CARIFTA Triathlon, Aquathlon & Mixed Relay Championships

History

Back in November 22, 2014 Darren Treasure approached Andrew Kirby, President of the Barbados Aquatics Sports Association and Peter Gibbs the then President of the Barbados Triathlon Federation about integrating a CARIFTA Triathlon Competition with the CARIFTA Swimming Championships.  Subsequently Peter presented the idea at the 2015 CARIFTA Swimming Congress in Barbados.  The Swimming Federations gave their blessing but felt a CARIFTA Triathlon Championship should be held independently from Swimming.  During the ensuing year support was gathered from the surrounding Caribbean Islands to develop a youth/junior triathlon event.

Then in May 2016 at the Caribbean Championships in Miami, Darren Treasure raised the idea with a number of the Federation’s represented (Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Jamaica, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Maarten,  Trinidad & Tobago and USVI) at the event, including Marisol Casado, President of the ITU invited by Alan Beckford, Jamaica.  It was the feeling of most at that time that our children don’t get enough race exposure and as a result of this they don’t perform well when they travel out of their home country.  It was at the conclusion of this meeting that the Caribbean Federation’s in attendance embarked to host the inaugural CARIFTA Triathlon Championships.

Trinidad & Tobago felt that this was a great idea and together with Barbados decided to pitch the idea to the English speaking Caribbean and much discussion went into this.  Once there was buy in to the event a meeting was set up at the International Triathlon Union Congress 2016 in Madrid, Spain.  Extensive discussions about the name and look and feel of the event was had.  Finally and after a lot of research on the use of the CARIFTA name it was decided that the event will be called CARIFTA Triathlon, Aquathlon & Mixed Relay Championships open to all children ages 11 to 19.  The triathlon was also declared draft legal in an effort to help teach the juniors “how to draft” safely.  At the time, it was felt that all triathletes should focus on swimming and hence the aquathlon is a swim/run with the swim leg being a lot longer than the sprint distance.

At this congress in 2015, it was also decided that Barbados will host the first one as it was Peter Gibbs & Darren Treasure who thought of this idea.  The event is now going strong with more and more participants taking part every year.