On the heels of the NBA Finals, which brought enormous crowds to downtown Milwaukee, the city is getting ready to host another large-scale sporting event: the USA Triathlon Age Group National Championships, set for Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 7 and 8.
USA Triathlon‘s largest annual event is expected to draw 16,000 visitors, including 10,000 spectators and 6,000 athletes, who will participate in Olympic-distance and sprint-distance races along Milwaukee’s lakefront. The event, sponsored by Toyota, is expected to generate an estimated $6 million in economic impact to the area, according to VISIT Milwaukee.
For both the Aug. 7 Olympic-distance race and the Aug. 8 sprint-distance race, the swim portion will take place in the Lake Shore State Park Inlet; the bike portion will take place along Lincoln Memorial Drive and the Lake Freeway; and the running portion will take place largely along the paved Oak Leaf Trail along Lincoln Memorial Drive and inside Veterans Park.
The event won’t be televised because the 2020 Tokyo Olympics will still be going on, but it will be live streamed on Team USA’s website, according to VISIT Milwaukee.
It will be the fourth time the Age Group National Championships are held in Milwaukee after the city played host in 2013, 2014 and 2015 and will again in 2022. This year’s event was originally scheduled to take place in Milwaukee last summer, but it was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“USA Triathlon has told us that Milwaukee was one of its competitors’ and spectators’ favorite host cities when they were here last, and now they revisit Milwaukee for 2021 as well as next year,” Marissa Werner, director of Sports Milwaukee, a new division of VISIT Milwaukee that aims to draw sporting events to the region.
USA Triathlon joins a lineup of major sporting events on the horizon for southeastern Wisconsin, including the Ryder Cup, set for Sept. 21 to 26 at Whistling Straits in Sheboygan County; the U.S. Speedskating Olympic Long Track Team Trials at the Pettit National Ice Center in January 2022; and the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball First/Second Rounds at Fiserv Forum in March 2022.
