This year's triAthlone to take place on June 30

Over 2,000 people are expected to run, cycle, and swim their way through the seventh annual triAthlone, which will take place on the afternoon and evening of Saturday, June 30. Its chief organiser, Liam Heavin, said he expects the upcoming event to be broadly similar to last year's triAthlone. The event returned to a one-day format following the 2010 European Triathlon championships which took place in the town over three days and drew over 4,000 participants. The manner in which last year's races were scheduled - starting at 3pm on a Saturday and concluding that evening - was welcomed by the town's traders, Mr Heavin said. "The format allowed most business people to have a normal morning's trading on that Saturday and we expect it will be very, very similar this year," he told the Westmeath Independent on Monday. One meeting had taken place between the event organisers and local traders, and there have also been meetings with Athlone Town Council, the Gardai and the Defence Forces. One way in which the next triAthlone will differ from the 2011 event is that the Strand will be reintroduced as part of the running route. This is designed to limit the number of running participants on Church Street at any given time, as there was a difficulty with crowd congestion last year. "The size of the crowds we had on the street last year was quite unexpected," Mr Heavin said. "We had similar crowds to what we saw during the European championships the year before. That's a good sign in that it shows the event may be gaining traction as a spectator sport, but it did lead to some problems on Church Street given the number of people on the street. "The runners were going up and down Church Street and there weren't many breaks to allow people cross the street. We had people with buggies who weren't able to get across the road, so on the advice of everyone involved with the event we've changed that this year. Using the Strand will mean we'll have less participant 'traffic' on the street so there will be more breaks to allow pedestrians cross." He stated that this year's event will remain the largest one-day triathlon in the country and, in an Olympic year, the fact that triAthlone will feature an Irish Olympic-distance championship race is likely to be a significant draw. The event will also include Ireland's first ever paratriathlon championships for physically challenged athletes. In 2010 the European paratriathlon championships were staged as part of the triAthlone event, but none of the participants in that race were Irish. With paratriathlon having been accepted as a new sport for the 2016 paralympic games in Brazil, Mr Heavin said he was hopeful that having the Irish paratriathlon championships in Athlone each year would help develop the sport in Ireland. "That's something we're very enthusiastic about," he said. Registration for this year's event opened in early March and Mr Heavin said just over 500 people have signed up so far. "We're ahead of where we were this time last year. Our event is unusual in the sense that we probably see more than 50% of people sign up in the last 4-6 weeks before the race," he said. "Hopefully we're developing a reputation as a high-quality event. There's a large group of people who stick a pin in the calendar (on the date of the race) each year and know that's when they're coming to Athlone. We are the biggest sporting event of this kind in the Midlands and that's something we want to continue to build on," he said.