Alex Payne will anchor the presentation

PTO Tour broadcast team Alex Payne Vicky Holland Barrie Shepley Belinda Granger

The Professional Triathletes Organisation has revealed the broadcast team for the first PTO Tour event.

Taking place in Edmonton, Canada, on 23-24 July, the event can be seen across Europe through Warner Bros. Discovery’s Eurosport channels plus discovery+ and GCN+ platforms.

Sport presenter Alex Payne will anchor the presentation, with commentary to come from former triathlete Belinda Granger and experience commentator Barrie Shepley. Another successful ex-triathlete, Vicky Holland, will on-the-ground expert insight for the women’s and men’s elite races as they unfold.

All four were also involved as part of the larger team that presented the inaugural Collins Cup last year. Martin Turner is executive producer for the PTO Tour, as he also was for the Collins Cup.

Payne said: “Bizarrely, the lack of personal affinity with triathlon was part of the appeal – the chance to learn about the extraordinary challenge the sport presents, the characters within it, the tactics, the locations and the history. You don’t often get an opportunity to dive into something with so much colour and appeal, and so many stories that deserve to be told on a much broader scale.

“For someone outside the sport, the ability to put your body into places that most normal people could never achieve is fascinating. And the fact that most of them don’t even see it makes it even more remarkable. It’s obviously on us as broadcasters to grow the appeal, the awareness and the engagement – but I also think the athletes need to be helped in understanding just how extraordinary their achievements are, and how strong their message is, to the armchair viewer. That’s the bit that excites me – and being able to develop a consistent and engaging narrative over the PTO Tour season, underpinned by the PTO Rankings.”

Turner added: “The beauty of sport is watching those ‘wow’ moments. That’s why we buy into the athletes as heroes, because they can do things we can only dream of. The mission for all of us on the PTO Tour broadcast team is to capture those moments and then take them to the biggest possible audience.

“The best athletes haven’t really gone head-to-head that often before. But already at the PTO Canadian Open, we’ll have the top men – Norwegian’s Kristian Blummenfelt and Gustav Iden plus Canadian Lionel Sanders, all racing against each other for the first time this season. And in the women’s race, we’ll have 17 of the world’s top 25 PTO Ranked athletes, led by hometown hero and World #10 Paula Findlay, who grew up racing in Edmonton.”