Give it a couple years and Ironman will ruin gravel racing too.

It will be interesting to see what Ironman's game plan is with buying up ultras.

UTMB is a very different race to UTA 100km in Australia.

UTAust has some similarities with IM. No qualification standards, relatively high entry fee, extremely generous cut-off time. While a reasonably tough 100km worth of trails, it is an accessible entry point for anyone interested in getting into trail ultras. With the addition of the 50km, 25km and now 12km events over the race weekend, it even has its equivalents of a 70.3, 5150 and Ironkids events!

UTMB is different. It's not an event for everyone in the same way IM is marketed. And it requires qualification at other races. And this is where I wonder where Ironman is headed.

With qualification for UTMB currently earned through points from completing any number of independent ultras around the world, will IM give preference to UTMB qualification at the relatively few ultras they already own, or will they seek to franchise the sport to same extent as they have with Kona and long distance triathlon?

While the UTMB qualification system isn't broken, I don't trust Ironman not to try and "fix" it.

My dyslexia caught me for a second and I thought it was something about mountain bikes

---

"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Ha. Me too

It will be interesting to see what Ironman's game plan is with buying up ultras.


In other areas of business it's called "brand extension"

It's done for several reasons - as suggested above you get to extend your brand into other areas, and product categories. There is a hope here of cross-pollination and possibly winning over new customers.

Another game-plan in VERY thin margin businesses, like the race/event business, to increase the total revenue, it's hard to do with the existing product range, so you extend into new areas or acquire other businesses that do extend into those new areas, the net result is an increase in total revenue!

---

---

Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Its good for a business to be diversified.

Last year when large marathon weekends and ironman's couldn't be held, a lot of Ultras still could be produced (smaller scale ones, not UTMB huge ones).

Over the last decade, Triathlon has faded a bit as Ultra's have grown, smart business is to be in multiple disciplines. As road cycling declines, gravel grows

IM is now in Triathlon, road running, trail running, cycling. All endurance sport based but not totally exposed to a single sports health

---

Boots
Fleet Feet Rochester, NY
Fleet Feet Buffalo, NY
YellowJacket Racing, Rochester, NY

Boots,

Yes - to all of that.

Triathlon probably peaked about 5 - 7 years ago in terms of total numbers of race participants in North America. It's been on a decline ever since. Those are the facts. However, this is not helped, by articles that are still written occasionally, about how the sport is "booming" or it's the "newest thing". The writers who write these stories, clearly have not done any extensive research into their subject.

Running and cycling are also down over the same time period - cycling in a more pronounced way, running almost imperceptibly(1% - 2% a year!). But as you noted WITHIN those communities large shifts in interest and participation going on - many runners shifting over to trail running races, and in cycling the same thing with gravel - overall cycling and running numbers probably about the same, but there has been decent and noticeable growth in Trail/Ultra Running and Gravel!

---

---

Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

[/quote] That looks like a lot of synergy with Ironman under the Rock N Roll Marathon brand when you consider a Run Rock n' Roll Weekend has 20k participants across the four distances offered.[/quote]


Yes! I was itching for what the running comparison would be, and this is it. Big, blown out, corporate homogenized product races with higher price and lots of hoops, bells, whistles. RnR marathon series is the closest to IM in the running world, NOT trail races.

Dunno, UTMB appears to be highly corporatized from the outside looking in.

---

Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

So a few things here that stand out. One is that yes, UTMB was already going to a qualification system that favored affiliated races rather than the previous points system. It’s all rather complicated and nebulous but in general, race world trail series events to race UTMB.

The second one: you guys are throwing trail ultras all together in a bucket. UTMB isn’t just a trail ultra, it’s specifically a MUT event - meaning Mountain Ultra Trail. Mountain running is generally a sub part of ultra running but in all honesty, UTMB or Hardrock have very little in common with Ultra Trail Australia, or Tarawera, or Javelina Jundred. To make a more succinct comparison, it’s like comparing the London Marathon to the Pikes Peak Marathon - not a comparison that holds.

The part where even the previous model did not really make sense was that it seemed like you were funneling potential qualifiers for the crowning MUT race in the world to flat and fast ultras. Huh??

Also - Didn't we just go through this process with Triathlon? A relatively underground/grass-roots sport gets big enough to attract corporate attention / consolidation.

I think a lot of the MTB crowd don’t care. Cape Epic is a novel- scenery and Africa but large portions of it could be ridden on a a gravel bike. The fastest growing parts of MTB especially in North America is not XC. Out west it would be tough to find an XC bike. It’s just riding single track for fun, enduro riding and eMTB. Ride up to have fun down. The adventure side of the sport seems to be draw not so much the racing.

From a business perspective, this seems like a smart move for Ironman. Triathlon is a sport that has had a very documented decline in participation. Ultramarathons are the complete opposite.

There was a nugget in the latest Ultrarunning magazine about this. In 2009, there were 40,679 ultramarathon finishers in North America. That number in 2019: 127,296.

Is it good for the sport of ultramarthoning? I guess the jury is out on that..