Question: In other discussions, the question of triathlons came up, regarding
distances and the public's perceptions. In the examples that were
given, I started to question myself about why there wasn't a "set
standards" of distances in a triath. I mean, when people think of
marathons, they think of 26.2 miles. When the public thinks of
triathlon, they think of the Ironman in Hawaii. Doing some simple
calculations, I found the ratio of swimming:biking:running of an Ironman
triathlon were 1:46.67:10.92.
Example. swim 1/2 mile, bike 23.3 mile, run 5.46 miles.
I really don't the full history of the triathlon except was told
from watching ABC sports. If the Ironman was the first, then shouldn't
standard model should be based off this. If it wasn't, the base it off
of that. Wouldn't that make some sense or am I just blowing smoke? Of
course this would still allow any organization to design thier triathlon
any way they see fit.
Answer:
im not a triathlon historian but there were a few other races that
popped up around or before the hawaii ironman that had various distances
(san diego, ca, cypress gardens, fl, and others), the Hawaii race is
just the one that really launched the sport's popularity. There are a
few schools of thought regarding tris - those that think that IM
distance is the 'real' triathlon distance and that most everything else
is a bastardized version of it, and those that could care less, as long
as it involves a swim/bike/run, not necessarily in that order.
for a brief synopsis of distances go here:
http://www.recsporttriathlon.com/TheDistances.html
whats happened is that the popularity of the sport got so big that event
directors realized they had an untapped market and started catering more
to recreational athletes -thus the sprints and shorter races that are
all over.
Triathlon "standards" are very difficult to pin down since each course is
different for a wide variety of reasons. Among them the set up of the
transition areas, fresh water swims vs. salt water swims, order of events,
traffic conditions, drafting allowances, etc. In other words triathlon
refers to an event with 3 different sports linked into one continous race.
What is standardized is the name of events, Ironman refers to 2.4, 112,
26.2, Olympic refers to 1.5k, 40k, 10k.
The history of the ironman started in Hawaii when decided to combine the
three toughest events that occured on Hawaii to determine which sport had
the most fit athlete. It just so happened that the Ironman distances were
the distances of the events. They could have been any other distances but
that was just happened to be what they were.
