MADRID, 7 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Ibiza will once again bring together the best triathletes in the world in the PTO Tour European Open, which will be held on September 28 and 29, 2024 and, for the first time, will feature the novelty in the next edition of the tests for the groups of age.
This was announced by the Professional Triathletes Organization (PTO) and the Spanish Triathlon Federation (FETRI) at the World Travel Market, which is being held at the ExCel in London and in the company of the president of the Consell Insular d’Eivissa, Vicente Marí.
The Pitiusa island will host again, thanks to the Consell Insular d’Eivissa and the collaboration of the Spanish Triathlon Federation and the Professional Triathletes Organization, a test that will have a great economic and sporting impact.
“Ibiza is known for its beaches and its parties, but we also want to be known as a top-level sports destination. The celebration of this new championship is really important for our image and our income, because we already saw that the PTO test that came to our island at the beginning of May of this year helped create the best start to a summer season in our history,” said Vicente Marí.
Marí recalled that the triathlon races attracted 12,000 more visitors and generated an estimated economic impact of 12.5 million euros. “It will also change when they consider coming to the island, sending a clear message that we are ‘open for business’ from early spring through fall, rather than just during the summer months of June, July and August,” he added.
In 2022, Ibiza hosted 9 sporting events that attracted 28,800 visitors to the island and generated a direct economic impact of 30.1 million euros. With two months left until the end of 2023, the economic impact of this year’s sporting events, including the TDF European Open and the World Triathlon Championship, could reach €42.7 million.
These data would represent an increase of 41 percent compared to the 30.1 million euros in 2022. In addition to the PTO Tour professional races, in which the 20 best-ranked female and male triathletes in the world will compete, the event will also host a PTO 100km European Open for age groups, following a similar model to the PTO and USA Triathlon in Milwaukee, in August 2023.
The 2023 PTO European Open in Ibiza was one of the most notable PTO circuit races of the year. In the men’s event, the last three Olympic champions faced each other for the first time: Jan Frodeno (2008), Alistair Brownlee (2012 and 2016) and Kristrian Blummenfelt (2020), but the winner was the Australian Max Neumann. In the women’s event, the German Anne Haug defeated the British Lucy Charles-Barclay, the new Ironman world champion.
The president of the Spanish Triathlon Federation, José Hidalgo, also expressed his satisfaction with the return of the PTO to Ibiza. “We are very pleased to renew this agreement with PTO and that their races can be held in Ibiza again, after the success of last season. Spain has always been a pioneering country, and we are convinced that the collaboration of all the actors and organizers of this sport is essential to make it bigger and more important,” he said.
On the 2023 course, the swim took place at Figueretas beach, before the athletes cycled towards San Antonio on a course of several bike laps, finishing with a foot race passing through the port of Ibiza and entered the area declared a World Heritage Site of the city. Next year’s route won’t be exactly the same, but more details will be announced later in the year.
Last week, PTO announced that its PTO Tour 2024 will visit Singapore on April 13-14, 2024, and that it will release more venues on its global tour in the coming months.