World Triathlon Updates Hydration Rules
World Triathlon has announced updated guidelines regarding the controversial hydration rules, aiming to provide additional clarity for professional and age-group athletes alike.
The rules, which came into effect earlier this year, limited the number and amount of liquid that could be carried within bottles both in front of and behind the rider. IRONMAN adopted these rules as well, adding further clarifying language around what constituted a bottle being mounted to a surface “around the steering axis.” But then the German triathlon federation DTU took it a step further, with nine additional pages of regulations on hydration carriers.
This puts everyone back on the same page — the announcement on the revised rules starts with “after extensive meetings with DTU, the World Triathlon Technical Committee, and the bike manufacturers’ industry, World Triathlon has developed a rule interpretation document on the World Triathlon Fairing rules.” It is expected that IRONMAN will follow suit, given the ongoing rules harmonization between IRONMAN and World Triathlon.
Here are the key clarifications made by the revised rules.
Handlebars and Attachments to Them
World Triathlon has officially adopted the extension rule that IRONMAN had previously gone through, prohibiting extensions from reaching beyond the leading edge of the front wheel. This measurement will include the absolute tip of the extension — meaning that if you have a Dura-Ace friction TT shifter, the end of that shifter is considered the tip.
All attachments — whether it be hydration, mounts, nutrition boxes, etc. — now must effectively fit within a box. It is our understanding that a measurement jig is being created so as to effectively create a pass/fail method of inspection. Those points of reference are measured from the lowest edge of the arm support, and must fit within a box that is:
- a maximum of 250 mm in the direction of the saddle
- a maximum of 200 mm in height
- no further than the foremost point of the handlebars or clip-ons
- a maximum of 20 mm from the highest point of the front wheel
Computers are specifically excluded from this measurement.
The other key clarification here is on anything mounted above the arms — it is specifically prohibited. The arms must remain uncovered at all times. Call it the Joe Skipper rule.
Hydration: Limits on Fluid Volume, Bottle Counts
The updated ruleset provides some further clarity on the front and rear hydration rules. Front hydration that mounts around the steering axis may not exceed 2 liters of total capacity. There is not a limit on the number of bottles used to reach that figure.
With rear carriers, there’s another imaginary 30cm x 30cm box that the mount, cage/carrier, etc. must fit into. Bottles are specifically excluded from that measurement. Athletes may carry a maximum of two liters of fluid across two bottles with an individual capacity of one liter. It makes things somewhat standardized.
We say somewhat there because, if you are an athlete with a bike that has frame hydration built in towards the back of the bike, your rules are different. Your frame hydration is limited to a total capacity of two liters. Crucially, though, you are not allowed to then have rear hydration carriers. (Update: World Triathlon has provided clarity that this part of the ruleset is specific to rear internal hydration systems, such as that on the Specialized Shiv, and not all internal hydration carriers.)
When Will New Rules Be In Force?
World Triathlon’s rules, although announced yesterday, are in effect as of April 15th. IRONMAN, in general, will give a notice period to athletes regarding rule changes such as these. We would anticipate that rules won’t take effect until 30 days after an announcement from the brand, making either races towards the tail end of May, or early June, as races where would expect to see these things evolve.
@mathematics ahead of the curve (before Christmas)
Can you provide further clarification on the integrated hydration comment below? Does this mean you can either have integrated hydration or 2 liters of behind the saddle hydration but you can’t have both?
Doesn’t this affect canyon the most? Not sure I understand their reasoning on this.
How about the rear storage box like on QR bikes? What difference does it make if there’s a bladder inside or some tubes and tools?
Only thing I can think of is they are trying to level the playing field between bikes with internal hydration and those without them. One could carry more total liquid with internal frame hydration.
Reading through it, it really ultimately seems like it is trying to limit you to 4L of fluid. Which is ultimately a safety thing…because, you know, we’re all such excellent bike handlers.
Personally, I prefer to eat a ton of salty food and creatine in the days leading up to the race and just retain 4L of water internally. Take that bottle-bureaucrats!
what internal hydration holds 2L though? Also does their rule limit how much hydration is held within the bike triangle such as on the down tube or the inside seat post?
Hopefully Ironman doesnt adopt that aspect of these rules. That aspect is more adept for middle distance (70.3 and shorter) but it’s ridiculous to limit the combination of internal hydration with rear hydration storage in long course.
