Today World Triathlon announced that the World Triathlon Championship Finals will take place in Wollongong, New South Wales, to finish the 2025 season. For a few years now the finals are also hosting the standard distance triathlon and aquabike world championships for age group athletes.

After the long-distance World´s in Townsville and the standard distance World´s in Malaga in 2024, Australia and Spain are switching distances next year. The long-distance World´s will then be held in Pontevedra in western Spain, while the standard distance World´s will take place in Wollongong, just a one-hour drive south of Sidney. It will be organized by Elite Energy, a race organizer who has included aquabike races in most of his events for a few years now. EE also hosted the Australian national aquabike championships at their event in Huskisson in 2021 and 2023. With a race organizer who has quite some experience with including aquabike events in their races we can certainly hope for a well-organized race with some particular attention to the needs of a well-organized aquabike race.

The yearly event in Wollongong is the Tri Wollongong Festival which is usually held in late April. It includes a standard distance triathlon and aquabike race and will take place on the 21^st of April this year. I would expect the race course for the world championships to be similar. So most likely the swim will take place in the Belmore Basin, which looks to be quite well protected. The bike course however, I would expect to be subject of change, since it´s four laps of 10 km at the Tri Wollongong Festival. With the bigger starter field at the World´s there would be a bit too much traffic. Possible options are to extend the flat turnaround route alongside the coast, or to change the route more significantly and maybe tackle some of the hills in the west of Wollongong. But most likely we´ll have to wait until next year to get some more details about the race course.