It might sound weird to ask this question on an aquabike website. As aquabike athlete you have some chances to race for glory at National Championships but also at European and World Championships. There is however no option to race for money. But there will be one exception in 2023.

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Which aquabike races had the most finishers in 2022? It´s not a big surprise that the World, European and US National Championships are the aquabike races which attract the most athletes. But there are also some other events all around the world with a significant number of aquabikers competing. It´s great to see that not only the number of events is growing continuosly. Also the size of some races show how fast this  multisport discipline is growing.

So let´s take a closer look…

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In todays review of the 2022 aquabike season we take a look at the most active and most successful aquabike athletes of the year. With a much bigger choice of races it´s not a surprise that the athletes with the most races and also with the most wins in 2022 came from the United States and Great Britain. The athletes who raced the most in terms of racing distance however do not come fromt any of those countries.

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In 2022 we had 871 aquabike races taking place worldwide. The biggest number – not very surprising – in the United States, with a total number of 542 races (83 more than in 2021). We had 127 races in the UK (+22), 61 in Canada (+48), 42 in Australia (+13), 24 in New Zealand (+8) and 15 in Spain (+10). As pleasant as those growing numbers are you should keep in mind that in 2021 the racing season still was a bit shortened due to covid restrictions. This is especially the case in Canada where the 2021 racing season started pretty late.

A total number of 7365 athletes finished an aquabike race. That´s 34% more than in 2021. The share of participating men and women didn´t change much. With 55,8% male aquabike finishers we had a slight shift towards the male side here (55,6 % in 2021). The explanation is probably that we had quite a few new aquabike races in countries where the share of male aquabikers is much bigger in general, which is especially the case in southern and eastern Europe. In the following chart you can see the different distribution in agegroup of male and female athletes.

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871 aquabike races in 25 countries (including six new countries on the Aquabike.World map), national aquabike championships in 12 countries (3 new), the first ever standard distance aquabike World Championships and thousands of happy faces on the finishline, many of them finishing their first ever aquabike race. That´s the summary of the 2022 aquabike racing season.

In early 2021 in some countries many events still had to be cancelled. So 2022 marked the first full racing season for many athletes after the pandemic years. Multisport racing was back in full operation mode and all international championships could take place as planned.

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With the switch from aquabike.events to Aquabike.World our Aquabike Ranking Europe now became the Aquabike.World Ranking.

We have now listed all aquabike race results from all around the world from January 1^st 2021. So you can also check the past ranking from 2021.

In the current ranking we have more than 4000 athletes in the Men´s Ranking and more than 3000 athletes in the Women´s Ranking from 37 countries.

If you look at the current ranking it might be a bit of a surprise that European Athletes are still quite dominant in the top ranks (at least in the men´s ranking) – quite different to the 2021 ranking. There were two a bit extraordinary circumstances last year which had an influence here. The European Championships in Bilbao have been the biggest race of the season with the most points to grab. There were less competitors at the long distance World´s in Samorin – probably due to the relatively late announcement of date and location of the event this year after the original location in Australia had to be cancelled. And also the first ever Standard Distance World Championships attracted less athletes. In this case probably rather because of the exotic location and unusual time of the year, long after the season for most athletes in the northern hemisphere was over.

The second factor might be a bit controversial. During the process of importing all the results from the last years, an important question came up. What should we do with results from events where the swim was cancelled? In most cases when the swim has to be cancelled, the triathlon turns into a duathlon and the aquabike race gets cancelled alltogether. But in some cases the aquabike race still takes place. Either as a pure time trial on the bike or in some cases with a short run before. And there was one notable event in 2022 where exactly that happened. The National Long Distance Aquabike Championships at the Toughman in September. So this is a big race and there are big points to earn. But after all… an aquabike race without the swim is nothing but a bike race. That´s why I decided not to count those events. I´m really sorry for the US guys for missing the chance to score big. But on the other hand many other countries don´t even have National Championships at all. If you check the rankings from 2021 you will see that the US athletes have been very present there.  Let´s see how this develops in 2023…

