NEW YORK — It will not be difficult to spot Max Fennell among the 34 professional triathletes who line up on the Hudson River’s edge early Sunday for the New York City Triathlon. Fennell is considered to be the only African-American professional triathlete.
NEW YORK — It will not be difficult to spot Max Fennell among the 34 professional triathletes who line up on the Hudson River’s edge early Sunday for the New York City Triathlon. Fennell is considered to be the only African-American professional triathlete.
The sport has been around since the early 1970s. But while some fitness and sport movements, like running, have drawn throngs of African-American athletes, the triathlon has drawn only a relative few.
Fennell, 29, and the other athletes in New York will compete in a 1.5-kilometer swim, a 40-kilometer bike ride and a 10-kilometer run. He has promoted himself vociferously as a change agent whose success may draw more black athletes into the sport. He earned his professional certification in 2014 from USA Triathlon, the sport’s U.S. governing body.
“Someone is always reminding me they are judging me with some type of bias,” said Fennell, who USA Triathlon said is the only black professional triathlete racing that it knows of (the organization says he may be the first, but its records are inconclusive.) “A lot of these people are looking at me like I shouldn’t be able to swim. I understand that I have to do well in the race. Even if I have a bad day and place top 20 in the race, there is usually a black security guard or a black kid there who gives me a fist bump, saying, like, thank you for representing.”
Several factors contribute to a lack of diversity in the sport.
Although the recent success of African-American swimmers in the Olympics, like Simone Manuel, who at the Rio Games last year became the first black woman to win an individual Olympic gold medal in swimming, may open the door more, there are still disproportionately fewer African-American swimmers. For years, racial discrimination kept blacks out of public pools and beaches, leaving few role models in the sport.
And with the rates of affluence lower among African-Americans, triathlons can seem too expensive to pursue, from the entry fees (more than $300, for example, for the New York City triathlon) to the equipment, including bike gear.
The dearth of successful black triathletes means younger African-Americans, in particular, have little inspiration to pay attention and join in. There are likely to be only a handful of black triathletes among the larger pool of 4,000 nonprofessional athletes at the New York race.
When USA Triathlon took a survey last year of more than 12,000 people from its membership –including amateurs and professionals — it found that just under 1 percent of the respondents identified themselves as African-American. Ironman, the best-known race organizer and the sponsor of more than 250 events worldwide, says it does not have demographic information on participants.
Tony Brown, founder and president of the Black Triathletes Association, an organization begun in 2014 to increase the number of African-American triathletes, says he does not think African-Americans “see the sport as cool” because it has no black stars.
“When you look at major sports — basketball, baseball, football — you celebrate the athlete,” said Brown, whose organization now has 1,000 members. “You see LeBron James on billboards.”
“When you make the sport look like something you can do, because someone does it that looks like you,” he said, “then it’s easier to be interested in the sport.”
USA Triathlon says it has taken a number of steps to diversify the sport, including conducting surveys and focus groups to learn more about the demographics of its members. The organization has also introduced “Tri for Change” — a program that is dedicated to teaching children basic swimming, biking and running skills at no charge.
“It has been very well received locally, and we’ve seen great participation,” said Chuck Menke, chief marketing officer at USA Triathlon. “We haven’t always been able to accommodate all the potential kids who could participate in the program, but it’s still in its infancy.”
Fennell did not always aspire to be a triathlete. Growing up, his goal was to become a professional soccer player. He played collegiate soccer at Delaware Valley College near Philadelphia, but during his sophomore year, he was arrested and convicted of robbery and aggravated assault after he broke into a house in his neighborhood with a friend who was armed with a baseball bat.
Fennell was sentenced to 180 days in jail, but he was permitted to serve the sentence on weekends. To pass the time, he watched television and was captivated by the broadcast of the Ironman championship in Hawaii.
After completing his sentence in 2011, he continued training for soccer, but an injury kept him from trying out for a professional team. He then turned to triathlons, and he achieved enough success to turn pro in 2014.
Fennell has participated in 54 short- and moderate-distance triathlons and two half Ironmans, in which participants swim 1.2 miles, bike 56 miles and run 13.1 miles. Some day, he said, he hopes to compete in the Olympics and use that to help young black athletes start to do triathlons.
“I want to show kids that in the face of one of the whitest sports in the world, there is this guy who is grinding through and being successful,” Fennell said. “I want some kid to look at what I’ve done and inspire them.”