With total prize money of $2.2 million (£1.3 million/€1.6 million) on offer, the WTS remains one of the richest triathlon circuits worldwide.

As Casado, who is also an International Olympic Committee (IOC) member, pointed out last month, the bonus money was increased to reflect the new structure that requires athletes to compete in five WTS races en route to becoming world champion.

"Athletes will now be more rewarded for competing across the Series as a whole," Casado added.

Marisol Casado, President of the International Triathlon Union and an International Olympic Committee member, has ambitions to develop the sport at the Games ©Getty Images

But as the city which hosted the 1990 Commonwealth Games with such ease and grace looked forward to what promised to be a hugely competitive contest for both men and women, the sport's President had her gaze fixed on further innovations.

And, as the ITU celebrates being a quarter of a century old this year, she is also reflecting upon the fundamental shift without which triathlon would have been unlikely to have earned its place on the Olympic Programme.

Although it effectively started in San Diego in 1974, the swim/bike/run combination had to wait until 1989 for the ITU to be established as its international governing body - with the main goal of getting the sport into the Olympics.

Casado, one of the founding members of the ITU, became the federation's President in 2008. This 57-year-old resident of Madrid joined the IOC in 2010, becoming one of three Spanish representatives, and secured a seat on the Council of the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF) in 2011.

She presides over a sport that arrived at the Olympics as a tailored package, with both men and women making their debut at the Sydney 2000 Games.

"I have to say that we were very, very lucky to start in the Olympics from day one with both men's and women's events," Casado said. "The ITU has always been very conscious of equal gender issues. For example our communications team is very alert to the fact that in their competition reports they give the same space to women and men. This is a fundamental. If you don't do this in your international federation, nobody else is going to do it for you."

The President pinpoints the key change which earned that Olympic invitation as being the decision to allow "draft legal" races - that is, races where cyclists are allowed to bunch and use each other for shelter from air resistance. While "drafting" was illegal, the sport required large numbers of officials to monitor the distance between athletes - officials who got in the way of the spectators' line of vision.

An ITU spokeswoman confirmed the background to this profound shift of emphasis.

"Triathlon was admitted as an Olympic sport in 1994 and between that time and 2000, the decision was made to make the standard-distance (aka Olympic distance) races draft legal," she explained. "According to our sport department, they recall the decision being official made in 1997.

"The decision was simultaneously influenced by the IOC and the evolution of the style of triathlon racing going on at the time. As the sport grew and attracted a higher and higher level of competition, it became increasingly difficult to officiate drafting in areas like the swim exit and transition.

"It required a large number of officials that clouded the field of play and even race outcomes. At the same time, the IOC encouraged the ITU to find a way to make triathlon more television and spectator friendly.

"Eliminating drafting rules accomplished both goals. It created a more exciting fast-pace style of racing and also decreased an official's impact on the race outcome by allowing the athletes' talent to determine the podium.

"It also set in motion the next evolution of triathlon, which was to make multi-lap courses as opposed to one long bike/run lap which we used to see.

"So, the benefit was the minimisation of officials and the elimination of a rule that slowed the sport down, allowing for a more competitive, quick race style that makes the sport more exciting to watch."

Cyclists form a peloton during the triathlon at the 2013 Australian Youth Olympics ©Getty Images

Casado told insidethegames: "Deciding on draft-legal cycling was the main change we had to do to be part of the Olympic Movement. The IOC thought it was more television viewer-friendly.

"When that happened it meant we didn't have to have marshals controlling the drafting.

"Also we changed our course - where normally we did one loop, we do different loops, which is more spectator-friendly."

Other more traditional triathlon organisations maintain cycling in the older style, where drafting is not allowed and therefore the races more closely resemble individual time trial racing.

But when drafting and the formation of pelotons is seen as legal, the emphasis within the competition shifts to the running performance, as several athletes will enter the bike-to-run transition at the same time due to drafting.

Triathlon's Olympic status has grown thanks to a series of dramatic races at the Games. In Sydney, Canada's Simon Whitfield, not one of the favourites, won gold after surviving skidding to a stop in the bike race to avoid a 15-man crash. Whitfield was only 24th as he began the concluding 10 kilometre run, but caught the leading competitor, Germany's Stephan Vuckovic, with 1,000 metres remaining. The German responded by opening up the lead again to 25m, but Whitfield passed him again 200m from the line.

In the women's race, home hopes were high for Michellie Jones, who had won the Sydney World Cup on the Games course, finishing 10 seconds ahead of Switzerland's Brigitte McMahon. But after the two ran neck-and-neck for much of the concluding run, the shine was taken off the Sydney crowd's bright day as the Swiss athlete moved ahead with 200m remaining.

Canada's Simon Whitfield is surprise winner of the first men's Olympic triathlon title at the Sydney 2000 Games ©Bongarts/Getty Images

Whitfield created another Olympic surprise eight years later at the Beijing Games when he added a silver to his collection in finishing just five seconds behind Jan Frodeno of Germany.

