Triathlon returns at Riding Mountain

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This article was published 12/02/2025 (269 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Riding Mountain Triathlon will be back in all its glory in August.

With work to eradicate zebra mussels on Clear Lake last summer putting a complete ban on boats, the swim-bike-run triathlon was turned into a run-bike-run duathlon and drew a fraction of the normal race field.

Even so, race director Dave Lipchen said it was a bittersweet day when he heard the news that boats will be back next summer and the full triathlon can return.

“It’s a tough one,” Lipchen said. “Obviously zebra mussels will explode and we will have to deal with that, but on the other hand, it’s like the ultimate invasive species and everywhere already anyway.

“It was very tough to try to survive it. I’m not going to lie on that. It makes me you question what’s the point of doing anything if everything gets completely wiped out every single time something is up.

“We had just started seeing the light out of COVID and then this struck.”

The policy change came in late January when the park announced their new “one boat, one lake” aquatic invasive species prevention program. That aims to cut the chance of more invasive species reaching the lake by restricting access to boats that only stay on the lake.

That means Lipchen will once again be able to have rescue craft on the water during the swim.

“You can swim in the lake and you can fish off the side, great, but I can’t save you,” Lipchen said. “If I try to put an event on, I can’t save you if something actually happens if I can’t get somebody to you to pull you out of the water. That’s what the issue was.”

The two options for athletes last summer were a sprint duathlon (5-km run, 20-km bike, 2.5-km run) or a super sprint duathlon (2.5-km run, 10-km bike, 1.5-km run).

The triathlon normally features Olympic (1.5-kilometre swim, 40-km bike, 10-km run), Sprint (750-metre swim, 20-km bike, five-km run) and Super Sprint (300-metre swim, 10-km bike, 2.5-km run) distances for adults, plus a duathlon (2.5-km run, 20-km bike, 5-km run), with shorter races for children the next day in the Kids Of Steel event.

The change had a massive impact on participation, which dropped from 544 athletes in 2023 to fewer than 200 last summer.

“Nobody wants to do a duathlon when the weather is warm enough to swim in when we have such a short window to have events,” Lipchen said.

It’s been quite a decade for the race, which is Manitoba’s largest and most prestigious triathlon.

Laurie Penton started the Riding Mountain Triathlon in 1986 and ran it for 10 years before Winnipegger Dave Lyon, a Manitoba track and field legend who died in 2013, took it over. Brandon’s Ellis and Deb Crowston worked closely with him for several years and then began to run it in 2007.

The race took a one-year hiatus in 2016 as Highway 10 was repaved, and in 2018, the Crowstons handed the event over to Lipchen, an East St. Paul resident who runs the Windburn Multi-Sport Academy.

During the COVID shutdowns in 2020 and 2021, Lipchen staged virtual triathlons to keep the race going in people’s minds.

In 2022, 394 athletes came back, which was half of what the race had in 2019.

“Hopefully this year we have a really good race, a big rebound, not the COVID rebound, which was some people came back and everyone sat on the couch for two years and weren’t ready to play,” Lipchen said. “That was a long, drawn-out return to fairly sustainable numbers.”

Just as the numbers began to bounce back in 2023, the race was hit with another blow with the boat ban that killed the triathlon. Lipchen admitted it was hard to take.

“The amount of people who came, I’m very thankful because it was clearly in support of trying to keep the race going and myself and trying to hold the community together with all the events,” Lipchen said. “That was good but it’s not sustainable. The only reason the race survived last year was that I have a lot of sponsors who helped keep the race. Without the sponsors, the race would have cost me money to host.

“That’s how impactful it was. I wouldn’t have been able to do it again.”

Until he heard the news that boats were back a couple of weeks ago, Lipchen was going to launch race registration with the caveat that without clearance by early June to have boats, kayaks and paddle boards in the water, he was going to shut the event down and return all the registration and sponsorship money.

Happily, he won’t have to worry about that now.

“You’re playing this total mind game trying to figure out how you can keep the race alive and how you can keep the athletes engaged and then hope it all works and is still successful,” Lipchen said. “We were able to pull it off.”

Lipchen is planning to be very proactive in reaching out to former athletes who have raced, provincial associations and clubs to let them know the event is back in its entirety.

Registration will open soon, which will allow people to know they have a spot and can reserve their rooms or campsites well in advance.

Despite losing four triathlons in the last nine years, Lipchen is certain Manitoba’s oldest continually running event has lots of life left in it yet. That goes well beyond the event itself.

“This one is engrained,” Lipchen said. “It’s one of the earliest races in Triathlon Manitoba’s history. Once again though, a race is just one piece of the puzzle. The community is awesome, the national park is awesome, it’s beautiful, it has challenging everything, it has nice rolling hills, the water is beautiful, there is a very big business support community there with all the hotels and all the restaurants and the shops.

“It draws in more people just because of the infrastructure they have going than just the race itself.”

He notes that whole families come up for race weekend, and while they may not all participate in the event, there are unique activities for every age and interest.

“It’s got a lot of stuff,” Lipchen said. “It’s not like you can pick a race up and just move it … This one engages the whole family.

“It’s a pure destination race.”

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