The story of the São Martinho do Porto Triathlon began, in a way, with a phone call.
At the end of 2021, I had just challenged a dozen friends from Alcobaça to do the IRONMAN 70.3 Cascais the following year. After several years competing for a club from Sintra, I wanted to create a triathlon community in Alcobaça. I spoke with the Board of the Alcobaça Swimming Club (CNAL) and that is how the Triathlon Section of CNAL was born.
Certain day, one of those friends called me asking if I knew why a Portuguese Triathlon Federation vehicle was parked in front of the Alcobaça Town Hall. I had no idea.
I called João Raimundo, who knew Sérgio Dias personally, then President of the Federation. A few minutes later we learned that Hugo Nalha, Vice-President of the Federation, had met with João Santos, the Councillor for Sport, to assess the possibility of hosting a triathlon race in São Martinho do Porto. The answer at that time was negative, the reason being that an event of that nature would only make sense if there was a triathlon club in the municipality.
The irony was obvious.
Everything that was needed was there, except the knowledge that everything was there.
I knew Hermínio Rodrigues, Mayor of Alcobaça, professionally, and asked him for a meeting to present the newly founded Triathlon Section of CNAL. From there, everything happened quickly.
When the Town Hall, the Portuguese Triathlon Federation, the Parish Council of São Martinho do Porto and CNAL sat at the same table, it was very easy to realize that there was a powerful confluence of desires.
What the event would eventually become was profoundly shaped by two statements from that meeting.
Hermínio Rodrigues challenged us:
"Organise an event that makes the people of Alcobaça proud."
Sérgio Dias added:
"CNAL takes care of the party, the FTP takes care of the competition."
I believe that the DNA of the São Martinho do Porto Triathlon was born right there.
We defined five objectives. Promote São Martinho do Porto. Promote sport and triathlon in the municipality and the region. Honour the Olympic triathletes of Alcobaça. Create a high-quality event that would positively impress athletes and spectators. Bring to a sprint-distance race some of the quality and glamour we find in major international long-distance events.
Today, looking back at the four editions, it is especially those last two objectives that best represent what we did.
I have participated in IRONMAN Barcelona and IRONMAN Cascais. In these races, an athlete can pay close to a thousand euros for an entry and thousands of people take part. That financial scale allows the organization to offer an extraordinary experience.
At the São Martinho do Porto Triathlon, the entry fee was around 20 euros.
Our challenge was to look at what is best done in the world, but keep our feet firmly planted in our reality.
That forced us to be creative.
Perhaps the best example of that forward creative thinking is the transition area on the beach.
In the first edition, in 2022, the transition area was set in Rua Eng. Francisco Cavaleiro. With 714 entries we immediately realised that space would not allow us to keep up with the predicted growth indicators.
On 4 December 2022, at around 6 PM, myself, Sérgio Dias, Nuno Vieira, President of the Parish Council of São Martinho do Porto, and João Raimundo were on the beach. We had chosen that time because the tide was similar to the race day and time in 2023 and we needed to analyse several technical aspects.
The problem of the transition area came back into conversation.
Between jokes and some desperation, solutions emerged like "we tear down a building", "we push the building aside" or "we pave the beach".
Until the joke stopped seeming completely absurd.
I said: paving the beach, no, obviously, but perhaps we could find a material rigid enough to allow athletes to run over the sandy beach.
We started exploring the idea. We found a local company that produced wooden boards for construction and that had material with aesthetic defects that could be purchased at a price compatible with our resources.
And the transition area on the beach was born.
What started almost as a joke became one of the most striking images of the event and completely changed the race organisation, reduced the impact on the town's traffic and created an extraordinary competition zone for athletes and spectators. And perhaps the best transition area in the world!
From the very first edition we understood that the São Martinho do Porto Triathlon would not be a race like any other. Basically everything we tried to do started with a very simple question:
How can we make it better for those who participate and those who watch?
It was the same with the grandstands. With the meals offered to athletes and companions. With the merchandise. With the giant screens. With the sound system. With the opening ceremonies. With the event communication. With the finisher awards. With the presence of Alcobaça's music and culture. With the experience of the young people. With family involvement.
And it was also the same with the live broadcast of the 2025 edition.
