Early triathlons were held as offbeat training
exercises for runners. The first known swim/bike/run triathlons were
held at San Diego’s Mission Bay in 1974.
Organized by members of the San Diego Track
Club, the events were held on summer evenings and were intended as
no more than light-hearted breaks in the normal grind of training
for marathons and 10Ks.
One athlete who raced at the first Mission Bay
Triathlon, John Collins, was very influential in the further
development of the sport. Collins, took the triathlon concept to
Hawaii and used it several years later to combine three of Oahu’s
endurance events ,
The Waikiki Rough Water Swim, the Around-Oahu
Bike Ride and the Honolulu Marathon – into one race: the Ironman.
Only 12 men completed the first race held in January of 1978. In
1979, 13 men and one woman crossed the finish line. But a Sports
Illustrated article by Barry McDermott in May 1979 increased the
1980 field into the hundreds and brought ABC’s Wide World of Sports
to Hawaii for the first of an unbroken string of annual network
broadcasts.
In 1982, the last year no qualifying was needed to compete
at Ironman, the dramatic footage of Julie Moss crawling on her hands
and knees to a second-place finish at Ironman, triggered an
explosion of interest.
The decade that saw phenomenal growth in triathlon, the 1980s,
ended with a step toward the future. Twenty-five nations were
represented at the founding congress of the International Triathlon
Union in April in Avignon, France. The focus of the International
Triathlon Union was to gain acceptance by the International
Olympic Committee and have triathlon accepted on the Olympic
program. The first step in that process would be to create a
triathlon world championship.
The Ironman may be triathlon’s most recognizable event, but the
international or intermediate distance used in the Olympics is the
sport’s most popular. The 1.5K swim, 40K bike, and 10K run is
triathlon’s international standard and the format used at the
triathlon world championship and eventually the Olympics. The 1980s
also saw the development of the sprint or short distance triathlon,
which is about half the distance of an international distance race.
The first Olympic triathlons were held Sept. 16-17, 2000 in
Sydney, Australia. Switzerland's Brigitte McMahon won the women's
race and Canada's Simon Whitfield won the men's race.
