lifeguard. Some participants took longer than expected, and it began to get dark as they finished their swims. Shanahan recalls they pulled up a few cars and turned on the headlights so the athletes could see. Johnstone and Shanahan were surprised by the large number of entrants (46), mainly coming from local running clubs. Two notable entrants, Judy and John Collins, would four years later found the event which brought international attention to the new sport: the Hawaii Ironman. Ironman European migration The first European triathlon was held on 30 August 1980 in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia. The Netherlands, Belgium and West Germany followed, each of them hosting an event in 1981. But media coverage of these events was almost non-existent. Then in 1982, the event organiser IMG, worked in partnership with the American channel CBS (direct competitor of ABC who held the exclusive rights to Hawaii), to create a new event that would take place in Europe. The initial aim was to establish a new premier competition, the European Triathlon, with the goal of being of the same size and prestige to directly compete with that of Hawaii. Originally, the event was to be hosted in Monaco, but with the death of Princess Grace in September 1982, the previous agreements fell through. IMG refused to cancel the event so it was reorganised to be hosted in Nice, France. The first Nice Triathlon was held on 20 November 1982 where fifty seven competitors took the start, for an ill-defined competition that consisted of of swimming, of cycling and a marathon. In December of that year the national television station France 2 broadcast a program, Voyage au bout de la souffrance (Journey to the End of Suffering) which detailed the events of the Nice Triathlon. This program introduced the sport to the general public. Some fans of traditional sports strongly criticised this new practice as seven of the entrants were hospitalised due to the swim, as the temperature of the Mediterranean was only . Despite this criticism IMG's plan succeeded and throughout the 1980s. The Nice Triathlon was, alongside Hawaii, one of the two important long-distance races each year for both prize money and media attention. The year 1985 saw the creation of the first international triathlon structure, the European Triathlon Union (ETU) with the objectives to federate the triathlon structures in each European country and to act as a counterbalance to American