3 members of an Eagle County family to compete at XTERRA World Championships

Josiah Middaugh’s XTERRA career began right before he started a family. This week in Trentino, Italy, the Eagle-Vail dad will line up for the 28th World Championships with both of his sons.

“I think XTERRA has always had a family atmosphere, especially for myself,” the 46-year-old said. “(I) raised my kids with the sport of XTERRA. It’s always been an amazing place to bring my kids, and it’s been a part of our lifestyle for a long time.”  

Porter and Sullivan Middaugh will join their dad — the 2015 XTERRA world champion — for the short-track event on Thursday and the marquee long-course championships on Saturday. Both races will be live streamed at XTERRA’s Youtube page, with the short track stream scheduled to start at 6 a.m. MST and the long race starting at 1:45 a.m. MST. The first-ever Youth World Championships will be shown on Sunday.

“It’s super special,” Josiah Middaugh said of racing with his kids before adding that he’s going to try his hardest to focus on his own race. “They’re 100% competent on their own, so I don’t want to be worrying about them. But they will be on my mind a lot, making sure they have the best race they’re capable of having.”

“It’s a very unique experience for me,” Porter Middaugh added. “It’s going to be fun and motivating to push myself against my brother and my dad, and I’ll be hoping for the best for them during the race as well … hopefully, I’ll see them out there.”

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Sullivan Middaugh said having the familial band back together at worlds was “pretty unexpected.”

“I am very excited for us to be on the same start line for the first time,” Sullivan Middaugh stated. “I don’t necessarily know what to expect but I think all of us will do our best to achieve our own specific goals.”

Over 1,000 off-road triathletes from 52 countries are expected to compete in Trentino this weekend, the seventh and final stop of XTERRA’s second-annual World Cup season. The overall title is determined by the athlete who accumulates the most points across all seven long-course and five short-track races. Last year, Sullivan and Josiah Middaugh finished ninth and 15th in the final standings, respectively, but only missed two weekends. With the removal of Beaver Creek from the XTERRA schedule in 2024, it was more difficult for Americans to chase the overall.

Sullivan Middaugh’s only XTERRA event this season was a fourth-place overall finish at the Oak Mountain World Cup stop on May 18th, a race in which he claimed the North American Championship title in the process. The 20-year-old also won the now defunct XTERRA USA title in both 2022 and 2023. He sits in 25th in the overall standings.

Josiah Middaugh, meanwhile, sits at 17th after taking 11th at Oak Mountain and tacking on a 10th and eighth in the short-track and long-course events at XTERRA Quebec on July 12-14. Thursday will be Porter Middaugh’s first XTERRA event of the season. In the 2023 USA event at Beaver Creek, he was the second-place American and fifth overall.

Thursday’s short-track race begins with a two-lap, 400-meter swim in Lake Molveno, transitions to a 4-lap, 8-kilometer bike course with steep bridges, varied surfaces and abrupt gradient shifts and concludes with a 3-kilometer run over a slightly shortened bike loop. The long-course is comprised of a 1.5-kilometer swim, 32-kilometer mountain bike and a 10-kilometer trail run.

“I am looking forward to the short-track race. I think that it suits me well and (I) have been racing some shorter distances this year,” said Sullivan Middaugh, who has focused mainly on draft-legal road triathlons this season. “I am going to treat it like any other race. It will be good to get rid of some of the pre-race nerves and go into Saturday with some confidence.”

Thursday will be Porter Middaugh’s first XTERRA short-track ever.

“I think experience is really important in XTERRA, and having them (Josiah and Sullivan) kind of show me the course has been really helpful,” he said. “It’s going to be fast and furious, and it’s going to burn the lungs and legs a little bit. It’s definitely a quick turnaround, but it’s mainly about staying focused and patient, especially on the technical sections, particularly when it’s wet.”

This year, Porter Middaugh joined his brother with USA Triathlon’s Project Podium after a record-setting fall and spring with the Battle Mountain cross-country and track teams. He said the environment has been “amazing.”

“I’m able to train with a group of guys who push me, and I could never ask for anything more,” Porter Middaugh said.

Sullivan Middaugh has taken monumental steps forward in his second season with Project Podium. He won his first-career continental cup event at the Americas Triathlon Cup in Calima, Columbia, on May 5 and won another in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic on Aug. 10.

“Project Podium is the best development program for them to be in, so I think no matter what genre of triathlon they end up doing, it’s really good for their development,” Josiah Middaugh said.

At last year’s XTERRA World Championship, Sullivan Middaugh finished third in the short-track and fifth in the long-course. He was 10th after the swim but moved into the lead by the end of the bike leg. He wound up four seconds behind silver medalist Arthur Serrieres and 13 seconds from winner Jens Emil Sloth Nielsen. Nielsen has finished fourth, second and third in his three World Cup short-track appearances this season.

“I have high expectations,” the Danish athlete said of the world championships. “I haven’t won one this year yet, so this could be the one. It’s a great venue, and I love that there’s always a lot of people around for it.”

Arthur Serrieres was the 2023 World Cup overall champion and is also the defending long-course world champion. He seems to be more focused on the latter event this weekend.

“The short track will just serve to me as an activation for Saturday’s world championship,” he told XTERRA earlier in the week.

Fellow Frenchmen Felix Forissier currently leads the overall standings with 769 points. Nielsen (703) and Serrieres (590) are sitting second and third, with 75 points given to the winner of the short track race and 100 going to the long-course champion. On the women’s side, Avon’s Suzie Snyder sits in ninth in the overall standings but is not on the start list for either the sprint or distance events this weekend.