Running: there is the sport par excellence. The easiest to practise: all that is needed is a pair of willing legs. And maybe, if we make into a competition, the hardest. But only maybe. What about cycling, with that pulley driven by the pedals? With the machine we can advance more, but the effort to move it is also multiplied. Or swimming, the fight to clear a path through an aquatic element, foreign to man? Great effort, little progress in terms of metres. Each one is harder than the next, so it is not strange that someone came up with the idea of joining the three specialities and created the triathlon, one of the most complete sports there are.

Indeed, classic triathlon follows that order: first swimming, always in open waters (the sea, a reservoir...). Secondly, after putting on the helmet and the automatic pedals, go rolling on a bike; in some trials, like the Olympics, drafting is allowed and in others it isn’t, which has caused controversy. And finally, after taking off the cycling clothes, running to the finishing line, with the body well punished already. There is nobody who performs equally in these three so different varieties of sport, and this is why we have to give it all in our favourite one and clench our teeth in the least favourite, in order to minimise the loss.

And the training necessary to perform well in this exciting world will strengthen our body, while at the same time it will be more enjoyable for the mind than if we practised just one sport. Between the three segments which comprise a triathlon trial, we will work the legs perfectly well -although different muscles- using them on foot or on the metal horse. And also the upper part, in the distances covered through the liquid element. But, most importantly, we keep changing the scene.

Actually, we know that France already had triathlons in the 20s, but they were called something else and they were never consolidated. It has been accepted that the beginning was the organisation in California of the Mission Bay Triathlon, on 25 September 1974, a race organised by a group of sportsmen from various specialities who inaugurated the term and counted on the significant participation of 46 people combining arm strokes, pedal pushes and strides. Since the beginning of the 80s, this liking started spreading around Europe too. (...)