Triathlon Mixed Relay - ITU's exciting mixed gender format - continued its rapid growth yesterday, with the announcement by the Glasgow Commonwealth Games Committee that it would be included on their sports programme for 2014.
The debut of the Mixed Relay comes four years earlier than anticipated after the discipline was voted onto the Commonwealth Games programme starting in 2018, at the Commonwealth Games General Assembly in St. Kitts & Nevis last November.
ITU then presented to the Glasgow 2014 Organising Committee in hopes of having the Triathlon Mixed Relay as an optional addition to the sports programme of Glasgow 2014, the 20th edition of the Commonwealth Games. Yesterday's inclusion on the Glasgow programme is seen as a great boost for the development of the sport across the 71 Commonwealth nations around the globe.
Triathlon Mixed Relay consists of teams of four athletes: two men and two women, who will compete in the order of woman, man, woman, man. Each athlete completes a super-sprint triathlon of swimming, biking and running, before handing over to their next team mate. The first team across the finish line is the winner.
The recent Triathlon Mixed Relay World Championships in the Olympic city of Lausanne, Switzerland, boasted its largest field ever, with representation from all five continents.
This latest success seems to strengthen ITU's quest to get the Triathlon Mixed Relay event into the Olympic Games beginning with Rio 2016. ITU is bidding to get the discipline added to the programme of the Olympic Games and has already submitted a bid to the IOC.
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