Yeah that’s how I read it too. I imagine pros with canyons and felt ia 2.0’s will be ditching the internal bladders and running 2 bottles bts. This rule basically kills any internal frame hydration going forward.
It figures that Big Bottle conspiracists would be the ones behind this. Either they are laying the ground work to make us all dependent on their on-course nutrition or they want us to keep buying their overpriced tradeshow bottles.
Might need to dress up in a speedo and singlet with a bunch of friends and throw all the bottles into the lake at the Woodlands.
A good move IMO (obviously)
They addressed this at the pro meeting in Texas today said they’ll most likely adopt these exact rules towards the end of May.
I’m not a huge fan of the timing though. Midseason rule changes should really be kept to safety critical areas. I’m not sure this rule changes anything about the safety of the existing possible setups. For most setups this box is most limiting of the rearmost bottle (250mm from rear of armrest). There was already talk of extending the armrest rearward by artificial means (gluing more onto it). 250mm is roughly the height of a standard 750ml bike bottle, so imagining that against the back tip or you pads gives a good idea of how tight that is compared to some setups.
No system is extending down anywhere near 20mm of the wheel, nor extending past the bars, at least not the ones set up to augment aerodynamics.
This rule also (finally!) disproportionately benefits smaller riders. Not a lot, and it would be needlessly cumbersome to try to measure setups as a proportion of other distances.
I suspect the reaction to this by next season will be a slow change from many bottles to bespoke hydration systems for different frames. Most guys I see prefer the convenience of bottles, but this may change the math to see box-filling systems being 10’s of watts faster.
(PS: There is no width restriction that I see here, but presuming a reasonable 200mm max practical width gives a 10 liter box. I wonder if we’ll see hydration systems that have “reinforcing cavities” or other ways to fill them with non-hydration-fillable volume yet maximize the space they actually take up. Like a 5 liter shape with a 3 liter cylinder hole through the horizontal middle)
If you had an internal hydration system does this mean you can’t run a saddle bag or storage bottle for your repair kit on the rear attached to the saddle or is it just hydration?
Most of this makes sense from a safety perspective but I think I’d rather have people use internal hydration versus having bottles launch all over the place and this would seem to make it less likely people will use the built in option.
I can give some clarity from reading of the DTU regulation that theres are copied from and were released a couple weeks ago… of course the germans attention to detail and wording is 1000 times better than ironman so i would recommend people read those
The rules explicitly state that there is no limits to hydration within the frame triangle
Integrated hydration systems is defined as " In the case of a rear-mounted and frame-integrated beverage system, no additional bike bottles may be attached. (Rear exception).
- My interpretation here is that the “AND” (not and “or”) is very important. This would exclude bikes like the shiv from having rear bottles but not bikes like canyon or felt that have the hydration in the frame. The intent seems to be to prevent excessive aerodynamic stuff behind the seat.
*Rear storage seems fine - but it says that it has to be with in the 30x30 box. My question here would be how does this apply to bikes like QRs? Do your bottle mounts have to be within 30cm of your rear storage?
I ask myself if the people making these decisions now were around at the very beginning of triathlon become a large, distinct sport, what would they have outlawed then? Joe Skipper doing Joe Skipper things does not cause age groupers to crash into Matt Hanson or Ironman motorcycles to crash into age groupers or race directors from pushing through unsafe swims.
All these hydration rules articulated under the guise of safety are solving a problem that doesn’t exist, while there are a myriad of other safety problems that do exist and are seen as acceptable risk. And the justification that it provides a marginal aero benefit is a moot point considering where triathlon is at compared to cycling.
Politely, I dissent.
Historically, we have decisions that we all can disagree with. We outlawed disc wheels in Kona; we opted to ignore UCI rules when there might have been utility in keeping things aligned; the godforsaken zipper rules.
That said, there is something to be said from a safety perspective of both handlebar rules and how we carry total fluids. It is my understanding that there are some bike brands that are now requiring their athletes to provide ISO certifications for their entire set-up in order to avoid the possibility of some jerry-rig set-up failing, and it making said bike brand look bad in the process. (That’s technically already in the rulebook but that’s a whole other story.)
I think we can all agree that it’s good we got away from Camelbak’s in jerseys.