Brag the Rest of Your Life – June/July 2023
Once upon a time, back in the 1970s in southern California a new form of fun came to be: combining three sports, one after another, to see who could be the best. No one trained for this swimming/biking/running triathlon, as it was called; each man (it was all men) just went all out and everyone drank lots of beer afterwards. The distances were puny compared to what we hear of now: about five miles each of running and biking and an 800-yard swim. The entry fee was 50 cents, the bikes were single-speed beach cruisers, and the swim was added primarily to cool off. The kooky event didn’t even begin until 5 p.m. But, the very first triathlon, long before this Seventies version, took place at the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri, and was comprised of three track and field events: long jump, shot put and 100-yard dash. It was won by an American, and was referred to in Olympic manuals as a triathlon.
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