Looking Ahead to the Past

Way back in the dark ages, there was the fringe sport of triathlon.  Sure, the Olympics offered hybrid and combination sports for years with ski/shoot biathlon, heptathlon, and decathlon.  I don't know about you, but I never shot a gun or pole-vaulted before and those events seemed like television sideshows every four years anyway.  Before triathlon arrived, endurance athletes checked one of three boxes : swimming, biking, or running.  When Ironman burst upon the scene, triathlon at any distance was soon embraced as the new benchmark sport for cardio fitness.  It also spawned a brave new world of alternative sport.

Before long, duathlon (at first called biathlon and later renamed to eliminate confusion with the Olympic sport) evolved and appealed to land-based athletes who yearned for variety.  It took on three incarnations,  initially run-bike-run, but later run-bike and bike-run, depending on the race director and other factors.  There were even a few swim-run events.  At one time rare, these aquathons have lately seen a resurgence of interest with run-swim-run being the sequence of choice.  Triathlon saw an offshoot as well with Xterra events capitalizing on the wide spread popularity of mountain bikes.

So it was that triathlon and duathlon reigned supreme.  They gave athletes new frontiers to conquer, equipment manufacturers a proving ground for technological development, and the Wide World of Sports an annual television spectacle.  The only problem was that the restless human spirit stirred..  Not content with merely three sports, some athletes looked to other avenues for challenge.   Adventure racing was born.  Whole new sets of skills were necessary to participate  though.  It wasn't just a matter of having a higher VO2 max.  Could you ride a horse, rappel down a cliff, navigate watercraft, orienteer, and  manage to operate on minimal sleep?  Even these races mutated as urban survival events appeared exploiting downtown concrete mountains and borrowing stair-master skills from the gym.

Just when you thought we had run out of ideas, television producers took it yet another step, though most would question whether forward.  Reality shows pit contestants battling one another in harsh conditions around the globe.  At this extreme end, alliances, reward challenges and backstabbing  replaced speed, strength, and endurance.  This was so far removed from the epic day when Julie Moss wobbled and crawled to the finish line in Kona as to be absurd.

Where is all of this taking us?  The growing re-interest in iron-distance triathlon leads me to believe that we may be doing the full-circle thing.  On the other hand, I give it until next season before ESPN2 televises a street luge-BMX half pipe-roller blade triathlon brought to you by Mountain Dew.  It seems inevitable but unsustainable?  Swimming, biking, and running are still the core activities of the multi-sport world.  Will that change?  Who knows, but I sure hope not.