European athletes dominate performances in Double Iron ultra-triathlons A retrospective data analysis from 1985 to 2010

Abstract

We investigated the participation and performance trends of ultra-endurance triathletes from all nationalities competing in a Double Iron ultra-triathlon (7.6-km swim, 360-km cycle and 84.4-km run) from 1985 to 2010. A total of 1854 athletes participated in 92 Double Iron ultra-triathlons. The majority of the winners came from Europe with 72 victories, followed by North America with 17 victories. The race time for the European ultra-triathletes was 1340 (s_95.3) min, decreasing highly significantly (r2_0.28; PB0.0001) across the years. North American ultra-triathletes finished the races within 1556 (s_124.5) min; their race time showed no changes across the years (r2_0.045; P_0.07). The race time for the Europeans was highly significantly faster compared to the North Americans (PB0.0001). Future studies should investigate each country in Europe and North America in order to find the country with the largest participation of athletes and their best performance.