About The PTO
The goal of the Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO) is to celebrate the passion, determination and achievements of professional triathletes, bringing their stories to the fore and elevating racing on a global stage to reach and inspire new fans around the world.
An athlete-owned entity that supports non-drafting professional triathletes, the PTO is unique as a professional sports organisation in representing both pro women and men and through our athletes being self-determined co-owners. With investment partners including Sir Michael Mortiz’s Crankstart Investments, the PTO contributes its resources to give professional triathletes a collective voice and agency, helping our sport grow and thrive.
The PTO Tour
By creating triathlon’s first grand slam series, we’re raising the bar for our sport. Through the PTO Tour, which launched in 2022 with the PTO Canadian Open, Collins Cup and PTO US Open, we’re creating a world-class environment for world-class racing – for both our professional and age-group athletes.
For the pros, these ground-breaking majors feature prize purses of $1m plus global broadcasts across terrestial TV and streaming platforms to put triathlon on the map. Age groupers will have the chance to rub shoulders with the pros, hit the grandstand to watch every spine-tingling moment of the pro events and enjoy the thrill of racing on a stage fit for the world’s best athletes.
PTO World Rankings
The PTO World Ranking System crunches the numbers from every PTO athlete’s performance to gauge which are the best triathletes on the planet. Any race with a prize purse of at least $10,000 that’s longer than Olympic distance (1.5km swim, 40km bike and 10km run) is eligible, covering a vast array of PTO, Ironman, Challenge and Ironman 70.3 races in addition to a selection of more locally-run events.
In short, the higher an athlete sits in the PTO World Rankings, the bigger a star they are in the world of swim, bike, run. But the PTO WRS is about more than raising the profile of our athlete or their own bragging rights – the end-of-season PTO Bonus Prize Pool is linked to the rankings with an extra $100,000 going to each of our world #1 athletes and payouts going all the way to the 100th-ranked athletes.
PTO Maternity Leave Policy
Being athlete-owned and representing both female and male athletes, the PTO Maternity Leave Policy was created in November 2020 to help support women wanting to both start a family and continue their professional triathlon careers following pregnancy.
Women can take up to 15 months off while retaining an income based on their position in the PTO World Rankings at the time they begin maternity leave.
It’s a policy that 2022 PTO Canadian Open podium-getter and 2022 Ironman World Champion, Chelsea Sodaro, has spoken about widely, saying: “What’s been so challenging in the past, when women get married, when they get pregnant, it’s considered the kiss of death to your athletic career and what the PTO is doing is saying ‘no’. We value you. You are incredible athletes. We want you here. You matter. We want to support you so that you can find out how good you can be.”
The Collins Cup
Inspired by the Ryder Cup, the Collins Cup pits athletes from Team Europe, Team US and Team International against each other in 12 heated match races. The event is named after John and Judy Collins, who create the inaugural Hawaiian Iron Man Triathlon in 1978 and with it founded the sport of triathlon as we know it today.
Six men and six women per team fight it out in match-ups selected by Team Captains – each a legend of the sport lending their experience and expertise to help their athletes finish the event by hoisting the Collins Cup trophy, rather than taking away the ignominious Broken Spokes.
A points system is used to calculate the winners of each match race and these are totalled as the matches progress and each team edges closer to glory or defeat.
Team Europe currently rules the roost, having won the Collins Cup in both 2021 and 2022 with some truly outstanding performances and indomitable team spirit.
PTO and Sustainability
Building a sustainable business, able to thrive and contribute to the wider world across environmental and social touchpoints is important to us – and as an athlete-owned organisation, we understand the power and influence sport can have.
We are at the start of our Sustainability journey and we recognise that as a new organisation, we need to have focus in order to have impact. It is something we have learnt through our dedication to the sport of triathlon, but also from other, more established bodies.
