This year´s Aquabike Long Distance World Championships will be held on the 21st of August at the amazing x-bionic® sphere in Šamorín, Slovakia. The Multisport World Championships (which also includes the Aquathlon World´s) will be held in conjunction with the Collins Cup, which takes place the day before.
Amongst Triathletes the race venue is probably best known for hosting “The Championship” – the flagship race of the Challenge Family since 2017. It´s a modern multi sports resorts with all kinds of venues for horse riding, swimming, athletics, team sports and many more. I was fortunate enough to race there at the very first Challenge Family event at this location in 2016 – and I have to say it´s an absolutely exciting race location!
The Collins Cup is a 100 km race (2 km swim, 80 km bike, 18 km run) with 36 pro athletes (18 male and 18 female) competing in three teams: Team US, Team Europe and Team Internationals. It´s organized by the PTO – Professional Triathletes Organisation with its first edition in 2021. In January the PTO announced that this year there will also be an age group race the day after the event. Now the Multisport Long Distance World Championships are taking place alongside this age group triathlon. All with the same distances as the Pro´s Collins Cup. So the distance is actually a little shorter than a middle distance race – nevertheless it´s still called “Long Distance World Championships”.
The swim is in the Danube River. It´s 1 km straight forward and back again. At the location of the swim the Danube is very wide – so from my experience you don´t really notice any current at all. And it´s most likely to be a wetsuit legal swim.
The route of the bike course is not yet officially announced. In the FAQ section of the age group event you can find the information that “Age-groupers won’t take on exactly the same courses as the pros. This helps us manage the flow of athletes to give the best possible age-group experience and pro race coverage.” Now this statement is about the “regular” age group race, since there is no information about the World Championships yet on the event´s website. However I would assume that the true reason for the different bike course is the fact, that the Collins Cup is a two lap course on a highway. And it might not really pay off to get the highway closed for a simple agegroup race. This might be different for World Championships though. So it´s well possible that the bike course is the same as for the Pro´s. Therefore this is the bike course that you will find on our event page – unless we don´t have any other details. But one thing is for sure: The bike course will be pan flat and superfast.
If you want to go to Šamorín and you prefer an accommodation as close as possible to the race venue, you better be quick. Since the Collins Cup and the age group races have been announced much earlier, there is only one hotel in the immediate vicinity left with available rooms. You can find it here: https://www.aquabike.world/samorin-accomodation
Find all details about the 2022 Long Distance Aquabike World Championships here: https://www.aquabike.world/events/aquabike-world-championships-2022-samorin/ – of course will be updated as soon as we know more details.