T100 Triathlon World Tour Singapore: series will decide ‘ultimate athlete’, says Ironman champ Lucy Charles-Barclay
- Briton faces stiff competition with Ashleigh Gentle, India Lee and Daniela Ryft among those to beat
- Charles-Barclay excited by sport’s growth online and suggests there could be a Netflix series to be made
Lucy Charles-Barclay lines up in Singapore this weekend for the second leg of the T100 Triathlon World Tour, and said the series winner could rightly be considered the world’s ultimate athlete.
The Ironman world champion will race alongside the likes of Ashleigh Gentle and India Lee on Saturday, while Daniela Ryft, considered one of the best triathletes of all time, and Olympic champion Flora Duffy are also part of the tour.
Gentle goes into the event as defending champion, having won the Asian Open under the shadow of Marina Bay Sands last year, while Lee pipped her fellow Briton Charles-Barclay to gold at the Miami T100 in March.
“I think whoever wins the title at the end of the year could definitely win the title of the ultimate athlete,” Charles-Barclay said. “You’re racing the top 20 women to get this prize. So you have got to be the best athlete.
“It’s definitely going to be quite an elusive world title, I think. And everyone on the start line is going to be hungry for it.”
The race this weekend will just be Charles-Barclay’s second at the 100km (62 miles) distance, with the 30-year-old seeking a new challenge for the year after finally conquering the Ironman in Kona, Hawaii last October, having finished second four times.
Her decision not to defend her title in 2024 and switch to the Professional Triathlon Organisation (PTO) provoked a furious backlash from some within a sport the Briton said was “still very opinionated”.
Not that it was an easy decision, and Charles-Barclay said lots of thought had gone into what she wanted her year to look like.
“We discussed it with the team and I think ultimately it was what is going to excite me most to get out of bed at 5 in the morning and train,” she said. “And this was the thing that I felt like it was new, it was different, it was exciting, and I had been pursuing the ultimate goal [being world champion] for such a long time.
“And I feel like I just I did it [won Kona] and now I want something else to chase.”
Which of course raises questions over any renewed Olympic ambitions, given that in a previous incarnation Charles-Barclay was a swimmer with hopes of making the Great British squad for the 2012 Games in London.
While acknowledging that competing at the multi-sport extravaganza had always been a dream, Charles-Barclay said she was ultimately attracted by the excitement that had begun to build around the PTO.
“One of my favourite years in the sport was back in 2021, where I decided to race over nearly every different distance of triathlon,” she said. “And I felt like this year I kind of wanted to challenge myself in a new way.
“Doing this series, I’ve got to be faster. It’s more aggressive racing. There’s less time for error. You’ve got to be smart at the races, all of those things. I felt that it was going to challenge me and allow me to grow as an athlete.
“I’ve been loving what the PTO have been doing over the past few years, and the excitement has been building around this new tour. So I wanted to put all of my attention into this series.”
Charles-Barclay was also attracted by the potential for growth of triathlon, still a sport outside the mainstream. With almost 500,000 followers on Instagram, and another 100,000 on YouTube, she knows something about providing compelling content, and said there was no reason why her sport could not enter the mainstream if “the broadcast and storytelling was done right”.
“I’d love to see it be one of the Netflix series, like in tennis, golf or rugby,” she said. “My sister Holly does all my YouTube content, so I’m used to having a camera follow me around. That would be amazing.”
