Analysis of Injuries in Long-Distance Triathletes

Abstract

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.

Prevalence of injuries in triathletes from a French league

“…The prevalence of trauma injuries in triathletes in this study (52.4%) is higher than that found by Collins et al 4 and Korkia et al 9 but lower than that found by Egermann et al, 1 Wilk et al, 6 and O'Toole et al 5 The prevalence is also lower than suggested by our preliminary study (62.8%) who had examined 43 triathletes. 2 The distribution of injury suggested by our preliminary study 2 is remarkably confirmed by the results of this study: 44.5% of triathletes reported having made a tendinopathy during the previous season (vs. 41.9% in the preliminary study) and 35% muscle injury (vs. 37%).…”

“…5,21---25 On the over side, the competitive practice was similar to that described by other authors. 1 As suggested by Korkia et al, 9 the training loads reported by the amateur triathletes seem very important, especially among men (9.2 hours per week on average). These results and the nature of injury suggest probable errors in the planning of training.…”

“…4,5,7,8,17 More than 8 out of 10 (83.5%) injuries occur during training. Even if the time spent in competition has to be compared to training time, 1,12 the most studies confirm that the most frequent injuries in triathlon training occur during running 5,6,9,13 with a prevalence of injuries related to running ranging from 58 to 70% in the literature. 4,8---10 In our study, the prevalence of injury in running is even more important (72.5%).…”

“…The rapidly increasing number of practitioners is accompanied by an increase in the frequency of consultations in medicine and sports trauma interesting triathletes, 1 and this especially as this population appears to have substantial recourse to health professionals. 2 Like any other sport, this implies for the practitioner to know the sport and its specific constraints in order to understand the specific pathologies.…”

“…In the current state of knowledge, and as emphasized in a recent review of the literature, 3 the lack of available data on the incidence, pattern of injuries and lack of evidence level studies published do not establishment of preventive medical recommendations in triathlon. 1 The prevalence of injuries among triathletes found in the literature varies from 37 to 91%. 4---10 The differences in study populations, methodology, particularly about definition of injury or the method of data collection make it difficult to exploit these findings to develop recommendations for our league.…”