know from comments from the professional women who raced in Hamburg in 2022 that there were concerns over congestion, and motorbikes were more limited than they were this year.
Further, who has the right to sanction courses and do we have independent experts with no vested interests in the event?
Why so many bikes?
Then it becomes about scrutinising who has the right to be on the field of play, particularly concerning motorbikes. They provide very necessary functions for race officials and media, but in Hamburg – as other races – the question keeps recurring: Why were there so many?
The follow-up point is that motorbike drivers must have the requisite skills and training to be on the course. To be clear, there’s no inference that anything was lacking in Hamburg in this respect, but subsequent discussions have found that there are variable standards used across the triathlon world when it comes to moto drivers and their equipment. It is far from an Ironman-only issue.
Race organisers to work together
Which lands us at the final point. This incident occurred in an Ironman race, but the buck doesn’t stop entirely with Ironman. The factors that led to it should be looked at by all organisers and ideally have them working together to find solutions.
We saw a tragedy in Hamburg that will be all the more tragic if it doesn’t lead to lessons being learnt so that people can go to their place of work or play confident in their knowledge they’ll return home safely.
Top image credit: Alexander Koerner/Getty Images for Ironman
