When you try to find out about the history of aquabike races and when and where it all started, you usually get to hear (or to read), that the first races happened to be in the year 2005 in the United States. But that´s actually not the whole story. The first races happened a few years earlier in a place that you probably wouldn´t guess.
In December the International Triathlon Union (ITU) released their new version of the competition rules for the 2022 racing season. There are quite a few changes about aquabike racing. Some make sense, some are clarifying things that might were confusing in previous versions, but some impose restrictions that seem quite unnecessary – and for some races actually unfeasible. So it might be worth taking a closer look…
Just because an aquabike race finishes after the bike leg and the run part of the triathlon is missing, certainly doesn´t mean that an aquabike race is easy. A race is always as hard as you make it. But there are some races out there that are never easy. We take a closer look at the hardest aqabike races in Europe in 2022. They´re not only the hardest but also some of the most beautiful races – although probably not everybody is able to enjoy the stunning scenery when the water is freezing cold and gradients on the bike leg hit 20%. But if you don´t like warm water and flat roads, these races might be perfect for you!
More and more countries host national aquabike championships, some even over several distances. We have European Championships and of course World Championships for long and standard distance. On this page you find all dates for international and national aqauabike championships in 2022.
We all know the medal tables from the Olympics or other big sports events. But now we also have medal tables for aquabike championship races. In our classical country medal table we show you, which countries won the most medals at World and European Championships. But we also have athlete´s medal tables to honor the most successful male and female aquabike athletes at World, European and National Championships.
In the last part of our 2021 Aquabike Season Review we take a look at the races with the smallest and biggest winning margins. Last year we saw some quite impressive performances with comfortable victories and also races with only a few seconds between first and second place. We show you the closest and clearest wins in aquabike races in 2021.
Which aquabike races had the most finishers in 2021? The biggest one is not really surprise. With 147 finishers the Aquabike World Championships in Almere was the biggest aquabike race in 2021. But it might be a surprise that the European Championships in Walchsee didn´t even make it on the podium in this classification. Although the main reason for that are probably the travel restrictions for UK athletes, who were not allowed to come to Austria in June. But nevertheless it´s good to see that there are also some other races with a significant number of aquabike athletes on the startline.
So let´s take a closer look…
In todays review of the 2021 aquabike season we take a look at the most active and most successful aquabike athletes of the year. Since British athletes have a much bigger choice of races to participate in, it´s quite obvious that the aquabikers with most race participations and also the most wins come from the British Island. But also some athletes from the mainland had a pretty active racing season. So let´s take a closer look.
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.
After 2020 left us with very little or often no opportunity of racing, we had an almost complete racing season again in 2021. While racing season in UK started already in April, athletes in most other European countries had to wait a little longer for their first race.