Three consecutive events. 3.8 km of swimming, 180.2 km of cycling and a full marathon at the end of it. To be completed in a day. Competitors are required to finish all these within a time limit of 17 hours.
It is more brutal than it sounds. Yet, a few do love challenging the limits, and among them is Major General Vikram Dogra.
He happens to be India’s first serving Army officer to complete the Ironman Triathlon, reports the Economic Times.
Held in Klagenfurt town, the event saw 2,850 athletes from 50 countries participating in the event. The official twitter handle of the Indian Army shared the news, congratulating the Major General on his achievement, of completing what many call one of the toughest endurance events in the world.
Major General Vikram Dogra of 17 Poona Horse globally became the first General to participate & successfully complete #Ironman, Austria on 1 Jul 2018 which included 3.8 km of swimming, 180 km of cycling & 42.2 km running. 2850 athletes from 50 countries participated in the event pic.twitter.com/inDWWUsCVw
— ADG PI – INDIAN ARMY (@adgpi) July 3, 2018
The General is no stranger to sports and has been an avid sportsman all his life. He started cycling around five years ago, and cycled from Leh to Chandigarh, a distance of 800 kms in eight days. He has cycled all over, from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer, Sela Pass to Bumla Pass in Arunachal Pradesh and from Akhnoor to Rajouri in Jammu and Kashmir.
He has taken part in several triathlons, across various categories, like the Sprint (500 meters swimming, 20 km cycling and 5 km running), the Olympic category (1,500 meters swimming, 40 km cycling, 10 km running), as well as the half, and now the full Ironman.
Army spokesperson Col Aman Anand told The Times of India that Major General Dogra is the only serving army officer from the Indian Army to do a full Ironman and is the only General across the globe to have done so.
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Major General Dogra completed the Full Ironman in 14 hours and 21 minutes. Incidentally, he has been a Sword of Honour, and Gold Medalist of the December 1981 batch. He was commissioned in the Poona Horse (an armoured regiment), which he went on to command. He has also commanded an Armoured Brigade on the western front with Pakistan and an Infantry Division in a Strike Corps.
(Edited by Shruti Singhal)
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