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Earlier this week, TriDot announced the termination of their business relationship with IRONMAN, and as such, will bring about sizable change to the IRONMAN University program for coaches once again.<\/p>\n
TriDot emailed their coaching community about the change, stating in part:<\/p>\n
\u201cDue to unresolved business matters, TriDot has terminated its sponsorship of IRONMAN, effective immediately. As a result, the IRONMAN U program in its current form has concluded. TriDot no longer operates IRONMAN U, and any inquiries regarding IRONMAN U should be directed to IRONMAN.<\/p>\n
While our entire team\u2014including our Master Coaches, subject-matter experts, and staff\u2014is disappointed by this development, we remain steadfast in our commitment to you and the coaching community we\u2019ve built together.\u201d<\/p>\n
In their statement, TriDot also claimed full ownership of the education and training materials that formerly made up IRONMAN\u2019s University program, and announced the launch of the Endurance Sports Coaching Institute \u2014 effectively, turning the former IRONMAN U certification into their own branded program. They also say that they will retain the coach finding tool and offering additional certifications in 2026.<\/p>\n
IRONMAN, in response, told Slowtwitch:<\/p>\n
\u201cThat communication has come as a surprise to us based upon our ongoing collaboration and longstanding partnership with TriDot. IRONMAN remains committed to our coaches, the IRONMAN U program, and the importance of education that makes our coaches and community stronger by helping athletes all over the world reach their respective finish lines. Looking forward, we are excited and deeply committed to investing in and growing The IRONMAN U programs and platforms to support the world\u2019s best triathlon coaches, grow the coaching community, and together empower athletes to achieve their dreams. We will be sharing further updates and information related to IRONMAN U as soon as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
This will mark the third major revision to the IRONMAN U program since its original announcement in August of 2015<\/a>. And it comes as no surprise to many \u2014 as this was a relationship that was likely doomed to fail from the start.<\/p>\n How We Got Here<\/p>\n IRONMAN launched its certification program, IRONMAN U, almost exactly ten years ago, with a video of professionals like Mirinda Carfrae and TJ Tollakson talking about the importance of having a coach \u2014 but most importantly, coaches who understood IRONMAN racing. It came as USA Triathlon was continually selling out all of its Level I Coaching clinics, and IRONMAN \u2014 justifiably \u2014 wanted to tap into that audience of coaches.<\/p>\n Over the next few years, two things happened: demand for USA Triathlon\u2019s coaching clinics began to drop-off, and IRONMAN became more heavy-handed in its branding and attempts to add coaches to its certifications. Certified coaches were given spotlights at key races, for instance. IRONMAN also featured coaches in outbound communications as athletes registered for their events. <\/p>\n Then we hit the roadblock of the pandemic: races cancelled. IRONMAN pivoted, looking to build an entire ecosystem for training. It launched massive series of virtual races. It acquired FulGaz, and was looking to build a full-scale digital platform. It hired staff to head the IRONMAN U platform and build out libraries of content to better educate coaches. <\/p>\n And then it largely fell flat. The digital ecosystem never materialized. FulGaz has never seen the same kind of broad adoption that Zwift or TrainerRoad have ever seen. Staff left, and those positions went unfilled.<\/p>\n Enter TriDot. Although Tricot\u2019s business model was focused around its plans and algorithms, it checked many of the boxes that IRONMAN could be looking for. First, it\u2019s a partner to be able to outsource much of the content production and infrastructure to. Second, well, it\u2019s dollars in the door \u2014 and it came at a time when IRONMAN could use some financial wins. And it also made it easier to point to a single partner for training plans or coaching, rather than the generic \u201cIRONMAN Certified Coach\u201d and a finder there.<\/p>\n For TriDot, too, this looked like a win on paper. First, you had a new audience of coaches (and their athletes) to market to. Second, as part of the IRONMAN U certification process, it highly incentivized coaches to switch from other providers into TriDot as it looked to compete against other tools like TrainingPeaks. Between the two, it ultimately could help feed TriDot\u2019s AI platform\u2019s robustness; critical for tools like this one.<\/p>\n And Yet\u2026Another Failure<\/p>\n Coaches we have talked to have all expressed the same concern with TriDot: that they as a company will direct market to their athletes, encouraging them to switch to the AI-based model, and have lost money as a result of it. To then be asked to switch to TriDot through the IRONMAN U program was, in one person\u2019s words, \u201claughable.\u201d <\/p>\n It\u2019s clear that both companies underestimated the level of pushback that coaches would have toward switching to the TriDot platform. It\u2019s also reasonable to assume, based on TriDot\u2019s email to certified coaches, that they felt like they should be seeing more coaches migrating to the platform as part of the certification process. As of today, TriDot lists 895 coaches in their Coach Finding tool worldwide. That\u2019s less than half of the number that TrainingPeaks currently lists, or less than those currently listed as active coaches by USA Triathlon.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also reasonable to say that IRONMAN was taken aback by the announcement from TriDot. All of the IRONMAN U web links all still head to TriDot\u2019s platform, which has since been rebranded to TriDot\u2019s ESCI service. There\u2019s still references to TriDot in IRONMAN\u2019s purchasing flow. It leads us to believe that TriDot initiated this break-up.<\/p>\n Moving forward, it seems like IRONMAN will revert back to its original model of the University program, handling certification and education itself. That perhaps is smarter; it aligns more with the premium experiences that CEO Scott DeRue built out at Equinox. Being able to align an athlete, especially a newcomer, to a coach through the registration flow (e.g., a checkbox of whether you already have a coach, and if not, being interested in getting a coach for X rate), seems like a potential avenue. <\/p>\n As for TriDot, it seems harder to make sense of. They seem to be attempting to be all things to all people; are they an AI platform? A coaching services platform? A coaching certification company? The problem they still have to solve for is how their AI aligns with coaches; the market perception is that they are plans first. And even there, there\u2019s more competition, with the likes of HumanGo and Athletica.ai available. <\/p>\n Tags:Coaching<\/a>IRONMAN U<\/a>TriDot<\/a> \t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this week, TriDot announced the termination of their business relationship with IRONMAN, and as such, will bring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48764,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-48763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}