The Culmination of Ironman Triathlons: The Ironman World Championship

Sept. 30, 2010 - PRLog -- Ironman Triathlons is a long distance triathlon race organised by the World Triathlon Corporation, also known as the WTC. The main race is located in Hawaii and the Triathlon is broken into three sections: The first section is the 2.4 mile swim, the next one is a 112 mile bike ride and finally it's finished with a 26 mile marathon run. The race has to be done in that order, and has to be finished within 17 hours. The race officially starts at 7 AM which means that the marathon has to be finished by midnight. There are cut off times for the first two sections, for the swimming section it is 2 hours and 20 minutes, and the bike cut off time is 5:30PM.

The first Ironman Triathlon, and the name, spawned from an argument between John Collins and his wife Judy, who were arguing who were the more fitter athletes, Swimmers, runners or ones in other events. They came up with the proposal of combining three races together to complete one right after the other. These were the the Waikiki Roughwater Swim, then the the Around-Oahu Bike Race and the Honolulu Marathon, with the proclamation “whoever finishes first we'll call them the Ironman”. The first event was held on February 18th 1978 where only 15 men entered the race, with 12 completing the race, with the first Ironman going by the name of Gordan Haller. His winning time was 11 hours, 46 minutes and 58 seconds.

Over the course of the year news about the Ironman spread which generated additional interest, so much that about 50 athletes signed up to compete in the next years race. It was postponed by a day, though, due to poor weather conditions - so again only 15 competitors competed. This time Tom Warren was that years Ironman, taking 11 hours, 15 minutes and 56 seconds and the first  Ironwoman was a cyclist from Boston called Lyn Lemaire, who finished 5th over all. Just as Collins was thinking about changing the layout of the race (maybe to a relay) to get more participants for the race, it was featured in a sports illustrated which generates a buzz of hundreds of inquiries over the race.

The next year it was filmed by ABC's Wide World of Sports with permission from Collins, who even stated that "Watching the race is about as exciting as watching a lawn-growing contest." but that didn't matter as it brought the Ironman triathlon to a worldwide audience. This time 106 men and women competed in the event. Dave Scott won this this time and Robin Beck won the women's version. Thanks to the popularity of the Ironman triathlon other triathlons started to appear all over the world. The Ironman has been going strong year after year ever since then and has generated so much interest; now that there are qualifiers all over the world to enter the main and final race of the year, in the place where the race started .So if you are a competitor who wanted to train, or just want to be a spectator, book early - as all the Hawaii rentals, hotels and villas will be well booked before you know it.





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