For a corner of the island with no cycling club, no triathlon club and no swimming club of its own, the eastern end of Cyprus hosts a remarkable amount of racing. Four separate events, all within a short drive of Paralimni, and no page anywhere gathers them, which is why people who live here often find out about one of them the week after it happened.
This is that page. What it is not is a calendar: there are no dates below, on purpose. Race dates move, editions get postponed, and the internet is currently full of confident dates for events whose own organisers publish nothing. Every event here is named with its organiser so you can go and ask them, which is the only answer that stays true.
The Ayia Napa Triathlon
Run by Nireas, a triathlon organisation that has been putting on races since 1993 and is a founding member of the Cyprus Triathlon Federation. The hub is at Nissi Beach in Ayia Napa and the swim is in Nissi Bay, about fifteen minutes from our door.
It runs several formats at once: a middle distance, an Olympic, a sprint, and a standalone swim for people who want the water without the bike and the run. That last one is more useful than it sounds and we come back to it below.
What it asks of you is a sea swim, a coastal bike leg where the wind matters more than the gradient, and a run in the sun with very little shade. We have written the long version in our guide to training for it, which goes through the last six weeks in detail.
The open-water marathon at Fig Tree Bay
Protaras Open Water is organised by the Cyprus Swimming Federation with the Paralimni-Deryneia municipality, at Fig Tree Bay in Protaras. It is a real international fixture rather than a local swim: the bay has hosted a European Aquatics open-water cup leg, with a masters event alongside it seeded in waves by age group, and a Special Olympics open-water cup.
The distances are long by amateur standards (the headline race is measured in kilometres, not hundreds of metres), but the masters and shorter events are the accessible way in. If you want the honest picture of what swimming in that bay is like before you enter anything, swimming in the sea here covers the water rather than the racing.
SwimRun Cyprus
Held in Protaras, under the auspices of the Cyprus Triathlon Federation. Swimrun alternates running and swimming over a course, in the kit you started in, and it runs several distances from a short relay and a family-length event up to a long course, so somebody who is not a racer can enter it.
It is also the event on this list that best fits the coastline it is held on, and the one with the least written about how to train for it. Training for a swimrun is our attempt at that.
The Ayia Napa half marathon
Run For Autism is a road race starting near Nissi Bay and running along the coast, with a half marathon, a ten kilometre, a five kilometre and children’s races, raising money for autism support in the Famagusta district. The shorter distances and the children’s races make it the most family-shaped event on this list.
Which one first
If you have never raced anything, the honest order is usually the opposite of the ambitious one.
- A five or ten kilometre road race is the lowest-friction first race in existence. No kit, no transition, no water.
- The standalone swim at a triathlon is an underrated second step: the atmosphere and the mass start of a triathlon, without owning a race bike.
- A sprint triathlon next, with one caveat worth taking seriously: a sea swim is a bigger step for a first-timer than a pool or lake swim, so get sea time in beforehand. Several sessions, not one.
- Swimrun at a short distance, if the idea of running wet appeals more than the idea of a bike leg.
- The long courses after all of that, and not before.
Training for a race that is on your doorstep
The advantage of living here, or of coming here for a block, is that you can train on the actual terrain rather than on an approximation of it. That matters more in these events than in most: the sea state, the light off the water when you sight into a low sun, the wind on an exposed coastal bike leg and the lack of shade on the run are all things you can rehearse within a few kilometres of each other.
Ramo offers triathlon coaching and swimming coaching on this coast and races himself. What that buys you is a plan written by somebody who has swum in that bay and ridden into that wind, which is a different document from a generic twelve-week template. If you want the volume in one concentrated stretch instead of spread over a season, that is what the training camps are for.
None of the events above is run by us and we make no claim to be part of any of them. Enter through the organiser.
Do I need to be in a club to enter?
No. Every event here takes individual entries. It is worth knowing that the clubs in Cypriot triathlon and swimming are concentrated in Nicosia, Limassol and Paphos (there is no equivalent in the Famagusta district), so almost everybody racing from this corner is doing it as an individual.
Can I race one while I am here on holiday?
Plenty of people do, and the shorter distances are well suited to it. The one thing worth building in is arriving early enough to get into the sea a couple of times before race morning, because the sea is the variable that a visiting athlete has not rehearsed.
When are these races held?
We are not printing dates, and it is a deliberate refusal rather than an oversight: at least one endurance event on this island has been postponed while third-party calendars carried on advertising the old date. Go to the organiser: Nireas for the triathlon, the Cyprus Swimming Federation for the open water, the swimrun and half marathon organisers for their own.