While Tokyo is seeing a rise in COVID-19 cases, it appears as though all things are full-steam ahead for the Games later this month – today World Triathlon did the race number allocation for the triathlon events at the Olympics in a few weeks.
There will be 55 men and women in the individual race, and 18 teams in the Mixed Team Relay. You can see the team allocations below.
Here are some interesting pre-Olympic facts provided by World Triathlon:
- A total of 38 NOCs have qualified athletes for the Tokyo 2020 Games.
- Out of these 38 nations, Morocco, Egypt and Romania have qualified a spot for the first time in the history of Olympic Triathlon.
- Four NOCs – Australia, Great Britain, Italy & USA – were able to qualify a maximum of three women for the Tokyo Olympics.
- Another four NOCs – Australia, Spain, France and Norway – have managed to qualify the maximum number of three men to compete in Tokyo.
- Only Australia will have the maximum of six athletes competing in Tokyo 2020.
- A total of 18 teams will line up for the debut of the Mixed Relay at the Olympics. Of those…
- Seven qualified through the Mixed Relay rankings – Australia, France, USA, Great Britain, New Zealand, Germany & the Netherlands.
- Three qualified at the Mixed Relay Qualification Event in Lisbon – Belgium, Italy & Switzerland.
- Japan qualified a team as host country.
- A further 7 NFs qualified by having at least two men and two women in Tokyo via the individual rankings – Austria, Canada, Spain, Hungary, Mexico, South Africa & ROC.
Start numbers
- Athletes wearing the number 34 may have an extra lucky start in the Olympics – the number 34 athlete has already won 3 Olympic medals (1 gold and 2 bronze).
- There also may be good luck for athletes wearing start numbers in the thirties – five Olympic gold medals have gone to athletes wearing start numbers 30-39.
- However, both of Bevan Docherty’s (NZL) medals came while wearing the number 27.
- The lowest start number to take home a medal is 5 (Alistair Brownlee (GBR) in Rio 2016.
Olympic Participation
- Anja Dittmer (GER), Hunter Kemper (USA), Simon Whitfield (CAN), Ainhoa Murua (ESP), Hirokatsu Tayama (JPN), Nicola Spirig (SUI) & Sven Riederer (SUI) are currently triathlon’s only four-time Olympians. This year, Dmitry Polyanskiy (ROC), Vendula Frintova (CZE), Flora Duffy (BER), Yuliya Yelistratova (UKR) & Barbara Riveros (CHI) will join that select club.
- Nicola Spirig will be the first and only triathlete to have competed in 5 Olympic Games, winning a medal in two of them (London 2012 and Rio 2016).
- 47 of the 110 men and women due to be racing in Tokyo have already competed in at least one Olympic Games.
- Two women and three men on the Tokyo 2020 Olympic start lists have won triathlon medals in previous editions of the Olympic Games – Nicola Spirig and Vicky Holland (GBR) on the women’s side, Jonathan Brownlee (GBR), Henri Schoeman (RSA) and Javier Gomez Noya (ESP) on the men’s.
