Equilateral Triathlon

An Equilateral Triathlon is a triathlon in which each leg would take an approximately equal time. These triathlons were proposed by Wainer and De Veaux (1994) to redress the bias in favour of cycling over running and particulaly over swimming in standard triathlons. Cycling occupies about 78% of the typical race distances, running about 19%, and swimming about 3%. Based on world-record times for similar distances, cycling would take about 54% of race time, running about 31%, and swimming about 15%. In Wainer and De Veaux's equilaterial triathlons cycling should take about 33% of race time, running about 33%, and swimming about 33%. Examples would be: "Sprint", taking about 10 minutes per leg: 1 km swim / 8.5 km bike / 3.9 km run; "Olympic", taking about 28 minutes per leg: 2.7 km swim / 22.4 km bike / 10 km run; and "Iron Man", taking about 127 minutes per leg: 12 km swim / 96.2 km bike / 42.2 km run. Wainer and De Veaux's proposal appears to have had little influence on triathlon race distances.

Reference

Wainer, H., & De Veaux, R. D. (1994). Resizing triathlons for fairness. Chance, 7, 20–25. from http://www.williams.edu/Mathematics/rdeveaux/papers/triath.ps