With triathlon events suspended, and with athletes, coaches and officials around the world forced to stay and train at home during the Covid-19 outbreak, the focus for international governing body World Triathlon has switched to provide opportunities to train and get education courses online.
“In the last few weeks, we have been uploading in the Education Hub resources not only for registered athletes, coaches and technical officials,” explained World Triathlon Head of Development, Zita Csovelyak. “But we have also opened up some content as free access, so that we are giving everyone an opportunity to access useful resources during this time.”
Among other resources, athletes can find Wednesday Weekly Tips offered by Emma Carney, former triathlon world champion. She is offering advice on different matters, such as how athletes can develop their personal brand and sponsorship deals, as well as nutrition and exercise ideas under lockdown.
Also available for all triathletes, coaches and officials are the Mindful Offerings with Dr Debbie Alexander, a World Triathlon Executive Board member and also a Clinical Psychologist with a PhD in neuropsychology/sport.
The Education Hub also offers covid-19 guidelines for event organisers, for athletes and coaches and for medical delegates. The guidelines are accessible in English, Spanish, Arabic (two versions) and Turkish.
Online courses
World Triathlon notes that one of the opportunities during the pandemic is the possibility of opening up courses to more people. More than 115 triathletes and 35 coaches from South American countries – including Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Perú, Puerto Rico, Ecuador, Paraguay, Cuba, Uruguay, Venezuela and Costa Rica – attended the inaugurla PATCO Development activity. This includes one hour of physical training plus another hour of coaching every Saturday in Spanish.
English speaking athletes and coaches can benefit from the same initiative every Friday starting this week.
“Alejandro Cañas, PATCO Athlete and Coach Development Coordinator, said “For us, it is a great opportunity so that young athletes can have access to dry training, and implement different activities now that they have to stay at home. We try to teach them how to maximise their efforts and to stay connected during this pandemic. It was great to see that we had lots of really young athletes from the youth and junior categories attending the first course, and a large number of female athletes and coaches.”
In the last few months, World Triathlon Certified Coaches have gone through their revalidation process, all of them online. This includes 959 certified coaches from 101 developing national federations, who originally completed a Level 1 or Level 2 courses since November 2014 when the Education Hub was first launched.
For those who missed revalidating their certified status annually in the past three years, a one-go revalidation will be offered during the summer as the last chance to maintain their certification in the newly piloted process.
Another group that has been focusing on online education is World Triathlon Technical Officials (TOs). In 2020, 192 TOs from 42 countries have gone through their level 1 revalidation course in English, while another 69 participants have done so in Spanish, from 12 different countries. For the Level 2 courses, almost 80 officials have finished the process, coming from 30 nationalities, and with a total of 19 facilitators managing these seminars in recent months.
The agenda for the upcoming weeks includes: more training sessions for young athletes, development opportunities for coaches, and webinars on Covid-19 guidelines for all World Triathlon organizers and technical delegates. The webinars are provided in English and Spanish and are targeting event organizers first, with the plan to be extended to the wider community from June.
