The triathlon mixed relay at Paris 2024 can help ignite even more interest in the sport, according to British Triathlon Performance Director Mike Cavendish.
Team GB’s triathletes have already enjoyed a stellar showing at the Olympics, with Alex Yee winning individual men’s gold in thrilling fashion after Beth Potter clinched bronze in the women’s race.
Team GB will now look to defend their gold medal in the mixed relay, which made its debut to much acclaim at Tokyo 2020. Yee was part of the British team that won the inaugural gold three years ago and is now hunting for his fourth Olympic medal.
The relay sees each athlete complete a shorter leg than the regular Olympic triathlon and has proved a thrilling addition to the Games, and Cavendish is hopeful that another exciting race on Monday, with Team GB likely to go head-to-head with hosts France, can earn the sport some new fans.
“Along with the different mixes of swim, bike, run, you have got a whole different range of distance as well, then when you add relay to the mix, it just gives it a completely different angle and a completely different spectacle for people,” he said.
“We saw that from Tokyo, people that had never watched a triathlon before, never watched a relay before were absolutely captivated by it.”
Cavendish is hopeful that those at home were left inspired by two thrilling races and will want to swim, bike, run themselves through British Triathlon’s ‘Paris Inspired’ programme.
Paris Inspired will see a range of free activities on offer over the next few months, including family-friendly and adult focused sessions. Swim Bike Run Mini brings together two or three of triathlon’s disciplines in an event setting and Swim Bike Run Develop are coached sessions to build confidence in the singular disciplines.
“It’s probably more unpredictable than an individual triathlon,” Cavendish continued. “You get a lot more peaks and flows because you have so many more transitions, there’s a lot more opportunity for things to go wrong so it just creates a lot more jeopardy. “It creates an unbelievable spectacle that just gives us another product as a sport that we can demonstrate how good we are.”
The mixed relay will bring an end to an enthralling Olympic triathlon programme, one which Cavendish is confident can act as a springboard for increasing participation across the UK. That does not have to be a full triathlon, with multiple ways to combine swimming, cycling and running.
Bringing the medal success of Paris to the doorsteps of people across Great Britain is also something that British Triathlon hope to achieve this summer according to Cavendish, with the free Paris Inspired activities, and the national network of clubs and events key to that.
Cavendish added: “That is the unique part about our sport that there are multiple combinations that you can do.
“I think if you were to look back probably 15, 20 years ago, people looked at triathlons and thought ‘wow, that’s hard, there’s no way I could do that,’ people thought about IRONMAN or Olympic distance and it seemed quite daunting.
“But both just through the way people’s exercising habits have changed but also the work our development team have done in terms of some of the resources they are creating across community engagement and place-based activities, all of that hopefully does is just shine a light on the different activities you can do in our sport.”
Triathlon combines swimming, cycling and running, with a range of opportunities on offer to combine two or three of the disciplines at beginner-friendly Swim Bike Run Mini events and Swim Bike Run Develop coached sessions.
The three major participation activities in the country come together under the triathlon banner, with helping people to get active in swim, bike, run something Cavendish sees as being part of the legacy of this summer’s success.
“You can go for a cycle for 10 minutes and then go for a walk afterwards and that represents a small part of our sport.
“Giving people those types of variety and combination of activities to get out in the outdoors and to be able to do that with your friends, your family members and different generations is really, really important. There aren’t that many sports I think that can genuinely say that.”
Triathlon England is supporting clubs and organisers to deliver free events and activities through the Paris Inspired campaign to give more people the opportunity to try swim, bike, run https://www.britishtriathlon.org/the-games/paris-inspired