As far as we know, a broadcast of this scale was unprecedented in a national triathlon event. But we wanted to add something special. It was achieved when three Portuguese Olympic triathletes: Melanie Santos, João Silva and João Pereira, got together as the event commentators.
There is a symbolism here that I particularly enjoy. One of the objectives of the first edition had been to honour the Olympic athletes from our municipality. Four years later, Melanie Santos and João Silva were commentating live on the biggest ever edition of the race that had also started, to honour them.
But none of these ideas and achievements would have had the same value without the community.
The São Martinho do Porto Triathlon was never the work of a person, not even a small group. It was built by many dozens of people and institutions.
Schools, scouts, associations, firefighters, security forces, companies, musicians, technicians, volunteers and many others who were part of the organisation. Over the four editions we had more than a hundred volunteers and nearly twenty local entities involved.
And there was something very visible in the faces of those involved in the organisation. Pride.
Starting in 2024 we also decided to remunerate the entities that provided volunteers. We did it not just as an operational solution. There was a clear purpose to give back value to the community that helped create it and to strengthen the sense of belonging.
That large involvement ended up being one of the greatest achievements of the project.
The impact also reached the sport itself. When we started, Alcobaça had excellent triathletes, including Olympic athletes, but there was no local structure dedicated to triathlon. The São Martinho do Porto Triathlon helped increase the number of adult athletes and was directly responsible for the creation of the CNAL Triathlon School, which continues to operate to this day.
In 2023 we wanted to understand whether what we felt had an objective correspondence and measure. We challenged the Polytechnic Institute of Leiria to carry out an independent academic assessment of the event's economic, social and sporting impacts.
The results confirmed what we saw on the ground. High levels of athlete satisfaction, a strong connection between the population and the event, and an estimated economic impact on the municipality of around one million euros.
The event continued to grow.
In 2025 we reached 1,768 entries, of which 503 in the Open Race, unprecedented numbers for a national triathlon event. We had athletes from 15 of Portugal's 18 districts and from six nationalities.
But the numbers alone do not explain what happened on that weekend.
Perhaps the person who best captured it was someone who came to São Martinho do Porto from abroad.
In the 2025 edition, Alan Ryan, Vice-President of Europe Triathlon, attended the event. With him came an enormous experience in international events, from Olympic Games to World Cups, through World and European Championships, gathered from many years in the triathlon scene.
When Melanie Santos asked him whether São Martinho do Porto had the conditions to host an international event, the answer was unequivocal. He said the location was one of the best he had ever seen, that the event was at a professional level and, after recalling his experience at the world's biggest events in the sport, he summed up his assessment in a simple expression:
"This is right up there."
We were at the level of those races.
Not long after, the candidacy of São Martinho do Porto to host a European Triathlon Cup was approved.
That recognition was never taken as the ultimate goal. It was, above all, the natural sequence of a four-year journey and the quality confirmation of the event that many people helped to build.
Perhaps that is also why I particularly like the film produced about the 2025 edition, "The Bay of Dreams". It is not just a film about a competition. It is a film about athletes, territory, emotion, spectators and people. And it is significant that it is an award winning film in international film festivals around the world. In some way, São Martinho do Porto continued to travel even after the race ended.
When I look back at the four editions, the dominant feeling is a mixture of pride and gratitude.
Pride for the high level we managed to achieve, far beyond what we imagined when we started.
Gratitude to all the people who believed in the project, who worked, who took risks, who solved problems and who gave a little of themselves to make it all happen.
Hermínio Rodrigues and Sérgio Dias helped set the initial course, but the success of the São Martinho do Porto Triathlon belongs to a very wide group of people.
No organisation of this scale is built individually.
If I had to summarize in a sentence all these four editions, it would be this:
I firmly believe that the São Martinho do Porto Triathlon changed the way short-distance triathlon is organised in Portugal.
And perhaps that happened because we never looked at the event as just a competition.
A sporting event should be a great celebration for athletes and spectators.
The Bay of Dreams. São Martinho do Porto Triathlon 2025: Watch the film on YouTube.
Ricardo Santos
Head of the organisation of the São Martinho do Porto Triathlon, 2022–2025