Slowman wrote:
mattsurf wrote:
SBRcanuck wrote:
mattsurf wrote:
....far more people would have the chance to race at Kona every year, it would still sell out, ...Not that it matters, but I don't think this would be the case, very expensive to travel to, generally regarded as not a great course, no? The draw to it is the history.
So your aguement, which I wouldn't disagree with, is the in order to attract people to come to Kona, you need to offer both the lure of a World Championship AND to feel a part of triathlon history.
I think that it's worth experimenting, If Kona can survive / sell out based on its history AND a new World Championship event can be created, which also earns revenue from athletes, but also from medla, then it could be a massive win for Ironman.
I think that the Collins Cup has also shown that experimenting with a different format makes sense from a media perspective. Moving a different location would also be an opportunity to do something radical and different (I have no idea what though)
i wrote my thoughts on the front page.
I totally agree with Dan's take on this. As a matter of fact I think that even if you move the WC around you would still have far more demand than spots for Ironman Kona. As a matter of fact, I bet you could establish a time by age-group qualifying construct for IM Kona just like they do for the Boston Marathon and you would have two options for fast people: the WC if you qualified for a spot (harder to do) or Kona if you qualified by time (theoretically easier to do). This keeps the quality of the field high at both races and gives the more "mere mortal" of us an opportunity to race in Kona with a quality field.
More importantly this construct would make IM a heck of a lot more money and increase IM's international reach. I would not be shocked if this is the direction IM moves to, it just makes too much sense logistically and financially. Now, as to what to do with the current Legacy qualifiers, that is hard. My guess is that they give them the choice to race WC in a different location or to race IM Kona. After that the Legacy program will most likely be phased out. Get ready everybody, this is happening!
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