World Triathlon

Triathlon’s London 2012 Olympic Games is off to a stellar start, with the men’s and women’s events one of the first to completely sell out in the first round of ticketing this week.

Along with track cycling, rhythmic gymnastics, modern pentathlon, equestrian (cross country) and both opening and closing ceremonies, triathlon ticketing will go to a ballot process after more people applied than there are tickets available.

Across the entire first ticketing application for London, a total of 20-million tickets were applied for, with around 1.8-million people submitting requests. Applications were received for every session, every sport and across every price point, with 6.6-million tickets available in the initial public ticketing application round.

But one thing is clear, triathlon is already a hit in London. Hyde Park, in the centre of the city, will host the main triathlon venue with the swim to be contested from a pontoon start in The Serpentine. The bike route will pass several major London landmarks such as Buckingham Palace, Wellington Arch, Hyde Park Corner and Constitution Hill and back into Hyde Park, where the athletes will finish on the run.

Triathlon is also one of the only sports where people can line the streets to watch part of the competition for free, with publicly accessible viewpoints along the bike leg.

London will also be first time the competition at the Olympic Games will be spread over more than two days.  The women’s race will be part of a Super Saturday, on August 4, and the men’s race will follow three days later on Tuesday August 7. In the previous three Olympics since the sport debuted in Sydney 2000, the men’s and women’s medals have been on two consecutive days.

With no heats or preliminaries, the women’s battle for the medals will start at 9am while the men’s will start slightly later at 11:30am on Tuesday.

This year’s Dextro Energy Triathlon ITU World Championship London event, on August 6 and 7, will be the final chance athletes have to race on the course before next year’s Olympic races.

The next step in what is the biggest ticketing exercise ever undertaken in the UK, is that the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) will now check and de-duplicate applications before running ballots across sessions which are oversubscribed and process applications. For more details, including when tickets will be officially confirmed, the next round of applications and how to make sure your Olympic ticket is a real one, please visit the London 2012 official ticketing website here.