Random Triathlon Competitors

So the tool gave you a triathlete

You wanted a triathlon competitor and the tool up top gives you one, or several if you raise the number, from a list I keep by hand. It mixes the Olympic-distance racers, who sprint, with the long-course specialists, who suffer, and it covers both the men's and women's fields.

The tool is the simple part. Triathlon is worth explaining, partly because it is a young sport with an origin story better than any of the old ones, and partly because the two halves of it are far less similar than the name suggests.

A sport invented to settle an argument

In 1977, on the island of Oahu, a group of people were arguing about which athletes were the fittest: swimmers, cyclists or runners. It is exactly the argument you have had in a pub. The difference is that one of the men present, a US Navy commander named John Collins, decided to settle it empirically.

Hawaii already had three well-established races: a rough-water swim of about two and a half miles, a bicycle race around the island of about a hundred and twelve miles, and the Honolulu Marathon. Collins proposed doing all three, back to back, on the same day, with no rest. Whoever finished first, he said, would be called the Iron Man. Fifteen men started in February 1978 and twelve finished. That is genuinely the whole origin: an argument, a piece of paper, and a group of people who did not know it was impossible. Those distances, 3.86 kilometres of swimming, 180 kilometres of cycling and then a full marathon, are still exactly what an Ironman is today, because nobody has ever had the nerve to change them.

Two triathlons, pretending to be one

Here is what confuses newcomers. The triathlon at the Olympics and the triathlon at Ironman are not the same sport, and most of the athletes on this list do one or the other, not both.

Olympic-distance racing is short and vicious: a 1.5 kilometre swim, 40 kilometres on the bike, a 10 kilometre run, done in under two hours, and crucially it is draft-legal, meaning riders may sit in each other's slipstream. That turns the bike leg into a tactical bunch race, like road cycling, and the whole event usually comes down to a 10k running race between whoever survived. Ironman is the opposite. It lasts eight hours or more, and it forbids drafting entirely, so each rider must hold a set distance behind the one in front and grind alone for a hundred and twelve miles before starting a marathon. One is a knife fight. The other is a slow, controlled march toward the edge of what a body can do. Jan Frodeno, on this list, is the only person to have won both an Olympic gold medal and the Ironman World Championship, which tells you how rarely anyone crosses that line.

The fourth discipline

Ask a triathlete what the sport's three disciplines are and a good one will tell you there are four. The fourth is the transition: the moment of getting out of the water and onto a bike, and off the bike and into running shoes.

It sounds trivial. It is not. In a short-course race decided by seconds, an athlete who fumbles a wetsuit zip or cannot find their bike in a field of a thousand identical bikes has lost the race in the car park. Professionals practise it obsessively, leave their shoes clipped to the pedals and dive onto the bike at speed, and treat the transition area as a technical event in its own right. It is also where the sport's peculiar physiology shows itself: the first kilometre of running off a bike feels, to everyone including the professionals, like running on somebody else's legs. Every name in this list has learned to run through that, and it is the single thing that separates a triathlete from a swimmer who also cycles.

The crawl that made the sport

Triathlon did not become popular because of a winner. It became popular because of somebody who lost.

In February 1982, a twenty-three-year-old student named Julie Moss led the Hawaii Ironman with a few hundred metres to run. Her body then shut down. She fell. She got up, fell again, and eventually, unable to stand, crawled towards the line while the woman behind her went past. She kept crawling and finished second. It was broadcast on American television, and millions of people watching understood, in a way no victory could have taught them, what the event actually asked of a person. Entries exploded. The sport was made by a woman who did not win, and Kona, the Hawaiian town where that race is held, has been the sport's cathedral ever since. The champions on this list, Dave Scott and Mark Allen with six titles each, Paula Newby-Fraser with eight, Chrissie Wellington, who was never beaten over the full distance, all built on that broadcast.

What a random triathlete is good for

• Club nights and training groups. Draw an athlete to talk about, or to model a session on.
• Race sweepstakes. Handing competitors out to a group during a world championship or an Olympic race.
• Quiz and trivia prep. Triathlon is a strong quiz subject precisely because casual fans know nothing beyond the Brownlees.
• Discovering the sport. Draw a name, find their best race on video, and start with the ones who finished on their hands and knees.
• Settling a debate. Pull two athletes and argue the greater career, short course against long.

Triathlon questions

What are the Ironman distances?

A 3.86 kilometre swim, a 180.25 kilometre bike ride and a full 42.2 kilometre marathon, completed back to back. They come directly from three existing Hawaiian races combined in 1978 and have never changed.

How is Olympic triathlon different from Ironman?

Olympic distance is far shorter, 1.5 kilometres of swimming, 40 on the bike and a 10 kilometre run, and it allows drafting on the bike, making it a tactical bunch race. Ironman forbids drafting and lasts eight hours or more. They are effectively different sports.

What is a transition?

The changeover between disciplines, from swim to bike and from bike to run. Triathletes call it the fourth discipline, because seconds lost there decide short-course races and running off the bike is a skill in itself.

Can I pull several competitors, or narrow the pick?

Both. Raise the number for a few at once, with none repeating in a single pull, and use the text boxes to narrow things, such as a starts-with letter or a keyword the name has to contain.

References

1. World Triathlon. triathlon.org
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica, triathlon. britannica.com