In 2021 we had 137 aquabike races taking place in Europe. Most of them – not very surprising – in Great Britain, with a total number of 105 races. 8 races took place in Austria, 5 in France and Spain.

We had a total number of 1.679 athletes finishing an aquabike race, about 62,5% of them male and 37,5% female.

The biggest number of athletes – also not very surprising – comes from the UK with 919 aquabikers (55% male, 45% female), followed by Spain (138 athletes) and France (134 athletes).  Number four might also be worth mentioning here. Without a single aquabike race taking place in their home country, we had 107 aquabike athletes from Germany finishing a race. With strong performances in the World and European Championships (both not too far from the German border), Germany takes currently second place in our country ranking which is of course clearly lead by Great Britain.

Overall we had 1.961 race finishes, showing that most athletes only competed in one or two races and only a very small number of athletes in three or more races last year. Most popular are the middle distance races with a total of 838 race finishes, followed by Standard (624) and Sprint (307). Only 183 athletes finished a long distance aquabike race in Europe in 2021. There aren´t really a lot of long distance races out there. Considering that we had 147 finishers at the World Championships alone, it also shows that long distance races outside the world´s really aren´t as popular as Middle distance races.

While we had 47 sprint distance races (42 of them in the UK) and 49 standard distance races (40 of them in the UK), there were also 35 middle distance races (19 in the UK), but only 6 long distance races. For 2022 we already have 7 long distance races in our race calendar.

So let´s hope those numbers will increase a little more. Especially for race distance other that middle distance there still isn´t too much going on outside the British Island. Slowly but steadily aquabike options are also offered in smaller races over shorter distances all over Europe. So let´s see what 2022 aquabike racing season will have to offer!