Kiwi triathletes Hayden Wilde, Kyle Smith and Hannah Berry now have a crystal-clear target for 2025 – Qatar.
The Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO) has confirmed the finale of its showpiece T100 Triathlon World Tour will be staged in Doha for the next five years.
The announcement was made in tandem with Visit Qatar, World Triathlon and the Qatar Triathlon Federation overnight.
The 2025 T100 Triathlon World Championship Final has been scheduled for December 11-13 and will include an age group component.
For elites such as the Kiwi trio, only the top 20 men and women will qualify to race the final with the 2km swim to take place in the Arabian Gulf before the 80km bike and 18km run wind around the cities of Doha and neighbouring Lusail.
The course will take in local landmarks, including the Lusail Stadium which hosted the 2022 FIFA World Cup Final between Argentina and France. The stadium is now a community hub for local schools, shops and other sporting facilities.
Elites must compete in at least five T100 races during the season to be eligible for the final. Their four best scores, plus their result in the Qatar T100 Triathlon World Championship Final, where points will be increased, contribute to their final T100 standings.
The 2025 T100 Triathlon World Tour will take place across nine races, including a return to Singapore for the season opener on April 5-6. The circuit then travels to San Francisco (May 31-June 1), Vancouver (June 13-15), France (June 27-29), London (August 9-10), Spain (TBC), Lake Las Vegas (TBC), Dubai (November 15-16) and Qatar (December 12-13).
Athletes score 35 points for first place to one pt for 20th place at each of the first eight races. The Qatar T100 Triathlon World Championship Final has increased points to up the ante (55 pts down to 4 pts) at the final hurdle.
Smith was second overall in the inaugural T100 season behind Belgian Marten van Riel. Paris Olympic Games silver medallist Wilde is making a step up to the longer distance to “freshen up” ahead of LA ’28 while Berry has earned a full-time PTO contract after her outstanding consistency to finish 4th in the inaugural Ironman Pro Series last year.
“We’ve been very clear with our strategy for the T100 Triathlon World Tour to visit iconic locations, along with our desire to position the series as a race to one ‘hero’ destination, as happens in many other professional sports,” explained PTO CEO Sam Renouf at a press conference held in Doha.
“This five-year partnership with Visit Qatar allows us to do exactly that, with the season-long series now being known as the T100 Race to Qatar in one of the fastest growing, family friendly tourist destinations in the world, which saw more than five million visitors last year.
“Qatar’s local population and visitors are also showing a strong demand not only to attend world class sports events, but also, increasingly, to participate in them – following the influx of events like the FIFA World Cup and Formula 1 in recent years.
“So, as well as being a spectacular venue for the climax of our new professional series, the weekend will also host events for amateur swimmers, cyclists and runners – from first-timers through to our inaugural T100 Age Group World Championships.”
At the first T100 Triathlon World Championship Final, hosted in Dubai in 2024, almost 10,000 amateur athletes completed either a Sprint triathlon (750m swim, 20km bike, 5km run), a 100km triathlon or a 5km Music Run.
As well as these mass participation events, the Doha weekend will also see the climax of the best age-group athletes from around the world. The PTO and World Triathlon are developing a qualification system, which is planned to be based on providing slots at each T100 event, on top of the traditional quota system allocated to each National Federation, in order for the top athletes from each age group qualify for their own T100 Age Group World Championship in Qatar.
