This year Ironman Arizona has 3392 sign-ups and 2624 athletes on the start line which gives a DNS rate of 22.6%. That's at the high end for Ironman//

I will bet you that the reason for the lately increasing % of DNS is the fact that people are getting race insurance, and maybe some races offer transfers?? In the old days of ironman you just ate any fees paid, for whatever reason. But if you can get insurance or a transfer, that incentivizes folks to enter and take a chance when things may not be optimal. I wonder out of the 800, how many actually ate the entire entry fee?

Seems high... but... For RD's, 20% DNS is the rule of thumb, but when you throw in 1) IMAZ sells out fast and 2) IM's deferral/transfer process is now more generous, plus 3) DNFs, I can see how you get to 31%

I have to wonder how many central states athletes, who would otherwise go back to IMAZ, are going to Tulsa instead. I'm one of them. 2 hour drive vs 15 hour drive.

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Athlinks / Strava

I think the slower than normal filling is really a false assumption. I have to laugh at the whole scheme, since the beginning of time really. Courses are set up, and then they are deemed to be maxed out at a certain level of athletes. But for some magical reason, just about each and every year, the course magically can hold a 100+ more, until 10 years later the fields are nearly doubled. So as someone pointed out, they had 3600 or so enter last year, would be fun to go back and see how many they had in 2009? So no doubt the number of entries will be up once again, more magic for the course limits found, and it will take just a bit longer to sell those extra slots.

IF they went back to 09 limits, pretty sure it would sell out in a day, maybe a week, like it used to..

Here are just the results from 2009 and on the IM page I found these numbers from 2012-2019.


2009- 2398 official finishers (from athlinks)

From IM page numbers (I dont know if this includes or doesnt include DNS's....their old result page was easy to get to the end, now you have to click an arrow for every 10 places....their new website is kinda a nightmare to find things)

2012- 2937
2013- 2707
2014- 3202
2015- 2681
2016- 2442
2017- 3269
2018- 3275
2019- 3392

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Most people had realized that swimming in TTL kinda sucks?
I am actually debating whether to go back in 2020 and try to get IMAZ done really right. Maybe 4th time will be the charm.

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Next races on the schedule: none at the moment

Just for fun and as a comparison.

I looked at my records for the two times I raced IMAZ in 2006 and 2007 (when it was raced in April).

2006 - 1943 starters and 1725 finishers
2007 - 2066 starters and 1865 finishers

Obviously, they have more people signing up/finishing the race these days. That's at least some kind of progress.

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"Human existence is based upon two pillars: Compassion and knowledge. Compassion without knowledge is ineffective; Knowledge without compassion is inhuman." Victor Weisskopf.

A lot of good points already mentioned in the thread, Price, Industry Decline in the sport, More 70.3's (IM branded), etc. On the DNS injury seems to be the most common reason, on overall field size its become a catch-all deferments from other races in the season from people I met at this years race. If memory recalls, the year Tahoe cancelled field size was yuge!

I can offer one data point. I was one of the DNS for IMAZ this year. I did IMWI in 2012 and fell off the Tri-wagon pretty hard. Last year I had a great friend talk me into training for and racing with him at IMAZ this year.
Normally I would have started a plan to see how things went before making that kind of commitment, but the fact that "IMAZ fills up instantly" pushed me into the "I don't really have a choice but to sign up immediately" camp before I'd even begun any training. As we all know, life happens, a few injuries happened (i'm not as young as I used to be) and I ultimately decided not to do the race, but I did still go and cheer everyone on. I'm sure I could have "finished it", but decided to not risk injury and do it right next year.
Tentatively I'm planning on IMCHOO 2020, BUT this time I'm doing my plan, hitting all my performance goals and then I'm going to sign up.

lol you sound like a few of those ladies i was coaching until they did what you did and signed up for IM AZ sorta against what I thought was sound judgement....I sorta told them "umm go find another coach" (after we talked about not doing an IM until 2020 or further). Thank god they all bought the insurance, 3 of them needed it so they rolled their entry to 2020, 1 did the race but bless her, she DNF'd from the "cold" swim with hypothermia type issues.

I'd say do the insurance as a no brainer these days, as I think pretty much it's fairly easy to justify rolling the race entry to another race.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

In hind site, I definitely should have grabbed the insurance, but you know how some of us type A's are. "I don't need that". lol

Last year was 6 days, this year 15 days to sell out. A sell outs a sell out though.

The second and third laps on this course (especially the 2nd) are super congested for FOP cyclists. This race caters to the bucket list crowd, and with traffic going two ways, this course is ripe for accidents. IM is being greedy selling so many entries, but this is one of the few races they have that kind of demand.

Not only have I never heard of a single accident between riders going opposite directions on this course, I have never even heard of a close call. The sections that have riders going in both directions are virtually dead straight with zero turns. Probably the safest IM course in NA. Certainly the safest I have experienced. The only accidents you see on this course are at the turn-around points and they are few and far between.

this race caters to the people who like really good IM races. it was congested, but only at the in-town turnaround. if you don't ride like an asshole, it's not unsafe at all.

This ^^

This race cates to triathletes who want an easier Ironman. Not much elevation on the run or bike.

You don’t need to train very hard and you’ll finish.

I’m interested for PR’ing my im time

As a MOP age grouper, who is paranoid as hell on dangerous bike courses, I was expecting to white knuckle parts of IMAZ, from some of the fake news I bought into, while reading old posts and FB pages about the race. I was pleasantly surprised that it's not that way at all. I did it this year, and found it one of the safest, straightest, flattest, simple, and easiest bike courses I've ever raced. If it wasn't for Tulsa being so close to me, I would seriously think about going back to Tempe next year. I do think that Tulsa is pulling some of the Midwest racers away from IMAZ.

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Athlinks / Strava