The 2023 Long Distance Aquabike World Championships will take place on May 7th – quite early in the season for most European and North American athletes. Many details are not yet announced. But last week the organizer uploaded a pdf with the course detail on the event website. So let´s take a closer look.
The swim is a one loop 3 km course starting at Platja de ses Figueretes in the City of Ibiza. In early May water temperatures should be around 20 °C, so this will most likely be a wetsuit swim.
The transition map from swim exit to bike out, doesn´t exactly show, where the actual transition zone is. But to me it looks like it will be one long transition zone along the beach promenade. On the map this looks like a pretty long run, but it´s 400 metres from swim exit through transition to bike out. It probably can´t be much shorter at such a big event.
The bike leg is 120 km over a two lapped bike course with an elevation profile that looks quite demanding. There isn´t really one long or steep climb in it. But it´s up or down most of the time with quite some parts that look like false flat sections. Most of the bike course is on wide main roads which presumably will have one side open for traffic. We´ll find out more about that when more details from the race organizer will be published.
What is probably yet subject of change is the finish of the aquabike race. The triathlon finish is about 1,5 km away, so the organizer planned to have an aquabike specific finish right after T2. But due to the latest changes in the 2023 World Triathlon competition rules, the finish has to be before T2. To have a save finish of the aquabike race it would probably be the best to have it before the roundabout instead of somewhere around the corner in the streets of Ibiza. But that´s about 600 metres away from T2. In this case the safety issue could be the exhausted aquabikers slowly rolling to T2 while triathletes are still in the race. This could of course be avoided if the starting times between aquabikers and triathletes are separated enough. There is no raceday schedule out yet, so we´ll have to wait and see.