While the leaders in the Men´s and the Women´s Rankings remained unchanged compared the to the previous Aquabike Ranking Europe, it´s not a big surprise that the lead in the Country Ranking changed. With more than 3500 US athletes finishing an aquabike race in 2022 we have a clear new leader in this ranking. UK is still in second place of course, but the third spot on the countrie´s pdoidum might be a bit of a surprise. Ahead of Australia and Canada – both countries with much more aquabike races – it´s Spain who´s currently sitting in 3rd place. Of course the European´s in Bilbao are a factor here. But it´s not the only reason. While the number of races might be smaller (though fast growing) in Spain, there were quite a few big events that attracted a lot of aquabike athletes. So despite the smaller number of races, the number of Spanish aquabike athletes who finished a race in 2022 isn´t much smaller than those from Australia and Canada. And while there are many sprint and standard distance races in the other countries, all of the races in Spain have been middle or long distance races which of course earn a few more points.

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It´s done! On the 4th of January 2023 aquabike.events became Aquabike.World. We are no longer limited to Europe, but list every single aquabike race all around the world. This alone is a huge change. With hundreds of aquabike events each year especially in the United States, but also quite a bunch of races in Canada, Australia and New Zealand the workload for the event research multiplied. But there is much more to it…

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When I first heard about this “Aquabike” thing a few years ago there were no races in mainland Europe. Now we have several races in almost every central and west European country. And in some of them (especially Spain and Austria) quite a choice of events. Aquabike racing has grown – and so did Aquabike.Events. From a little website that lists the few aquabike competitions in Europe it became a home of a new multisport community, a result service, host of Aquabike Ranking Europe and the probably best source of information for this beautiful multisport discipline which for many athletes is so much more than just a sidekick of triathlon.

After a time of continuous development and growth it is now time to flip the switch. On the 4^th of January Aquabike.Events will no longer be available. But it won´t disappear. Instead our little caterpillar will transform into a butterfly. See you on the other side…

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Last summer we presented Coach Steve´s 12 week aquabike training plan to get ready for the European Aquabike Championships in Bilbao in September. I´m really excited to inform you that Coach Steve now created a whole bunch of aquabike specific training plans for different race distances, performance levels and time periods. To make it really easy to find the right training plan for you to prepare for your season highlight, we created a little tool to help you with that.

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The 2023 Long Distance Aquabike World Championships will take place on May 7^th – 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.

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On December 1st World Triathlon published the 2023 edition of the competition rules which brought a significant change – or actually recall – regarding World Triathlon sanctioned aquabike races. In this article I´d like to elucidate the pros and cons of the new/old rules. But first of all I´ll start with a little history lesson by taking a look at the previous versions of aquabike related rules in the ITU / World Triathlon competition rules.

It was in 2016 when rules for aquabike were integrated in the Competition Rules of the ITU (at this time World Triathlon was still called International Triathlon Union) for the first time.

Aquabike consists of Swimming, Transition area 1, biking and Transition area 2.

[…]

Athletes will finish the race at the finish line located by the T2 exit. The time registered in this point is the final time.

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Well… actually we only include races in Europe for the Aquabike Ranking Europe. However, it´s a World Championship. So we decided to include the first ever Standard Distance Aquabike World Championships in the rankings. It´s the first race outside Europe that´s included in the Aquabike Ranking Europe. And it will also be the last. Because Aquabike Ranking Europe will come to an end by the end of the year. But there´s no reason to be sad. Because something better is coming up…

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So the first ever Standard Distance Aquabike World Championships are done and dusted. Despite the exotic location and the date long after the end of the racing season for most athletes in the northern hemisphere almost 200 aquabike athletes started the race in Abu Dhabi. Many of the top ranked aquabikers might have been absent, but it still was certainly a well worthy World Championship race. The top 20 finishers came from 14 different countries, showing that this multisport discipline is not only attracting athletes in the two “home countries” of aquabike racing. There was only one athlete from both, the United States and Great Britain, in the top 20 of the men’s race.

But the conditions certainly where not easy especially from athletes who travelled from the cold northern November to the heat of Abu Dhabi. Looking at the results it really seems like athletes from the southern hemisphere had to struggle less with the warm conditions. So the only country who had three athletes in the top 20 in the end was… was Brazil! Parabéns!

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