We had the privilege of sitting down with PTO CEO Sam Renouf to chat about all things 2027 T100 Triathlon World Tour – the exciting rebrand and what the new series will look like. But shortly after we started, after I shared my love for the T100 series, having travelled to London, Ibiza, Lake Las Vegas and Dubai in its inaugural year while being coached by Mirinda Carfrae and working toward my pro card…well, Renouf shared that he knew Carfrae and used to train with her back in the day.

We all know triathlon is a small world…but we had to ask more!

And while Renouf rarely, if ever, highlights his own athletic background, we had the opportunity to learn about his days as an elite triathlete under renowned coach Brett Sutton. Renouf describes himself as a ‘college/uni’ athlete – training and racing on the GB squad while completing a degree at Loughborough. As he approached graduation, Renouf shared that Sutton believed he could step up to be winning professional races within perhaps three to four years. The problem? Prize money at the time was often in the realm of $5,000 for a win, and the economics ultimately made pursuing the sport at the highest level non-viable for him.

Why is this important? Well, it perfectly sets Renouf up for the role he holds today. His mission has been not only to grow triathlon on a global scale and make it truly mainstream, like golf, tennis or Formula 1, but also to make the sport financially viable for professionals, solving a gap he experienced firsthand as an athlete and being part of the solution for generations to come.

A Visionary From the Start

Renouf shared that with change and new ideas, there will always be skepticism. And he certainly faced his share of doubt and pushback at the start: The PTO will run out of money. This isn’t going to last. It’s not sustainable.

Those questions were particularly prominent during the inaugural T100 season in 2024, when the series significantly elevated the economics of professional triathlon through athlete contracts, $275,000 race-day prize purses that included $50,000 for each winner, and season-end bonuses tied to the overall standings. But through it all, Renouf’s underlying vision never wavered.

Renouf was a student of other sports, intent on bringing models that had worked elsewhere into triathlon.

“Triathlon has all the ingredients,” he said. “It’s already a global sport, there’s mass participation alongside the professional racing…it has the raw materials to succeed the way other sports like golf or tennis or Formula 1 have.”

“What people sometimes don’t realize is that those sports didn’t start the way they are now,” he added. They too were once fragmented and lacked the mainstream audiences they enjoy today.

By studying the factors that helped transform those sports – including professional athlete representation, the unification of disparate events into a more cohesive, year-long global narrative, and improvements to broadcast and coverage – Renouf became convinced that the same kind of global success could extend to triathlon.

It’s a vision he has held from day one, and one he has never wavered from.

What 2027 Will Look Like (and Where Does Ironman Fit In?)

As many likely already know, 2027 will mark the launch of an expanded and revamped Triathlon World Tour, bringing together the highest-level T100 (100km) and T50 (Olympic/sprint-distance) events, alongside Challenger Series events that will serve as a developmental pathway for elite athletes looking to work their way toward the highest level of the sport.

To this end, the original T100 has joined forces with World Triathlon and acquired the Challenge Family events (apart from Roth, which will continue as a standalone iconic event) – all aligned with recommendations originating from the July 2025 Deloitte report, which identified the unification of various series and the creation of a clearer narrative and pathway through the sport as essential to its growth.

And this brings us right back to Renouf’s study of other sports. These are the same kinds of structural changes that helped sports like golf evolve beyond fragmented series and events toward a more cohesive, understandable and engaging season-long narrative.

But there’s one obvious question on many athletes’ minds: Where does Ironman fit in?

Renouf addressed it directly, but his answer was perhaps unexpected – at least to us.

“Our competition isn’t Ironman, and we absolutely don’t see them as such,” he said. “Our objective is elevating the sport as a whole…and our comparators are these other sports like tennis and golf. And that is our metric of success. If our organization can be part of what gets triathlon there, that is success for us.”

It’s an interesting distinction. Rather than measuring success by whether the Triathlon World Tour gains ground on another organization within triathlon, Renouf is measuring it by whether triathlon itself gains ground among the world’s major professional sports.

And, indeed, growth in one corner of professional triathlon can help drive growth elsewhere. Many would credit the T100’s increased payouts and creation of a season-long professional series with helping spur the subsequent creation of the Ironman Pro Series, which has brought significant new economic opportunities to athletes competing across the Ironman and Ironman 70.3 distances as well.

Looking Ahead

While the preliminary T100 and T50 events were announced at a press conference held on July 24th in London, further details will be released in Pontevedra, Spain, the same weekend as the WTCS Championship Final.

Having covered this sport for more than 20 years, Triathlon Magazine has witnessed firsthand the significant economic and audience growth that has occurred alongside the rise of the PTO, T100 and Renouf’s leadership.

But perhaps the impact is just as interesting at the grassroots level.

This year, 24 athletes from our local triathlon club took up the sport and raced the Vancouver T100, many for the first time. A world-class event came to their city, and suddenly they had a reason to learn to swim, bike and run.

And maybe that’s the clearest expression of the vision Renouf described to us. Grow the professional sport. Create opportunities for the best athletes in the world to make a viable living from it. Build events and stories that people want to watch and follow. And, in doing so, inspire more people to discover the sport for themselves.

There is still plenty of work ahead before triathlon occupies the same mainstream sporting landscape as tennis, golf or Formula 1. But after speaking with Renouf, one thing is abundantly clear: he still believes it can get there.