The thing that's going to kill Penticton is repeated cancelations due to smoke, not Ottawa. But there's no indication that it's going away anytime soon.

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Strava

As great a race as Penticton is, if people don't sign up, it will be replaced by the half ironman. I have done it many times, and am signed up for 2024. Unfortunately the people in the BC government whose job it is to put out the fires don't have the horsepower to embrace the challenge, and as a result racing in late August in dry conditions becomes a situation where you are relying on luck. I flew in to Montreal last year to do Tremblant and even the day before the race, conditions were perfect. It wasn't until 2:00 Am in the morning until I awoke to heavy smoke that I knew the race was not going to happen. The day before, or a few days after and it would have happened. The race just unfortunately fell on the worst day possible and got canceled. Penticton also used to be a same year qualifier, now it gets delayed for 13-14 months. If it were held end of June and same year qualifier, much greater chance the race actually takes place(forest fire wise), and the numbers would probably support it to remain an Ironman.

You blame the govt for not putting out the fires? AYFKM? The entire province is a bone dry tinderbox each year. Firefighting resources could be doubled and it would still be impossible to stop.

Besides climate change, a huge part of the problem is decades of poor forestry management by the logging companies.

It's sad really. I got married in Penticton and my wife and I won't even vacation there anymore because it's always smoky...

No. I think it’s a replacement for Mt. Treblant and Lake Placid’s future demise given its proximity. Penticton can still draw from those further West.

As we all know, Canada is a massive country. It is like the difference between having an Ironman Russia Moscow and an Ironman Russia Vladivostok on the other end of the trans Siberian railroad , in effect two worlds apart. Or 70.3 Oceanside and 70.3 Atlantic City, which are literally two worlds apart in the same country. Ironman Canada Penticton competes to get most of the crowd from western Canada and western US. Even for Canadians Penticton is a pain to get to (between flying across Canada and then renting a car from Vancouver or catching a connector flight to Penticton or Kelowna. There is not easy way to get there, so when IM Placid came along it gave a pile of us the option to drive from Eastern Canada to Placid (I did Penticton 6 times before Placid came along, then did Placid 11 times)...and then when locals in Placid got belligerent with IM athletes, and I had more flexiblity, I started going to do European races which I could do literally for cheaper than driving to Placid with their rip off rates. In any case, Placid gave those of us in the East an option during peak Ironman participation and then Tremblant and Placid gave us two options during peak Ironman particiaption and then Penticton got too big for its boots, killed the goose that laid the golden egg and thought they were bigger than Ironman (which clearly they were not), and then with the detour to Whistler (I did that one twice too) and a pandemic in between, we have what we have.

• Less Ironman athletes racing
• More options around the world for full distance
• More people racing 70.3
• the allure of Penticton's course and the town is lost (there are not enough old timers telling newcomers that it is the "go to event outside of Hawaii....which it was for a long time"

As a local in Ottawa I hope IM Ottawa survives. We have the dynamic of Woodlands Texas and Frankfurt helping us....an Mdot event in a reasonable size city that shuts down for a day, versus putting an Ironman in a resort town that eventually grows to hate Ironman athletes after initially welcoming them. That's also why I think Nice is a great spot for our worlds...let's give it time. We can't succeed well as a sport when we take over towns. Bigger cities can absorb us for a day or weekend since bigger cities are always having an endless stream of pro sport events, biz conventions, political conventions etc....we just become another novelty act in the endless circus sequence in those towns (ex: this year in Nice they have Paris Nice, IM/70.3 France Nice, the Tour De France finish due to Olympics in Paris, IM Worlds in the sports that people around here generally are aware of).

I think the world marathon majors work well because they are in large cities that just shut down for a day and 364 days a year it is biz as usual.

Let's see if Ottawa can capitalize on the same dynamic. A long time ago the race director of the Ottawa Marathon was a 10,000m olympian in Seoul and Barcelona. We raced the international 10,000m circuit and several world marathon majors. Him and I were in biz school together and he said, "Our city has to bring the model to the Ottawa marathon". Eventually he quit his job as an engineer at Nortel (haha easy to do) and just took over the event and made it into what it is today (not a world marathon major, but the biggest race weekend in Canada). Our mayor in Ottawa has raced that many times so he saw the value of bringing a similar event in Ironman Canada Ottawa.

