Media

The ITU staff has come together for three days of meetings in Madrid, the location of the President’s office, to discuss the plans and challenges of the 2019 season, review the strategic plan for 2018-2020, and reflect on the past year.

“One of the things that I feel most proud of in my life is the team that we have built here in ITU”, expressed ITU President and IOC member, Marisol Casado. “We have a perfect mix of experience, talent, compromise, leadership and commitment, and this is what continues to move our organisation and our events forwards. Everybody works hard to deliver the best events and keep our athletes at the heart of all discussions, and I’m sure that the exercise we have tackled these last couple of days will help us to improve and achieve even greater goals”, she said.

Being one of the very few International Federations with a female president, ITU also leads by example in terms of gender balance, with nearly 30% female employees. In counting heads, the meetings brought together 13 nationalities, all working with the same goal: growing triathlon.

ITU currently has offices in three countries: Canada, Spain and Switzerland, where the head office is located. Whilst the majority of the staff works in one of the three locations, team members are also based in many other countries and continents to try to reduce the amount of travel necessary to deliver all ITU events worldwide.

Talking about travel. During the past year, the ITU staff has traversed the globe more than 12 times in total, landing in 25 countries to organise ITU events. And that is not counting those races that we have also helped deliver at major events during 2019: Buenos Aires Youth Games, Palembang Asian Games, Glasgow European Championships and Tarragona Mediterranean Games, amongst others.

But is not all about the racing. ITU senior staff and the President, Marisol Casado, have actively taken part in the IOC Forum, SportAccord, International Federations Forum in Lausanne, multiple IOC Commissions and an incredible number of meetings with all our stakeholders in order to maximize the presence of our sport worldwide.

During the staff meeting, the team was able to lay the foundations and strategies for the coming season, finalise the calendar and redefine partnerships so that everybody will be able to enjoy our sport even more once the exciting new season gets underway in just a couple of months.