For the past five years, East Canyon has been Utah's most popular triathlon. Last year it attracted almost 300 entrants, and more than that in 1986. It has attractive distances - a half-mile for the swim, 25 miles for the bike and 6.2 miles for the run - in a pleasant mountain setting. At East Canyon you swim in water you can't eat with a fork.

Beck was in the process of establishing a first-ever Utah Triathlon Series last winter - grouping East Canyon with the Heber Valley and Lake Powell events later in the summer - when he found out about Heritage Mountain.

"I wasn't in the mood for a financial bath," said Beck, who has been directing races for more than a decade. "Nobody is going to do two triathlons in a week."

Suzanne Borcherds, who is the race director for the Heritage Mountain Triathlon, says there was no premeditation to run East Canyon out of business. Her group checked the race schedules in the national triathlon publications and didn't see any conflicts. "We wanted to do it with the Freedom Festival," she says. "That was what made the date (uly 4) attractive for us."

Heritage Mountain failed, however, to check the Utah triathlon calendar - where the East Canyon event was displayed in solid black and white.

Adding further to Heritage Mountain's P.R. problem is that Vic Borcherds competed at East Canyon last summer. Certainly he had to be aware of the timing of the event.

As soon as Suzanne Borcherds discovered that there was a conflict she tried to call Beck and work something out. "I called him five times and he never called back," she says. "I have it written down in my Franklin (lanner)."

"This is America. They have every right to do what they did," says Beck. "The only bone I have to pick . . . well, it's like somebody coming in on July 18th, say, and putting up $100,000 and putting on the `Salt Lake Marathon.' It would run the Deseret News Marathon (raditionally run on July 24th) right out of business. That qualifies as a slap in the face."

Which may be why he didn't feel like returning Suzanne's calls.

The people catching the brunt of the conflict are Utah's amateur triathletes - those who innocently began training for East Canyon last spring unaware that the wheels of big business would cancel their event.

Some people, even triathletes, don't want to swim in Utah Lake - where giardia is the pre-race favorite.

In his "Last Lap" column in this month's "Utah Runner and Cyclist," Richard Barnum-Reece, never one to walk around a fight, calls for a boycott of Heritage Mountain. "The response has been very positive," he says. "People don't like what's gone on here."

Nonetheless, Heritage Mountain expects as many as 600 triathletes, many of them out-of-staters lured by the money, diving into the lake Monday morning.

"Really, we didn't come here to make enemies, or ruin the sport of triathlon in Utah," says Borcherds. "I hope we can sit down with Doug Beck and get this sorted out for the future." In which case East Canyon could conceivably be revived to swim, bike and run another year.