After a long wait, much anticipation and a lot of head scratching, the Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO) has finally confirmed what many suspected... there'll be no Collins Cup or fourth PTO Tour event in 2023.
Coming into 2023 the plan was for there to be four Tour events, plus the flagship Collins Cup event that has taken place in Slovakia over the last two years.
When announcing the first-ever PTO European Tour back in February, the organisation hinted that alongside that event and the US and Asian Opens, there would be a fourth event, with many believing it would be in Marrakesh, Morocco.
However, the PTO has now conceded that won't be the case. In a statement about the prospect of the fourth Tour event of 2023, the organisation said: “Timing and logistics did not allow for us to deliver the event to the high standards we require, especially given the scale of our broadcast production.
"As has been shared before, our intention is that the majority of PTO events will take place over multiple days, with independent races for pro men and pro women as well as entirely separate opportunities for age groupers to race.
"While this ensures the best ‘product’ it does have a bigger operational impact on our host cities compared to ‘normal’ single day (or morning) event.
"Our focus now turns to ensuring we deliver to these high standards with the PTO US Open in Milwaukee and the PTO Asian Open in Singapore.”
And the same difficulties are understood to have led to the decision not to put on a Collins Cup event in 2023. On this, the PTO said: "The Collins Cup remains an important format for the PTO and will return in the future, but our immediate focus is on delivering great events at the PTO US Open in Milwaukee on 4-5 August and inaugural PTO Asian Open in Singapore on 19-20 August – and then securing an expanded 2024 calendar, which we will announce later this year.”
Looking at the calendar, it was easy to see the difficulties the organisation faced with scheduling with the PTO Asian Open (19-20 August), Ironman 70.3 World Championship (26-27 August), men's Ironman World Championship (10 September) and women's Ironman World Championship (14 October) all coming thick and fast.
Over those two months, the tri community would also be turning attention to the Paris Olympic Games Test Event (17-20 August), the Super League Triathlon Championship Series (starting on 27 August in London) and the World Triathlon Championship Finals (23-24 September).
However, the majority of these events have been locked in for quite some time, so it begs the question why there's been a lack of clarity until so far into the season.
As for next year's PTO calendar – the expectation is that there'll be more than four events, with the 2024 and 2025 schedule due to be finalised by October and announced by the end of the year.
Top image credit: PTO
