With the motto "Go far", the eighteenth edition of the IES Yaiza Triathlon will be held this Friday morning. A sporting event that continues to grow in the number of participants and brings together most of the educational community of Lanzarote. In this edition, 1,600 students and teachers will participate in one way or another in the IES Yaiza Triathlon, which will take place in the surroundings of the Yaiza institute on Friday morning.
The organization has been overwhelmed by the avalanche of registration requests, having to leave out many students who wanted to participate in this sporting event. Finally, 1,600 young people will participate, of which about 1,200 will actively participate in the swimming, cycling and running events, and the other 400 students will help in the organizational tasks. For security reasons and logistical issues, the organization was forced to ask the educational centers to make a weighting in the number of registered triathletes, which meant that about 300 students have not been able to participate.
All secondary schools in Lanzarote will be represented in the XVIII IES Yaiza Triathlon. For the first time, a team from the Lanzarote Teachers' Center joins the competition. The IES Yaiza, with 119 competitors, is the center that contributes the largest number of triathletes to the event. It is followed by the IES Blas Cabrera with 100, the IES Zonzamas with 92, the IES Teguise with 91, the IES César Manrique with 87 and the IES Playa Honda with 83.
The registered triathletes have been placed in 273 teams, composed of a maximum of four members each, being the male, female and mixed teams. In addition, about a hundred athletes have dared to do the IES Yaiza Triathlon individually. The organization has divided the competitors into a category for those over 20 years old and another for those under that age. The students of the First Cycle of ESO of the IES Yaiza will also participate and will do so in a special category.
The route of the IES Yaiza Triathlon has undergone some variations with respect to previous editions, to facilitate the proper control of the participants. These modifications have been introduced in the bicycle and running segments. In addition, the participants of the First Cycle of ESO will start in another area and thus ensure their safety.
The participants are scheduled to start at around 10:00 am. In the enclave near Puerto Calero, the triathletes will have to face a 500-meter course in the open sea. The bicycles will be located in the parking lot of the Hotel Hesperia, from where the cycling event will begin, with a distance of 7.5 kilometers. This is one of the toughest parts of the triathlon, with participants having to overcome the constant ups and downs of the course. And the event will conclude with a 2.5-kilometer run, which will take place on a circuit in the vicinity of the educational center.