By Matt Hardy
Olympic gold medal winning triathlete Alex Yee has called on broadcasters to make the sport more accessible ahead of the Paris Olympics next year.
The World Triathlon Championship Series is currently broadcast free-to-air by the BBC but often finds itself relegated to BBC Sport or Red Button services, though the recent event in Sunderland was on BBC Two.
Yee, who has a plethora of medals in the sport – which involves swimming, cycling and running – won an individual silver medal at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo while also picking up a team gold medal at the same Games.
Triathlon needs more air time
“I’d absolutely love to see it be more accessible,” he told City A.M.
“That’s probably one of the big bugbears for me, you frequently need to pay for access to view it and it is a barrier to entry.
“It’s less and less accessible.”
Paris will be hosting a test event ahead of the games, between 17 and 20 August next weekend despite some issues surrounding the water quality in the River Seine.
The BBC will be showing the test event but only on their streaming services rather than traditional channels despite BBC2 showing “What they Really Mean For You” when the women’s race kicks off on 17 August and “Gardeners’ World” when the men’s race gets underway on 18 August – on 19 and 20 August the sports offering would clash with track and field’s World Championships in Budapest, Hungary.
Test events
“Triathlon is such a brilliant sport and such a spectator friendly sport over the shorter distances that hopefully it will be able to be broadcast over the BBC and other channels as well,” Yee added.
“We’re coming up to our biggest race in the season this year [test event]. It’s the last opportunity we get before we race on the course of Paris before the Olympic Games next year.
“It is a big qualifier for the Olympics next year as well.
“When I did the Tokyo test event, I actually flopped it completely, I had an awful race and didn’t get what I wanted out of the race.
“But the most important thing I did get out of the race was that I learned as much as I could about the course and that put me in a good position. I was able to feed on those memories.”
Yee is in the mix for the World Triathlon Championship Series title and has won twice this year.
The BBC were approached for a comment surrounding their coverage.
