Super League Triathlon triumphed at the prestigious Sports Industry Awards with the SLT Arena Games beating off stiff competition to land the Cutting Edge Award.
The Arena Games has been a huge hit with world-class athletes vying to compete, large audiences across broadcast and digital, and global broadcasters screening to more than 100 territories around the world.
The Sports Industry Awards is now the most prestigious in Europe and the industry’s biggest night of the year – attended by 1,700 high profile guests from the British and international sport industry including business leaders, celebrities, sporting legends and media.
The Cutting Edge Award, in association with PT SportSuite, is described as ‘one for the gamechangers. Those who’ve gone beyond themselves, broken new boundaries thought differently or brought in new ideas or technology.’
Last year’s winner was the INEOS 1:59 Challenge which saw Eliud Kipchoge break the two-hour marathon mark. Other nominees in 2021 were: BT Sport, EFL, Joymo and Nurvv.
Super League CEO and Co-Founder Michael D’hulst was on hand to accept the award at the star-studded ceremony in London just days after a successful first Championship Series event in the UK.
He said: “I am very proud and excited to have won the Cutting Edge Award at the Sports Industry Awards. These awards recognise the very best in the sporting world and for Super League to have put triathlon in this illustrious company underlines the innovation and growth we are driving in the sport.
“It is especially exciting to have won it in times of a pandemic, when as a company and a team we committed to push forward and launch a cutting edge event like the Arena Games in the face of adversity. That is what we stand for and why as a team we are successful in re-defining triathlon.”
The SLT Arena Games was launched in partnership with Zwift with a debut event in Rotterdam in 2020 before expanding to two further events at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and a return to the Netherlands in 2021 with paratriathlon formats added to the mix.
Super League’s innovative SLT Arena Games format blends in real life and virtual racing and proved a massive hit both among fans and the sport industry.
The SLT Arena Games see athletes complete three rounds of fast and furious action. The swim takes place in an Olympic sized pool and the bike and run legs on static equipment with the racing realised in the virtual world of Zwift, the world’s leading online training and racing platform, providing detailed data insights and up close and personal emotions of the competitors.
The athletes face three stages of swim, bike and run, with the order of the legs shuffled every round. Each swim is 200m, bike 4km and run 1km, guaranteeing maximum excitement and maximum suffering for the best of the best.
