Category: Races

The first Continental Cup race of 2023 took place in La Guaira, Venezuela yesterday. With temperatures nearing 30 degrees (Celsius), the athletes took on the Olympic distance for the first time this season. Men’s race Amid incredibly choppy conditions, the men took to the water from a beach start. Such was the size of some of the waves, those on the support boats did well not to get seasick. Irving Perez of Mexico and Ramon Armando Matute of Ecuador broke clear and were the first out of water. Together, they…

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What is now World Triathlon was created in 1989 and held its first World Championships in the same year. It was in the year 2000, though, that triathlon took a quantum leap forward. Having been approved in 1994, triathlon made its first ever appearance at the Olympic Games in 2000 and in doing so entered the big time. Men With a first Olympic medal on offer, much of the men’s field raced sparingly in 2000, opting to put all of their eggs in the Olympic basket. As a result, across…

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Men Only two men won more than one World Cup race in 2001: Simon Whitfield and Martin Krnavek. Both managed to win two races in a season in which eight men won a World Cup. Krnavek had the biggest winning margin of the World Cup season, taking the win at Corner Brook by 27 seconds. Meanwhile, the fastest run split went to Chris Hill, who recoreded a 30:41 in Cancun. At the World Championships in Edmonton, Peter Robertson won his first world title. He was in the middle of the…

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Men As was the case in 2003, the world championships were the final event of the year. Held in Cancun, the men’s race had a number of strong contenders, with Simon Whitfield leading the way. The only male Olympic champion in the world at that point, Whitfield won the first ever Commonwealth Games triathlon earlier in the year in Manchester. Miles Stewart came home in second, while future Olympic champion Hamish Carter took third. Both Whitfield and Stewart won two World Cups in 2002, as did Peter Robertson. Robertson started…

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Men Twenty years ago, the world championships took place Queenstown and were the final competition of the year. Conceptually, this is akin to the modern WTCS and it actually is not that dissimilar to how late the WTCS Final was in 2022. After a long year, consisting of no fewer than 18 World Cup races, the athletes toed the start line in December. The swim did little to break up the pack but on the bike Peter Robertson and Olivier Marceau launched an ambitious breakaway. Together, the pair out-split the…

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Men Due to a combination of regular absences and a lack of a stand-out athlete that could dominate a race, no man managed to win more than one World Cup race in 2004. Dmitriy Gaag won four World Cup medals in the year, including one win. His winning margin was also the smallest of the season, a triumph of 1 second at the Tongyeong World Cup. With the Olympic Games scheduled for August, the World Championships were held early in the year in Funchal, taking place in May. In what…

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Men Both Olympic champions took to the start line at the 2005 World Championships in Gamagori. Simon Whitfield and Hamish Carter each arrived in Gamagori in fine fettle alongside contenders such as Frederic Belaubre, Brad Kahlefelt and Courtney Atkinson. Each of those men exited the water in the front group. Meanwhile, two-time world champion Peter Robertson entered T1 some 45 seconds behind the leader. Over the course of the bike, Robertson was able to make up the ground lost in the swim and the race ultimately came down to the…

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2006 represented only the second occasion that triathlon took place in the Commonwealth Games. Having made two Olympic appearances at this point, it was an important stepping stone in the growth of the sport. Later in the year, however, the world championships in Lausanne took place under controversial circumstances. Less than two weeks before the racing began, the International Astronomical Union agreed upon the definition of a “planet” and determined that Pluto did not fulfil the criteria. As a result, Pluto was relegated to the status of a “dwarf planet”.…

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Yesterday we kicked off our dive into the history of triathlon by looking at the racing of 2008. Today, we wind the clock a further step back. Men 2007 was the year the world was introduced to the iPhone. It was also the year that Javier Gomez Noya made it onto his first world championships podium. Much as 2007 saw the beginning of a new era in mobile technology, so too did triathlon with the rise of its new star. Having previously hosted two World Cups, Hamburg was selected to…

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It was once said by Mark Twain that history never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme. Triathlon as a sport is now entering a period of maturity having established itself on the world sporting stage over the past two decades. What rhymes might there be if one were to look back through the history of the sport? We are starting a new series of articles to reflect on the history of the sport. Each article will delve into a year of triathlon from the pre-WTCS era, digging up races…

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