From complete beginners having their first ever go at a GO TRI event, through the record numbers lining up to contest the Triathlon England National Championships, to the huge haul of medals achieved at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, 2014 was a year to celebrate.

 

With such burgeoning interest in the sport we focused our attention on developing our membership proposition and we consulted members to find out what they want from us. Thanks to this process we now have more staff dedicated to responding to our 16,253 members' needs at times that suit them. 

 

Contact with members on facebook and twitter grew 32% and 80% respectively in 2014 and unique visitors to our website were up 18%, showing that connecting online and on social media is ever more important. We introduced our online members' area triconnect, which we will expand in 2015, and we have developed a digital version of our members' magazine, Trinews.

 

We have also worked with British Triathlon to increase the discounts available to members, including on Garmin products and Matrix Cycles. Members remain at the forefront of our efforts as an organisation and we will continue to improve our package in 2015.

 

GO TRI, the low-cost and easy-to-access triathlon experience that were launched in April 2013, went from strength to strength with 1,600 participants at almost 200 events up to September 2014. People new to the sport were encouraged to get involved and to give it a go at 61 different venues across the country but GO TRI is not just about having a go at racing: an estimated 6-7,000 participants having attended GO TRI training at one of 70 sessions on offer each week, thanks to our partnerships with national leisure centre operators.

 

GO TRI's aim is that people will continue in the sport and Triathlon England has increased the number of mass-participation races it supports in locations that did not have a significant triathlon offer from six in 2013 to 20 in 2014, double its target for the year of 10. This saw an estimated additional 6,000 race starts in 2014 and this growing success of our mass-participation races, among a total of 1,076 registered races (an increase of 30%), along with the growth in GO TRI, is making the sport more accessible than ever.

 

The Triathlon England National Championships were bigger and better than ever in 2014, with 3,661 people lining up at the race starts, and we have built on this success to make 2015's Championships even better. With a record number of bids to host the events resulting in the largest ever geographical spread of races, 2015 is set to see our sport's reach grow ever wider.