The sport of aquathlon consists of a continuous, two-stage race involving swimming followed by running.
The International Triathlon Union (ITU) and its member federation organizations sanction competitions and govern the sport.
The ITU holds an aquathlon world championship, typically held in the week before and at the same location as the ITU Standard Course Triathlon World Championship.
Holding an aquathlon rather than a triathlon can be an attractive option for a race director because:
- It reduces race logistics by removing one of the legs from a triathlon.
- It reduces the amount of space needed to hold a race limiting it to a rather small and manageable area. Bicycling often takes up the largest area of the three legs of a triathlon making it, in a practical sense, the most difficult leg for a race director to manage.
Sometimes called an aquathon
An aquathlon is sometimes called an aquathon. The ITU and USA Triathlon sanctioning organizations generally use the term aquathlon.
Relationships to similar sports
Modern pentathlon is similar to an aquathlon in that both include swimming and running. But swimming and cross-country running are only two of the five events which make up the modern pentathlon, and these are held as distinct, noncontiguous events. Within the penthathlon sport the term biathle is also used for (training) races comprising swimming and running. These however contain distance stemming from pentathlon races, for instance 200m swimming 3km running. Aquathlon follows triathlon distances. For instance 1km swim - 5km run at the 2004 world champs in Queenstown, or 2.5km run - 1km swim - 2.5 km run in Lausanne 2006.
Aquathlons are most similar to triathlons, with the key difference being the lack of a cycle leg. Another sport derived from triathlon is duathlon, which combines cycling and running but has omitted the swimming part.
The aquathlon competitive field generally overlaps with that of triathlon, the sport from which it originated. Aquathlons are also popular among triathletes as training events providing a multi-sport open water race experience that can be difficult to find outside of a triathlon race situation.
World Champions
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