Lack of Sponsors Foils Triathlon

Less than four months before it was scheduled to stage a much-touted international triathlon in the harbor area, the Port of Los Angeles has unceremoniously dumped the event because it lacks corporate sponsors.

In a two-paragraph press release received Wednesday, the port announced that the Oct. 2 triathlon was canceled because fund-raisers mustered just $40,000 toward the $200,000 in private donations needed to stage the event.

Fund-raisers also had collected $85,000 in non-monetary donations, but port officials said they needed cash. All of the contributions will be returned, they said.

Last August, the port set up a nonprofit corporation to run the event and contributed $100,000 as seed money. Port officials had predicted the event would become one of the premier triathlons in the world and would attract international attention to Los Angeles and lure more customers to the port.

But port spokeswoman Julia Nagano said the response from local corporations did not meet expectations. She blamed the lack of donations on longstanding commitments by corporations to other causes and on uncertainty surrounding the launching of any new event.

The triathlon is a three-event endurance race that involves swimming, bicycling and running. The port’s event was to consist of a two-kilometer swim at Cabrillo Beach, a 40-kilometer bike race through San Pedro and the Palos Verdes Peninsula, and a 10-kilometer run through Ports O’ Call and the Cabrillo Marina.

Rick Gaydos, president of Tri-Sports Inc., the nonprofit corporation set up by the port, said the group notified port officials in early May that fund-raising was sluggish and that the event would have to be canceled unless the port was willing to contribute more. Gaydos said Tri-Sports was out of money.

Lonnie Tang, the port’s director of commerce, said that Ezunial Burts, executive director of the port, talked with harbor commissioners and other officials and decided not to spend any more money to keep the venture afloat.

“The $100,000 was truly seed money to determine if there was adequate interest in the triathlon,” Tang said. “Perhaps in a year the interest will be there, and the timing would be right.”

But Gaydos, who predicted the event would have been a “tremendous success” if the port had agreed to underwrite it, held out no hope for a future triathlon.

“It is a dead issue,” he said.