Triathlon is an individual sport consisting of three disciplines -
swimming, cycling and running. Triathlon has changed from a novel appearance to
a very popular Olympic sport within the last fifteen years. Nevertheless, there
is not sufficient data about injuries in triathlon. The aim of this
retrospective survey was to investigate the incidence of injuries according to
class of injuries, anatomical sites and disciplines. Relations to age, sex,
performance level, training habits and medical care were analysed.
Questionnaires were sent to all German speaking participants of the Ironman
Europe 2000. With a response rate of 35 %, 656 questionnaires met
the inclusion criteria. At least one injury was experienced by
74.8 % (95 %-CI: 71.3-78.1) of all
respondents during their active time in triathlon. 51.1 %
(95 %-CI: 47.2-55.0) suffered one or more
contusion/skin-abrasions, 33.1 % (95 %-CI:
29.5-36.8) muscle-/tendon-injuries, 29.0 %
(95 %-CI: 25.5-32.6) ligament-/capsule-injuries and
11.9 % (95 %-CI: 9.5-14.6) fractures. Most of
the injuries happened during cycling (54.8 %
[95 %-CI: 51.9-57.8]) within training sessions.
18.7 % (95 %-CI: 16.4-21.2) of all injuries
occurred while the athletes were competing. Considering the low number of
competition hours per year, the incidence of injuries during competition was
higher than during training session. Significant relations were found
considering the age, performance level and weekly training hours of the
triathletes. Older athletes sustained more fractures
(p = 0.024), high performance athletes suffered more
contusions/abrasions (p = 0.003) and
muscle-tendon-injuries (p = 0.001) and athletes with a
large number of weekly training hours suffered more muscle-tendon-injuries
(p = 0.014). To summarize, injuries in triathlon seem to
be related to age, performance level and weekly training hours, but not to sex,
presence of training coach and medical care.
Key words
Training habits - age - performance level - sex - coach - medical care
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