As the International Federation for triathlon, ITU focuses on governing and growing the sport worldwide through various development projects ever year.

This year, ITU and its Continental Confederations offered more than 70 ITU Development Projects. These projects included coach, technical official and community level courses aimed at enhancing participants’ knowledge on a range of triathlon subjects.

In addition to the breadth of seminars offered, Abu Dhabi, Tahiti, Bahrain, Indonesia, Greece, Nepal, the Virgin Island, Panama or Jordan all hosted courses for the first time this year.

For most elite triathletes, it’s the dream of competing in the Olympic Games that fuels them on. However, lack of funding, training facilities and knowledge can hinder even the most talented and skilled athletes from reaching such goals. For that reason, ITU created a number of development projects aimed to help promising triathletes to reach their Olympic goals.

One of those projects is Team ITU, which aims to provide support, resources and expertise to athletes from emerging or developing countries with the goal of competing at the next Olympics. The project has grown expansively since we began it.

This year, saw athletes from Chinese Taipei, Chile, Ecuador, Belarus, Bahrain and Ukraine join Team ITU for the first time. All Team ITU athletes were offered coaching support in a team atmosphere followed by the chance to compete at events in New Plymouth, Chengdu, Huatulco, Tiszaujavaros, and Alanya, the ladder of which hosted Team ITU for the first time.

ITU Continental Confederations also did great work to establish different projects to aid in the development of Federations. CAMTRI, for instance, focused on an athlete development project with the goal of getting athletes to Rio 2016, while Oceania established Team Oceania, in which athletes from Fiji, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea trained in Fiji and competed at the Pacific Games.

The Asian Triathlon Confederation sent new bike equipment to Cambodia and Myanmar, and focused on the development of athletes, officials and the Federations in the Middle East, while in Africa they worked on establishing new National Federations. The European Triathlon Union held several successful athlete camps.

Additionally, with the technical support of ITU, a duathlon event was held at the Olympic Youth Development Centre in Lusaka (Zambia) this December for the first time.

ITU is committed to continuing to…