I will look at the video later but any water temperature over 74 will dehydrate you. It is plain stupid to run that far in the heat and swim unless you have trained for it. Not sure how good of an athlete this guy was but 3.5 mile run probably took them around 30 minutes and he was ending an 800 meter swim which is another 20 minutes. An hour in on a hot day pushing yourself and no one close to the finish line to watch the athletes. Say what you want around a lot of triathlon events but they take the swim very seriously.

There is a reason why in triathlons swimming is first, it is the safest way. I used to tell people I coached that ever time you get in the water death is a possibility so treat it as such. Swim with a buddy or safety flotation device.

I hate this for his family and friends. So tragic.

I really hope the re-think not having swimming first next time.

Why not have them swim on a swim board? It still takes energy and effort but you inherently have safety flotation…

It's a test to find the fittest man/woman on earth. To do that you have to do hard stuff and hard stuff is inherently dangerous.

Part of the challenges is doing new or unknown things to test their athleticism/fitness and general ability to take known skills and adapt to accomplish something new.

I've listened to a lot of different people talk on it now. It's a slippery slope - just use a swim board. why would they ever use a mountain bike. Just use stationary. Why are they scaling that wall. Just have them use a mountain climber machine.

Blah! Part of me is "do you want to compete in this sport or not?" If not, go do something else.

But there's something to be said about increased eyes/jet skis/paddle boarders on that event. That's the whole issue. This dude needed help and no one saw it and he disappeared in front of everyone's eyes unknown for about 20-30m before anyone noticed.