The race at Toya Ko was not the original.

Ironman in Japan has had a punctuated history with the original Biwa Ko (Central Honshu) course in the late '80s to early '90s being discontinued due to traffic/road closure problems.

The race was resurrected for a while at Goto Island, west of Honshu, around the turn of the century but a foot-and-mouth outbreak resulted in travel restrictions and a cancellation of the race and it was not staged again.

There was another hiatus before the most recent incarnation at Toya Ko in Hokkaido which was held for less than 5 years IIRC.

It seems Japan has been without an Ironman branded event just as much as they've had one in the last 30 years.

Similar situation at the time at Ironman Australia. With the Japanese usually the largest foreign contingent, one of my friends was they official interpreter/tour guide/host/bus driver and conducted the Japanese language race briefing.

Yes, it is certainly perplexing as to why IM has had such a chequered history in Japan.

I thought they had finally hit on the right location in Hokkaido. The island is relatively sparsely populated, Toya-ko is conveniently close to Sapporo for transport connections, it is a beautifully clean lake for swimming and the cycling course is both scenic and challenging.

Hokkaido is less susceptible to typhoons than the rest of Japan (both in frequency and severity), so weather is less likely to be a factor than the previous courses.

Not sure about the course being too tough. The swim and run certainly hid no demons.

Perhaps the cycle might turn off a few international athletes, but I can't imagine it would deter the average Japanese triathlete and that's the demographic critical to the race's continued viability. Plenty of kick-arse endurance races in Japan have been staged for decades with little or no foreign interest and I think it's a bit ethnocentric to think that Ironman need be any different. With the spread of the franchise around the globe, a smaller proportion of athletes now race IM internationally than they did in the days of just NZ/Aust/Japan/Germany/Kona and if there's a thriving domestic scene and it's not a "resort" or "destination" race, luring foreigners is now largely irrelevant to a race's ongoing success.

I always thought the run course would have been pretty cool with a single lap circling the lake, (a neat 26 miles and a beautiful run in it's own right), but the logistics of the multiple out-and-back option is obviously less complicated.

Part of me would like to have raced Toya-ko. It was probably the only IM-branded event of recent years that appeared satisfactorily attractive for me to consider overcoming my aversion to dragging my tri gear overseas.