French athlete goes viral after completing triathlon with his dog
A Frenchman who goes by the social media handle Juleskennel completed a swim, bike, and run with Mia, his Belgian Malinois
Photo by:
Instagram/juleskennel
A French athlete has gone viral after posting a video recap of a triathlon he completed with his dog, Mia. The man goes by the social media handle Juleskennel, and he tackled a swim, bike, run race designed for human-dog duos. It’s called a canitriathlon, and it is as wild as it sounds.
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Racing a canitriathlon
In Juleskennel’s video, he shows himself exiting the water on race day as he is being towed along by an eager Mia. The pair proceeded to T1, where Juleskennel hopped on his mountain bike and connected himself to Mia with a bungee cord and harness. The second leg of the race is bikejoring, which is the official term for cycling with a dog.
Bikejoring takes considerable skill from the rider, a lot of discipline from the dog (you wouldn’t want your dog veering off-course to chase a squirrel while bikejoring), and good teamwork from both partners. In the Juleskennel video, he and Mia made multiple passes of other racer-dog pairings to climb into first place on the ride. After the bike, Mia and Juleskennel carried on to the run, which in dog-racing terms is called canicross. The duo ran a stellar final leg, impressing tens of thousands of viewers online.
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The perfect team
Mia is a Belgian Malinois—a very energetic and athletic breed of dog—making her the perfect companion for an endeavour like a canitriathlon. She is not Juleskennel’s only endurance sport partner, however, as he has three more dogs and races with each of them.
Juleskennel has had success in bikejoring and canicross with all of his dogs, and his vlogs of training and racing has garnered him and his team of furry sidekicks plenty of attention. He currently has more than 264,000 followers on TikTok and 104,000 on Instagram, as well as 80,000 subscribers on YouTube. You might not be ready to jump into a canitriathlon with your family pet, but you can live vicariously through Juleskennel if you want to see a dog triathlete in action.