You're assuming the city would cooperate and issue permits, etc. I doubt they would.

Money can buy anything

The WTC owns the Ironman brand and has rights to run the Ironman Triathlon World Championships.

The ITU is the only other organization that can run any kind of Triathlon World Championships.

There used to be two Races held therein the early 80's. Host one in April or May and call it " Kona", same course, same everything and yes, for the right amount of money the fine folks of the Island would endure another event. It's not like your re-inventing anything; same course, same format, same bananas, same amount of $ into the economy and YES, I do know what it takes to put on events! A limit of 2k entries would also fill up in about 2 hours. I'm there!

So call it the Galactic Triathlon Championships and beam invitations into outer space via SETI....Seriously, money can and will buy anything.

bob

If the WTC were ever "stupid" enough to move the world championships out of Kona I suspect such an event would appear with the full cooperation of the Island.

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Frank,
An original Ironman and the Inventor of PowerCranks

Quote:

he WTC owns the Ironman brand and has rights to run the Ironman Triathlon World Championships.

The ITU is the only other organization that can run any kind of Triathlon World Championships.

Sadly you are wrong. Anyone can run a world championships. You could run one in your backyard. The fact that no good athletes would turn up might be the main issue. Thats why I said they would need to sign professionals to be there.

Frank I agree with you.

The ITU, being the international govering body for triathlon, has a really big problem with anyone but them running a world championships. They got into a big fuss with the WTC recently over the exact issue. Evidently, someone over there forgot that they signed away their rights to the Ironman WCs.

"Sadly you are wrong. Anyone can run a world championships. You could run one in your backyard."

you're right and you're wrong. you could run one in your own backyard. but that's the only place you could run it. the U.S. congress passed a thing most often called the "amateur sports act of 1978," and referred to by national governing bodies and the USOC as the act.

this allows the USOC and the NGBs under it to basically own a legal monopoly over world and national championships for the sports they govern. yes, you will get shut down if you try to put on your own world or national championships if your sport is recognized by the USOC.

but the ITU signed, in 1998, a document that allowed WTC to hold its own "triathlon world championship" and last year the ITU after getting uppity with WTC was forced by WTC to reaffirm that agreement.

the only other entities that put on their own multisport world championships are xterra and *maybe* powerman. for this reason, in 2004 the ITU by act of its own congress dissociated itself from these organizations, ironman included, as a governing body. powerman, ironman, xterra and lifetime fitness are officially without a world governing body, and perhaps most of the rest of the sport is in that boat as well, depending on how you read the very badly worded ITU congress resolution.

me, i rather like not having a world governing body.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

the U.S. congress passed a thing most often called the "amateur sports act of 1978," and referred to by national governing bodies and the USOC as the act.

Okay but if the "World Championship" was held outside the US (putting the second Kona theory to death) it would not be bound by the US Congress, so in theory you could run a "World Championship" triathlon. I am only guessing not stating this...

Most countries have an equivalent and most international sporting bodies will only recognize one national governing body for that sport

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Forget speedwork. Speedwork is the icing on the cake and you don't have a cake yet. - MattinSF

Basically they have 9 tenants, live life to the fullest, do not turn the cheak, and embrace the 7 deadly since. - TheForge (on satanists)

"Okay but if the "World Championship" was held outside the US (putting the second Kona theory to death) it would not be bound by the US Congress"

that is true, but i think you'd have to run it in myanmar or someplace that is not sending a team to the olympics. any country that's part of the olympic movement, with a national olympic committee, is going to offer you up the same ration of shit if you put on a world championships in any sport governed by one of the 45 international sports federations under the olympic umbrella.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

We had this happen in masters swimming. An organization called latycar had been having the pan amaericam masters championships for years, rotating them around to different cities etc. It would seem that the pan american fina representative got pissed off with latycar for some reason and got fina to pass a resolution saying it was an unaffiliated event.

Big deal?

Well, apparently officially FINA can ban anyone who competes at an unaffiliated race from ever competing in another fina or fina affiliate race. For us here in the us, that means no more masters swim meets for you if you go. In fact I would be very surprised if this is not the case with the ITU, and I would not be surprised to find out that the itu could ban anyone who raced in powerman or xterra should they choose.

My head was reeling from all this really, the fact that some ass in South America can tell me which swim meets I can do gets to me. I guess it wasn't that big of a deal since I would never go to south america for a swim meet.

But anyway, I thought I'd clarify the specific ration of shit that they could deliver.

"In fact I would be very surprised if this is not the case with the ITU, and I would not be surprised to find out that the itu could ban anyone who raced in powerman or xterra should they choose."

the ITU might find itself in a sticky restraint of trade lawsuit if it attempted to do so. as i mentioned in a prior post, the ITU has of its own accord decided it's not the IF of most of triathlon. so, it would essentially be banning an athlete from another sport (not triathlon, as the ITU defines it) from competing in a triathlon. the ITU can't very well say that XTERRA is a rogue organization and operating in a way it should not, because the ITU has no standing over XTERRA (remember, the ITU has decided it is not the IF for XTERRA).

in maui last week we had two former ITU world champions, maybe more, and several olympians, including two-time ITU olympians. i doubt that if olivier marceau, bevan docherty, sybille matter, conrad stoltz, eneko llanos, julie dibens, and others wanted to race the ITU circuit, that the ITU would attempt to do anything about it.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

"i doubt that if olivier marceau, bevan docherty, sybille matter, conrad stoltz, eneko llanos, julie dibens, and others wanted to race the ITU circuit, that the ITU would attempt to do anything about it."
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As I recall, the ITU was making threats against USAT over the Lifetime Fitness race one year because it was drawing some of its athletes from their Corner Brook World Cup event. I also seem to recall the ITU backing down rather quickly.

Haim

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"Sometimes you need to think INSIDE the box!" -- ME
"Why squirrel hate me?"

What you need to do is make up a new sport with 4 events - maybe a 2.4 mile swim - 200 yard run - 112 mile bike - 26.2 mile run. Come up with a new and catchy name - call it the World Championships in Kona and you'd be good to go.....

Dave