The reasoning behind triathlon’s end

Robert Mortensen’s letter on April 5 (“Wake up, Newport, or you’ll be next”) discussed the Newport Beach City Council’s recent action to deny a new permit for the Kring and Chung Triathlon. Mortensen’s letter was correct in some regards ? yes, the triathlon is well liked, worthwhile for active people of all ages, and an event with history both in the triathlon field and in Newport Beach.

But Mortensen, like the race organizer, seems to have entirely missed the reasons that the council denied a permit for the event. He also missed the difficulty with which city staff came to our recommendation and with which the City Council supported that recommendation. To a person, we all concluded that the denial of this event’s permit ? while appropriate ? saddened us greatly.

Mortensen’s letter, in addition to implying that we take great joy in harming athletic events, ignored the sound reasons why the permit was denied, and there are several.

Most important, the bike course for the event blocked hundreds of people in Harbor Cove, Park Newport, and Sea Village from leaving their homes during the bike portion of the event. Think about that for a moment. You’re at home, on a Sunday morning in May, and you’re stuck ? locked in, unable to leave your home for church, coffee or the grocery store for one to two hours without an emergency police escort. No other athletic event ? be it the 30,000-person strong Race for the Cure, the Relay for Life, or the 1,200-participant Pacific Coast Triathlon (nearly 1.5 times the attendance of the Kring and Chung Triathlon) ? does that. That’s just unacceptable for a city to do to even one resident no matter how wonderful the sporting event.

This race’s recent history shows that the race organizer has a pattern of not paying fees, not submitting the required plans and materials (the same plans and materials that every other event successfully submits), having an inadequate number of admittedly well-meaning volunteers (several who completely abandoned their posts during the race last year, forcing city staff to manage parts of the race), and road closures that occurred too early and last longer than the race organizer’s permit said they could last. Significantly longer.

Trash and racers intrude into the Upper Newport Bay Ecological Reserve, and inadequate trash cleanup follows the event.

Finally, Mortensen attacks the city staff for preparing an “elaborate presentation” about the event and the reasons to deny the permit. This is a tad ironic, since another race supporter at the same hearing suggested that the city, to paraphrase, won’t be able to articu- late the reasons why this event should not go forward. We appear damned if we did articulate those reasons and damned if we didn’t.

I respectfully urge Pilot readers to watch the council’s discussion on this matter. Ask yourself what you would have done if you were in the council’s shoes, faced with the same evidence. You can watch it at any time using the city’s Web-streaming service (www.city.newport-beach.ca.us). I think you will come to the same conclusion the council did: This race, on this course and with this race organizer affected residents too much to risk another year of poor compliance with permit conditions.

All of that said, without exception, the city staff and council look forward to seeing an alternate proposal for next year’s event.