This is the informal name of triathlon, which is a multi-sport race, requiring a continuous successive passage of three courses: swimming, cycling and running. This sport, which originated a century ago in France, has now gained great popularity and was included in the program of the Summer Olympic Games in 2000.
Triathlon competitions have several formats that differ in length and sometimes in types of disciplines, however the most popular of them is the so-called "Olympic distance", consisting of a 1.5 km swim, a 40 km bike and a 10 km run course. This classical distance gathered together 70 athletes from 25 countries of the world, as well as the domestic athletes, who competed for the Asian Cup and the championship of Uzbekistan among amateurs and professionals, held on October 8 and 9 on the rowing canal of the Great Silk Road STC in Samarkand, built by Enter Engineering.
On the first day of the competition the professional athletes of Elite category from China, Australia, Austria, Estonia, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine, the USA and others competed for the victory. The national team of Uzbekistan was represented by Alina Khakimova, Alexander Kurishov, Arslon Tursunov, Kamran Khodjaev and Yuri Glushko. Our athletes performed well, however, unfortunately; they could not climb the podium. The winners were Spaniard David del Campo in men and Heska Tous in women, representing the International Triathlon Federation.
The next day, amateur triathletes competed in the AGE Group, ELITE UZ, RELAY categories as part of the Open Championship of Uzbekistan. The last category was a team relay race, where different athletes competed at each stage. Among the participants were two teams representing our company - "Enter Engineering" and "Enter Engineering Base". The first team included Askar Khamidov (swimming), Ilyas Temirkhanov (cycling) and Anton Tkachenko (running), and Vildan Gafurov (swimming), Denis Mayorov (cycling) and Denis Mambetov (running) participated in the second one.
“Participation in such kind of competitions is a great opportunity to test your own strengths and capabilities,” said Ilyas Temirkhanov. “We trained to show the maximum possible result”. However, as it usually happens, the weather made its own adjustments, and thus the swimming distance was reduced. Nevertheless, our team completed its “minimum program” and they took 11th place in the overall and 9th one in the men's out of 20 teams. All the guys demonstrated a stubborn fighting spirit and showed up fully during their race. The second team from our company took 14th place in the overall standings and 11th in its category.
The past championship was a good experience for Enter Engineering athletes, and they are not going to stop there. They plan to participate in the Cup of Uzbekistan in duathlon in Jizzakh.
