If the WC were held in Kona every 4th year and rotated to courses that are more affordable and closer to population centers with a lot of triathletes, would the WC still sell out every year? I imagine so.

Would putting it in a cheaper, more accessible location make it easier for people other than rich old dudes to participate and possibly grow the sport? It’s certainly plausible.

Would Kona’s numbers decline in the years it wasn’t the WC? Probably. But if you can still sell out your WCs and grow interest in the sport in the process, wouldn’t it be worth a modest decrease in Kona numbers?

The lesson that 70.3 Worlds moving around is that it may or may not sell out, depending upon the venue.

And I don't really think being able to participate in IMWCs is an indicator of the health of the sport. Races selling out, generally, is an indicator of the health of the sport. And the races that really show the health of the sport generally aren't put on by IM, Challenge, CLASH, PTO, etc. It's your local ones. If those are healthy, and bring new people in, and then eventually start mixing in those races put on by the larger companies, then you have a better recipe for success.

---

----------------------------------
Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

Did the 70.3 championship attract more people, interest, and attention when it was held in Clearwater or Vegas? Was it a mistake to start moving it around the world? Should IM have just stuck with one of the original locations to build up a Kona-style tradition?

I honestly don’t know what the recent 70.3 WC numbers have been in terms of selling out. Has the 70.3 championship attracted fewer participants than Kona? My sense is that the 70.3 WC numbers are pretty good and that overall participation in 70.3 races has grown more than full distance in recent years. I can’t conclude that 70.3 growth is a result of bringing the WC closer to triathletes, but who knows? I certainly don’t think 70.3s have been hurt by rotating the WC.

In any case, I don’t think you can assert that because the the 70.3 championship does not sell out every year that the full distance would not sell out. Among other reasons, the 70.3 WC has been held/ scheduled in some places that I would venture are not that close to triathlon population centers and/ or inaccessible. As I and others have suggested, it would be better to rotate the full distance WC to areas that are close to where the triathletes are.

How about this : each year the world champs are held somewhere in the world (easy access with plenty of affordable accomodation) for all qualifiers. Each AG podium (or top 5, or more ?) then qualifies for the Kona world championships, which are held every 4th year. During the Kona year, there is also a regular IM WC which qualifies for the next Kona event.

This way Ironman gets to keep IM WC Kona, make it an even bigger dream (need to qualify twice, also they can keep the legacy invites). They can also keep the event to a manageable participant count.

Plenty of downsides though from qualifying for the event multiple years down the line. And not sure what the pros would make of it.

Have Kona be non WC in october, open to 10,000 slots (2 days racing) so every dreamer can participate and get it out of there system. Pretty sure there will not be a sell out and the luster will die out. Its a pretty ugly course. St George is more visually appealing imho.

I disagree that there is not a connection between IMWC and the health of the sport.. The IMWCs, like the national or world championships of any sport, have the potential to draw attention and interest. Lots of people watch the Super Bowl or Final Four that don’t watch a single regular season game. If you can set up your WC in a way that draws eyes and—in the case of triathlon— participants, it’s good for your sport. It’s easy to imagine people doing a local triathlon because they were exposed to the IMWC. And holding high profile events close to people matters. It’s the reason the NFL plays in London or the NBA played in China.

I doubt if Ironman will get away with calling their championship the World Championship in the long run if it is not in Hawaii.
Also now there are a lot of people who say how can a commercial company call their race World Championship. But it is accepted reluctantly because it is held on the holy Hawaii ground. If not, it will just be the Championship of Ironman like for example the "Championship" of Challenge.
Maybe even the ITU will sense new chances for a longcourse WC.
Ironman could come in dire straits just for a couple of dollars.

It's for the bucket list of it all. The WC is Kona; Kona is the WC. I want to have done both at the same time, not each on its own. Are they in a different universe from me? They sure are. But I want to have BEEN there. I want to have shared that experience, if only tangentially. And after shoveling all that money into the IM Corp and waited my turn, I don't want to be told "welcome to sunny Montana."

If I actually qualified for WC, I wouldn't care where it was. But that is never going to happen, so these are my wants, silly as they may seem.

I think this is the point where any decision adversely hits someone the wrong way (even keeping it in Kona is a decision).

As a counter, I'd much rather visit a rotating WC - mostly because Hawaii isn't that approachable for a full family. At least with a rotating selection, I have a chance every few years of it being on my continent, or if not, at least more accessible continents (Europe is a more accessible destination for North America than Kona).

If I manage to qualify, there's zero chance my family comes with me. I'll go, but only because the lifelong goal trumps the huge bill (and probably only once). If its rotating, at least there's a decent chance that my family can come (they've supported me this far), and I'd likely try to shoot for multiple WCs as they rotate.

going to draw the parallels with marathon running. Kona and Boston are both the pinnacle of age group athletes. On the pro side Kona is the pinnacle where every pro is shooting for it but Boston is just one of the majors and yes you always get a competitive/deep field but its not necessarily more coveted or deeper than NY, London, Berlin, Chicago, and Tokyo.

i think personally i would rather go to Roth but wish it were qualification based so getting there meant more too

70.3 growth is based on the fact that it is a much less absurd race distance...........

