Mondo Knows Facts
An Olympic triathlon is 51.5 km long
It combines a 1.5 km swim, a 40 km bike leg and a 10 km run The standard distance is often called the Olympic distance after the sport joined the Games in 2000. A world championship Ironman is far longer at 3.8 km of swimming, 180 km of cycling and a full marathon. Transitions are timed and count towards the total. It sits in Mondo's sports collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
Where this comes from
Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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More facts like this
Olympic rowing is raced over 2000 metresThe distance was standardised in 1912 and has been used ever sinceThe Ironman began as an argument in HawaiiA 1978 debate about which athlete was fittest produced a combined raceDrafting is banned in most age-group triathlonsElite races allow cyclists to ride close together, but amateur races do notWetsuits are allowed only in cool waterThey become compulsory below about 16 degrees Celsius for professionalsThe first modern Olympics were held in AthensAround fourteen nations competed in Athens across nine sportsThe Olympic motto is three Latin wordsCitius, Altius, Fortius translates as faster, higher, stronger
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Tags: triathlon, distance, olympics
An Olympic triathlon is 51.5 km long: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- It combines a 1.5 km swim, a 40 km bike leg and a 10 km run. The figure is taken from World Triathlon, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a sports fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Sports shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.