The final of the Russian triathlon season brought together 6,500 participants from 393 cities

From Octo­ber 6 to Octo­ber 8, the IRONSTAR SOCHI SIRIUS 2023 sports fes­ti­val was held in Sir­ius (Sochi). The event brought togeth­er 6,500 par­tic­i­pants and 17,000 fans from 77 regions of Rus­sia. The fes­ti­val includ­ed wom­en’s and chil­dren’s races, open water swims, triathlon com­pe­ti­tions at dis­tances of 113 km, SPRINT and OLYMPIC, as well as the main triathlon race of the sea­son — IRONSTAR 226 SOCHI SIRIUS 2023.

The fes­ti­val start­ed with SWIMSTAR open water swims at dis­tances of 1 and 2 nau­ti­cal miles. The par­tic­i­pants cov­ered 1,852 km and 3,704 km, respec­tive­ly, in the waters of the Imereti port. Also on Fri­day, the STARKIDS chil­dren’s 500 m and 1000 m race took place, and the IRONLADY wom­en’s 5 km race end­ed the first day of the fes­ti­val. On the same day, the ath­letes were able to dis­cuss how to build a train­ing reg­i­men and where to start prepar­ing for the first triathlon as part of the pub­lic talk for girls “The Guide to a Suc­cess­ful Woman.” Ath­lete and blog­ger Anas­ta­sia Tuk­mache­va, nutri­tion­ist Anas­ta­sia Zhuko­va, CCM in swim­ming Eka­te­ri­na Sugrobo­va and triath­lete Maria Maly­she­va shared their expe­ri­ence with the par­tic­i­pants.

Sat­ur­day and Sun­day were ded­i­cat­ed to triathlon races. On Sat­ur­day, Octo­ber 7, the first to start were the par­tic­i­pants of the main race of the sea­son — IRONSTAR 226 SOCHI SIRIUS 2023, for which the triath­letes had been prepar­ing for the whole sea­son. As part of the com­pe­ti­tion, they cov­ered 3.86 km of swim­ming, 180 km of cycling and 42 km of run­ning. After com­plet­ing this dis­tance, 486 peo­ple became tru­ly “iron”. In addi­tion, on Sat­ur­day the par­tic­i­pants also tried their hand at the 113 km race, which includes 1.93 km of swim­ming, 90 km of cycling and 21 km of run­ning. On the same day, pro­fes­sion­als com­pet­ed for prizes at the Russ­ian Long Dis­tance Cham­pi­onship, the win­ners of which were Ilya Pra­solov and Yulia Golofee­va.

Among the par­tic­i­pants there was a record num­ber of paraath­letes for one fes­ti­val — more than 50 peo­ple at dif­fer­ent dis­tances. Also, 10 chil­dren with Down syn­drome took part in the chil­dren’s race.

The sports fes­ti­val con­clud­ed with triathlon races at OLYMPIC dis­tances (1.5 km swim­ming, 40 km cycling, 10.5 km run­ning) and the short­est – SPRINT (0.75 km swim­ming, 20 km cycling, 5.25 km run­ning).

The fes­ti­val in Sir­ius is con­sid­ered one of the most pic­turesque in terms of routes: the swim­ming stage in the bay of the Imereti port, the cycling stage route began on the coast and then went into the moun­tains along the Adler-Kras­naya Polyana Olympic route, and the run­ning stage passed along the Black Sea coast.