All that to say, I don't think Ottawa hurts or helps Penticton, I think the race is trying to survive on a different dynamic than the smaller tourist town IM destination (ex Placid, Penticon, Kona, Tremblant). Its more in the category of Frankfurt-Barcelona, Nice, Woodland/Houston. That's why I think it can have legs to survive for a while.

I've done Penticton 2012 and 2022. What's changed:

- more chance of smoke
- more traffic
- harder bike course

Not sure why they made that last change when it's been seen over and over that signups suffer on races with tough bike courses. And compared to Whistler, the lodging sucks.

But for me, the traffic has reached an uncomfortable level. Esp. after riding some of the nice closed or nearly closed courses outside of North America.

My concern isn't the end of Penticton, but rather the end of Lake Placid. The races are only 1 week apart and draw from the same competitor pool.

Part of me thinks IMLP is done (I know, we say that every year), but they made a deal: Let us have the big 25th Anniversary Race and then we'll be out of your hair forever..

Plenty of great races world wide without getting raped with ridiculous minimum night stays at ludicrous prices. I’ve done 25 and once was enough in the Adirondacks for me.

But none that are drivable (by normal standards) from any of the major cities in the NE USA. Maryland is always an option, but people stay away from that for a variety of reasons.
With Mont Tremblant going away, Placid was the only game in town.
Now they schedule a new one the following week? Just seems odd.

I think in Ottawa there are only so many weekends to schedule it. I think in the first year it make zero diff relative to Placid. In subsequent years both being on top of each other hurts both. Ideally one is mid/late June the other one at end of Aug. Then minimally they don't conflict, but also the other conflict is with various local 70.3's (Tremblant, Musselman, Muskoka). These need to be feeders for the fulls ideally.

What is normal standards? Boston and NYC are just as close to Ottawa as they were to Tremblant… If Placid goes away there’s still Ottawa which has as thriving of an endurance sport community as I’ve seen.

Depending on the route you take Ottawa is 7ish hrs from Boston and NYC by car. For me 8-9 hrs is the cut off for when I drive or fly to a race with all the gear etc. Living in Ottawa I have always driven to races that I have done in NYC and Boston.

I know there's the discourse around Race X is too close geographically and is within so many weeks of Race Y, therefore they will hurt each other, but I'm actually curious to see if there's any data behind this.

Geography makes sense - If I'm looking at doing an IM branded race (or any race) and I'm willing to drive so many hrs to get there, then sure, having Ottawa near Lake Placid would mean that some people doing Ottawa would otherwise do Lake Placid, or vice versa. I'm excluding people flying since you're not really competing on a geographic basis anymore if you have to fly there - and so what really matters is proximity to an airport.

But having the two races so close on the calendar also being an impediment? I'm not so sure on this one. I mean, even if you move the races 2 months apart - how many people are doing 2 or more non-WC IMs per year? I'd wager that this is less than a few percent of all eligible racers. And that's for races within the same calendar year. Given the weather, the best you could probably do is move them 2.5 months apart - put one in late June and the other in early Sept.

How many more people would you get if you did this? You'd probably have a few people just from the wider suite of calendar options, but I don't think many are doing both. (e.g. if I want a fall race, and all my local options are mid-summer then I'm out of options), but you'd have to weigh this against having people train through the winter for the June race so you might lose people too. And to add, if I really wanted a fall race, I can do Maryland, which is drivable from Ottawa anyway.

For 70.3 distance, this is probably different, since you can more easily do 2-3+ races a year.

Interesting perspective, as I am one of those people who would likely do both (and probably will next year, even if they are a week apart), I've never really looked at it like that. You are probably correct.

What about from a spectator/volunteer standpoint? If you are not racing, but would like to go and cheer people on and maybe volunteer, unless you live very close to either of the races, you are probably not going to both. I know LP has been hurting for volunteers the last several years. If 10-20% of those volunteers who come down from Canada decide to stay home and go to Ottawa the following week instead, it would really leave LP with an issue.

Bike courses change. The course most people think of as the "classic" in Penticton is not even the original. The new course is safer and better, but of course.. harder.

People want to do flat, fast courses where it's a draft fest so they can brag about their finishing time. Weak.

Is the Penticton bike course 2nd hardest worldwide? Have to think IM Lanzarote takes top honors. Or are there others?

Safer how? They removed an admittedly annoying out-and-back in the middle of the course. But it wasn't a safety issue.