The women's gold at Beijing 2008 went to Australia's Emma Snowsill, who had established herself as a strong favourite having won four World Championship medals between 2003-2007. But the Australian had to overcome a strong challenge from the up-and-coming talent of Portugal's Vanessa Fernandes.

Home hopes were realised at the London 2012 Games where Britain's Alistair Brownlee made up a two-second deficit on the run to finish 11 seconds ahead of Spain's Javier Gómez, with his younger brother Jonathan adding a bronze for Britain despite having to serve a 15-second time penalty for getting onto his bike a split second too early.

But the greatest drama occurred in the women's race, where Switzerland's Nicola Spirig and Sweden's Lisa Nordén produced a sustained sprint to the line, which they both crossed in 1hr 59min 48sec - with gold going to the Swiss opponent in a photo-finish.

Nicola Spirig (right) takes the London 2012 triathlon gold from Lisa Nordén in a photo-finish ©AFP/Getty Images

In terms of its Olympic status, triathlon is very much the younger sibling of that other multi-event, the modern pentathlon, which was created by the father of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre De Coubertin, and introduced at the Stockholm Games of 1912.

Paradoxically, while the older sport has had to transform itself in recent years to maintain its Olympic standing - condensing all five competitions into a day, then condensing the concluding shooting and running events before, most recently, introducing laser shooting in place of air pistols - the younger sport has arrived fully formed, and ticking all the IOC boxes.

One change modern pentathlon has refused to countenance, however, is replacing its equestrian element with a biking element. Here at least the two sports are in concord - it is equally unlikely that its relatively young combined event will make any similar switch from bikes to anything else.

"Of course our main programme is swim/bike/run and we won't look to make changes to that in the near future," Casado maintained firmly.

While those fixed points remain, the ITU President, nevertheless, sees the relative youth of her sport as an advantage as other improvements are proposed or implemented.

"We are always looking to evolve the sport," she said. "And with that in mind it has been easy for us because we don't have long traditions and people saying: 'This is what we did for 20 years.' We draw strength from being a young, fresh sport and being open to new ideas.

"We have been able to develop and spread the sport through duathlon, which is run/bike/run, and the aquathlon, which is run/swim/run. Duathlon enables us to go to different places where maybe they have problems with the water where the quality is not fit for swimming.

"Competing over shorter distances allows us to grow a lot in more places. It is easier to arrange an event that takes only one hour."

Casado is now pushing hard to get the mixed team relay event - which held its own World Championships last year - introduced to the Olympic Programme for Tokyo 2020 when the IOC Extraordinary Session convenes in December this year.

Germany celebrate gold at last year's Mixed Team World Championships in Hamburg ©ITU/Getty Images

"Mixed team relay is done over a very short distance, and it gives to the sport something very important, a sense of team building," she said.

"Ours is an individual sport but our athletes are always really happy to compete as a team. It's the same kind of feeling tennis players have when they come together for the Davis Cup.

"We tried very hard to get the event included for the Rio 2016 Games but it was not possible because the IOC decided not to make any change in Rio.

"But I hope that by the end of this year the programme for Tokyo 2020 will have some changes. We will have to see what President [Thomas] Bach announces at the IOC Session in Monte Carlo in December. I think in this session probably some changes that we were looking for before, making it possible to have the mixed team event, will be decided.

"I am hopeful. I was with President Bach last year in Hamburg where we held the Mixed Relay World Championships, and he liked it a lot. Maybe this is not enough to persuade the IOC - but we will see."

Following the extreme popularity of the 2013 Mixed Relay World Championships in Hamburg, the event will again be held following the Hamburg World Triathlon on July 13. The host nation of Germany automatically qualifies for the race, as do the top 11 teams from the 2013 World Championships, excluding the host nation.

Casado also described the acceptance of Paratriathlon to the Rio 2016 Paralympics as a great honour, but added: "This is a huge challenge to our team at the moment because it is so complicated to decide on a fair system of classification. We are working very hard on it, and we hope to have the conclusions in May."

Asked how her sport might look at the Olympics 30 years on, she responded: "I think the basis will be the same. We always think about evolving our situation, but I think we have to settle down for a time now that we are in this position. Of course we would like to have more space in the Olympic Programme, and maybe to look at different distances or to have two or three events.

"We have been working on off-road competition. Triathletes are people who like to be outside, in the countryside. So maybe there can be a bike-cross triathlon? Why not?

"Maybe too in future Games we can have a separate qualification before the final, like a semi-final. It could be a week before the final.

"If we are accepted this year in having mixed team triathlon in the Games it is maybe the direction we will go in."

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. His latest book Foul Play - the Dark Arts of Cheating in Sport (Bloomsbury £12.99) is available at the insidethegames.biz shop. To follow him on Twitter click here.