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…
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 4th 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…
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.
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.
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.
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…
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. The only country who had three athletes in the top 20 in the end was… was Brazil! Parabéns!
While the triathlon and aquabike racing season is long over in Europe, some athletes still have a season highlight coming up next weekend. The World Triathlon Championship Finals will host the first ever Aquabike World Championship over standard distance, taking place on Saturday, November 26th in Abu Dhabi.
The Spanish town Sitges, about 30 km from Barcelona, was host town of the final race of the aquabike season 2022 in Europe. 32 aquabike athletes finished what was not only the last but also one of the most demanding aquabike races of the season.
While the triathlon and aquabike racing season has already ended in most parts of Europe we had the penultimate aquabike race in Spain last weekend. Or actually races. The ICAN Triathlon Gandia on the Spanish east coast south of Valencia offered aquabike option over the middle distance as well as over the long distance. With rather big numbers of aquabike athletes in both races we saw some remarkable performances and close finishes.