Major triathlon race cancelled on safety grounds after road users fail to obey local closures

Challenge Sandefjord in Norway was cancelled on Saturday on safety grounds as road users failed to obey closures in the town and surrounding area after signs were removed.

Pros and Age Groupers from all over Norway and 26 countries around the world had descended on the Scandanavian venue for what had been intended to be a festival of swim, bike and run.

But on Saturday afternoon things went badly wrong when the Middle Distance race for Pros and Age Groupers was cancelled, with organisers unable to guarantee the safety of competitors. The cause for that was road users failing to obey the local closures in place for the event after some road signs had been removed.

Challenge Sandefjord statement

A statement on the Challenge Sandefjord Facebook page read: “Unfortunately, we confirm Challenge Sandefjord is cancelled today for safety reasons on instruction from the local police. Athlete safety is paramount and we’d like to extend our thanks to local authorities for their hard work in testing conditions.

“We’d also like to thank all the athletes for your patience and understanding. We share your disappointment that you are unable to race following all your hard work preparing for your big day. All athletes will be contacted directly by the race organisation in the coming hours with further information.”

Unprecedented scenes

Anette Bruras, President of Norway Triathlon, told us the scenes were unprecedented, explaining: “This is something we have not experienced before. I am truly sad for the athletes who travelled to Sandefjord from all over Norway and from 26 other countries.”

“The city center was really challenging, but there were also some road signs removed outside the city on the bike course.”

Meanwhile Arild Tveiten, who masterminded Norway’s rise to triathlon prominence during well over decade as Sports Director for the Norwegian Triathlon Federation, said on Twitter: “Its so sad. On a day like this you are not proud to be Norwegian. Triathlon promotes a healthy lifestyle and a positive mindset that have changed many people’s life.

“And likely the ones who sabotaged this could benefit of a more positive attitude and mindset.”

British pro ‘disappointed and upset’

British pro Chloe Sparrow was one of the many athletes left upset and disappointed by what had transpired.

She told TRI247: “Our day started not as early as normal..with a 1.30pm race start. The briefing took place at 11am, this was all in Norwegian which we thought was odd for a big event, very limited translation too. A lot of athletes had questions at the briefing where the answers to the majority of these questions were “i’m not sure”…this all started to feel a little disorganised.

“We all made our way down to the race start at 12.45, to get there nice and early to prepare and start warming up. At 1.15 all the athletes started to line up on the pontoon, it was cold and we were all eager to start the race. At this point there were no officials in sight and no information on the start times (if pro women were going straight after the men, if it was a dive or water start) everyone was unsure on what was happening…

“At 1.30 the pontoon was extremely busy with all the pro athletes and age group athletes…still no officials in sight. At 1.35 there was an announcement saying the race is delayed until 2pm. At this point we were all cold and a little anxious. At 2pm there was a further announcement saying that we were waiting on the police to confirm it was safe on the bike course. At 2.15 we still hadn’t heard anything. At 2.30pm they made the announcement that the race is cancelled and that they were “sorry” and that was it. I’m sure i speak for many athletes when i say we were extremely disappointed and upset with this decision and lack of communication.

“The race did nothing to try and put on an alternative like a swim-run. They apologised it wasn’t safe on the bike course and that was that. There had been no emails to athletes on explaining the reason for the unsafe bike course.”