Chapter 648 Triathlon
William smiled evilly: "What? Are you scared by the high stakes? Do you dare to bet?"
Xiao Peng snorted coldly: "Okay, if you dare to send me, I dare to stay. What I am worried about now is that you will cheat after losing the bet!"
"Come on, let's sign the agreement!" William looked excited.
There's a reason he dares to compare himself to Xiao Peng at his fifties: despite his age, William is a true sports enthusiast! You can tell from the fact that he still works part-time at an airline. He's a master at "unconventional" pursuits, mastering tennis, sailing, golf, horseback riding, diving, skiing, and more, all to a professional level. Before inheriting the throne, he served as president of the Dutch Olympic Committee and a member of the International Olympic Committee...
Don't be fooled by his size. He ran a full marathon in New York two years ago and achieved pretty good results. In the Netherlands, people often see his family of five riding bicycles together. Don't look at him as fat and old, but 99.9% of the young people in the world are no match for him.
Nowadays, the health of young people has been ruined by mobile phones and computers. Among the more than one billion people in China, it is considered quite good if one person out of 100,000 can run a full marathon.
After hearing this, Xiao Peng looked at William with a playful expression: "Are you sure you want to compete with me?"
"Of course!" William said, "Why, are you scared?"
"I'm scared?" Xiao Peng brought out a pen and paper. "Come on, William, draft the bet yourself. Just write it according to the conditions that are favorable to you. Villa Eikenhorst? Although it's a bit old and the living conditions are not so good, I'll take it for what it is! If I go to The Hague for vacation, at least I have a place to stay. If things don't work out, I can also host a party with friends. From now on, I'll be considered a resident of the Dutch capital!"
There is something very interesting. Everyone knows that the capital of the Netherlands is Amsterdam, even Baidu introduces it this way, but Amsterdam cannot be regarded as the actual capital of the Netherlands. It can only be regarded as the nominal capital. The real capital of the Netherlands is The Hague: including the seat of the Dutch government, embassies of various countries in the Netherlands and the Dutch Royal Palace are actually in The Hague, not Amsterdam.
In fact, even the name "Holland" is incorrect. The Netherlands, as we now call it, is actually called the Kingdom of the Netherlands, but the correct name is "Netherlands," not "Holland." Holland is simply the name of two of its major provinces—though the Netherlands is only three times the size of the North, it is actually divided into twelve provinces. The two most influential provinces are North Holland and South Holland. Familiar Dutch cities like Amsterdam, The Hague, and Rotterdam are located in these two provinces, so people simply use "Holland" to refer to the entire Kingdom of the Netherlands.
If you meet a Dutch person in Europe, you can easily tell where he is from in the Netherlands: if you call him "Holland" and he says nothing, it means he is from North Holland; if he seriously corrects you to say "Netherlands" instead of "Holland", then they are either government workers or from a province outside North Holland.
The Netherlands has also been struggling with this issue recently and has begun to publicly announce that it wants to change its name. Of course, they are not changing their own country's name, but changing how others call them: from now on, they can only be called 'Netherlands' instead of 'Holland' - you only call two of our twelve provinces by their names, isn't this detrimental to our country's national unity?
This is actually understandable. It's like a person whose name is "Wang San" but you insist on calling him "Wang Ba". Will he be happy?
William took the pen and snorted, "You're so arrogant!" He quickly scribbled something on it, then suddenly looked up and asked, "When are we competing? What are we competing for?"
"It's up to you," Xiao Peng said.
William rolled his eyes. "If we compete in the Modern Pentathlon, we'll need too much preparation. How about the Triathlon?"
He said this out of cunning.
The modern pentathlon includes shooting, fencing, swimming, equestrianism, and cross-country. Xiao Peng's shooting skills astounded everyone. William admitted he couldn't beat Xiao Peng in shooting. As for swimming... Xiao Peng's livelihood was aquatic, so his swimming skills were definitely not bad. However, he wasn't worried about swimming. After all, the results of top swimmers were pretty close. Even if he wasn't as fast as Xiao Peng, the difference wouldn't be much. In equestrianism and cross-country, he was absolutely confident he could beat Xiao Peng. The former was because he had practiced equestrianism for longer than Xiao Peng, and in cross-country, he could run a full marathon himself, but he didn't believe Xiao Peng could do the same.
There were five events in total. He was confident in two, not in two, and one was fencing... and he was a bit hesitant about fencing. While he was also a fencing expert, his size and agility were definitely not as good as Xiao Peng's, and these two were fatal flaws in fencing. What if Xiao Peng "defeated the master with his random punches"?
So William chose to compete in the 'triathlon', which is cycling, swimming and running.
Swimming doesn't make a big difference, and running is what he is good at - even more so in cycling. When he has nothing to do, the whole family will ride bicycles. In this way, his chances of winning are much higher than those of the 'Modern Pentathlon'.
And he was afraid he couldn't win, so he added, "Then let's have a long-distance race!"
Xiao Peng widened his eyes: "William, are you crazy?"
There are three triathlon formats: sprint, Olympic distance, and long distance. The long distance triathlon involves a four-kilometer swim, a 130-kilometer bike ride, and a 30-kilometer run. Fewer people can persevere than a full marathon.
"What? Are you scared?" William looked at Xiao Peng with a smug look on his face. "I have no problem competing in the Super Triathlon."
Xiao Peng slammed the table and said, "Alright then, let's compete in the Super Triathlon."
'Super Triathlon' is also known as 'Big Iron'!
In fact, triathlon is very complicated, and the regulations of various race schedules are very loose, so many triathlon brand events have been born. The standards of each event are also different. The "Super Triathlon" is the standard of the "IRONMAN" event, requiring athletes to swim 3.8 kilometers, bike 180 kilometers, and then run a full marathon of 42.195 kilometers in one day.
Of course, there are still some strong people in this world. What seems impossible for ordinary people to complete is a piece of cake for some people.
Taking into account factors such as temperature, wind speed, weather, and race conditions, there is basically no recognized world record for triathlon. However, German Jan Frodnow once finished in 7 hours, 35 minutes, and 39 seconds.
"Let's compete!" William lowered his head and wrote something on the paper, then looked up and said, "Look, no problem, sign. There's a gym downstairs, let's go compete now!"
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