One of the big items on the agenda of your national organization is to increase the level of communication with the roughly 60,000 members that make up USA Triathlon. In that spirit, I’d like to provide some highlights of things that the Board is currently doing. Through this effort, I believe we’ll have an increased level of understanding of the “why’s” behind things that affect your racing.
 
WTC/ITU/USAT Probably the number one issue that members ask about is what’s going on with USAT and the World Triathlon Corporation (owner of Ironman races and the 70.3 series). While the “legal” end of things involves three parties (the International Triathlon Union being included), most of our members are only concerned about USAT’s position. Speaking as an individual board member (although I believe other members would agree), I think the sport would be better off with USAT and WTC reconciled, thereby creating one “membership” or license that you have to purchase in order to race. That being said, the board has been heavily engaged in identifying and trying to resolve the issues that divided the two organizations last year. We think there’s light at the end of the tunnel, as demonstrated in WTC’s participation in the USAT Rules Summit held in January. Personally, I see movement on both sides toward the “middle” and hope to have a more definitive report in next month’s newsletter.
 
RULES SUMMIT As mentioned above, a rules summit was held in January, which initiated discussion on the possibility of creating one rule book for all races around the world. While this may not seem important to most of our age group racers, it does simplify things to only need to be aware of one set of standards, no matter where you’re racing, including at our National Age Group Championship. Several rule changes were discussed. Some are being rolled out at a few races to see how they work. Others are subject to further board consideration and possibly a board vote. One example is the “Bare Torso Rule”, which has drawn a ton of attention. Most other countries and many race organizers (including the WTC) require men to cover their torsos when racing. USAT rules do not currently include this requirement. There are good points on both sides of the issue and the board has referred this out to different groups for comment before considering it as an agenda item.
 
COMMUNICATIONS By the time your read this, you may well have received the first issue of our new membership magazine. We’ve taken publication in-house this year and the USAT staff has put a major effort into creating a magazine that you’ll find valuable. It looks great and has a lot more substance to it than previous editions.
 
The national office will be rolling out a new web site within the next month or two. It’s intended to be more user-friendly, provide more resources to our members, and to take advantage of technology to provide on-line race sanctioning (already a reality), real time national rankings and some other great features.
 
Overall, the board is working with Skip Gilbert, our Executive Director, to increase the communication and visibility of the organization so that our membership sees USAT as very relevant and valuable to your training and racing. USAT is a whole lot more than an “insurance provider” for race directors, and we’re hoping you’ll all agree with that over the next several months as many of these changes start to become visible.