News

The second ever Olympic Mixed Team Relay is scheduled to take to the streets of Paris tomorrow morning as the final triathlon event of the Paris Olympic Games. Similar to the lead in to the individual races last week, the River Seine is providing plenty of headaches for the event organisers with a continuing question mark over the quality of the water. Similar to last week, a final decision on whether the event will go ahead or not as planned at 08:00 local time, will be taken overnight tonight.

The Mixed Team Relay is a thrilling and exhilarating event that consists of a 300m out and back swim in the Seine, before racing up the steep steps onto the bridge for transition. The bike portion of the race is a flat and fast two laps totalling 7km passing the Champs Elysees. The run consists of two 900m laps, with athletes turning off the road early on the second lap to race down the ramp towards the Seine to tag their teammate.

Teams consist of two male and two female athletes. The men will take the first leg of the race, passing over to a female teammate, back to a male teammate, and finally the women will race down the blue carpet to break the tape and determine the teams fate.

Should the event go ahead as planned there are sixteen nations who will fight it out for the  Olympic medals, with all 6 of the individual triathletes who medalled in their individual races taking part in the team event it is going to be another brilliant morning of racing.

Earlier today the draw for the pontoon start took place with team GB as the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Champions getting first pick of the pontoon position.

Medal Contenders

Team GB, the defending Olympic Champions  boast a Gold and Silver medal from the individual race last week, with Georgia Taylor Brown having raced to 6th they will be looking to defend their title.  Samuel Dickson was also in action in the Men’s individual race, and instructed to end his personal endeavours after the bike portion of the individual race in order to focus fully on the Mixed Team Relay.

Similar to Team GB, France also has two medal winners from the individual race on their team. They’ll be buoyed on knowing they also have Emma Lombardi and Pierre le Corre who both finished 4th in the individual race as they strive for Gold on home territory and if Wednesday’s crowd was anything to go by on the streets of Paris, if the race comes down to the wire then the home support for France could carry them all the way to Olympic Gold.

Germany are the reigning World Champions in the event, whilst the US boasts a strong team particularly on the Women’s side. Portugal will be looking to make their mark with two men in the top 6 in the individual event. Belgium, Norway, Switzerland and Australia will all be bringing plenty of firepower to the event, with the Netherlands boasting one of the teams with the most experienced athletes in the race. Regardless of the pick of who could potentially break the tape, this race is guaranteed to be fast, frenzied and filled full of excitement!

The full start list of teams can be found HERE