---

Pink? Maybe. Maybe not. You decide.

I think it would be interesting to see the break down of "The WC need to stay in Kona" and "The WC needs to rotate" based on who has raced Kona and who hasn't. Also, who is racing to compete and who is racing to complete. Generally, I think the people that want it to stay in Kona have never done it before and/or are there to just complete. The people that want a rotating WC are there to compete and/or have been there before.

Exactly, whatever happens many will be disappointed. At this stage they should do what's best for the sport. And Kona isn't that, it is excluding a large numbers of triathletes because of location, price and timing.

IM has done a fantastic job at marketing Kona, brainwashing people with the mystical big island where everything started (even if it started on the island next door). Surely they can start doing the same with other locations around the world in a rotating system. Then in 40 years when they'll have to discontinue the Nice WC or the Lanzarote WC, people on Slowtwitch 8.0 will be horrified, no no no you can't discontinue Lanzarote it embodies the spirit of the sport I would never want to not race WC in Lanzarote etc.

When KB crossed the line, the commentators were saying that he was finishing the hoka oneone run course and about to become the 2021 Intermountain Healthcare Ironman world champion...Kona is a marketing trick, a powerful one. Maybe it's time to open triathlon to everyone in the world, and make it less of a US-centric heavy-marketing party?

Let's keep a race in Kona so pilgrims can pay 10k to go run through an industrial park once a year; but let's move the WC out of there to make it available to all deserving athletes...from around the world.

This is accurate for me. My slow legacy butt is just there to complete, so I want that to be at the place that is sold as being synonymous with the IMWC. I'd be bummed if that turns out not to be the case when my name comes up on the list, but I'm pragmatic enough to realize that it's the marquee names and not my desire for the perfect Instagram moment that is going to drive that bus.

Right now, since I've been KQ'd for a while now and have waited through multiple Kona cancellations, I am incredibly supportive of keeping it in Kona. It's the classic!

That said, I may feel differently after October. I have to admit I was impressed with the production value last week in StG. It opened the door to the idea in my head, which I think was exactly IM's goal. Even though I think they should have ditched the Hawaiian theme for a Native American one, which they did in small parts.

Incredibly challenging course as well, can't wait to compare it with Kona. Not sure if "incredibly difficult" should be a WC requirement or if the field alone is enough to dictate difficulty, but I think it should be a challenging course with diverse skills being tested.

The ways the pros talked about it afterwards makes me think some of them (LS stands out although I don't think he said it directly) are coming around to the rotation idea too. The notion of different types of athletes having a chance to compete other than "the type that does well at Kona" (in quotes as KB is blowing up that notion) must be alluring to some.

Still, maybe I'll get over it but the idea just kinda makes me kinda sad. Those Kona broadcasts were staples of my formative triathlon years, and I still love the aspect of returning to the birthplace of the sport to crown a champion.

If I were inexplicably given the power to make the call today after experiencing StG, I'd still keep it in Kona, but definitely with a little less conviction than I had before

---

Too old to go pro but doing it anyway
http://instagram.com/tgarvey4

No one is asserting that 70.3 growth is solely or even principally a result of a rotating WC. You’re knocking down a straw man.

The debate is over the lesson we can draw from the example of the 70.3 rotating championship. My sense is that it helps participation and increases interest in the sport, but I could be wrong. Hard proof that goes beyond anecdote is hard to generate.

I don’t doubt that there is a risk to including locations other than Kona. It’s certainly reasonable to worry that a switch would mean a less compelling, less sought after WC. But as I’ve said, when you have an aging sport with multiple barriers to entry, not the least of which is cost, there is something wrong both symbolically and practically with holding your highest profile event in a place and time that only the most fortunate can go.

Amen.

You introduce logic into baseless speculation, how dare you.

This is all there is to it. There isn't anything inherently special about Kona. It's also why those who have never done it are the ones who care more about keeping it there

 
I would like to see courses adjusted in WC years so for example if the race was in cairns they should run it as the original course where athletes ran from 20km out of town through sugar fields then did two small loops in town to finish. Right now the run course is 4 small in town loops and not as iconic as that original course.

Moreover, Kona, in a not championship year could turn into a 2 lap bike course so athletes don't go as far along the highway, therefore the iconic climb to Hawi is kept for WC years, same as the run, it could just be 4x 10km loops along the coast front, but in a WC year the course would be the full iconic course that includes the energy lab.

This keeps the WC years even more special and iconic.

I think the baseless speculation came from Andrew Messick in an interview, he didn't cite any market research or anything like that, but maybe it's not entirely baseless.

Messick and the rest of the lackeys would dump Kona in a heart beat if they thought they could make a buck, but that simply isn’t the case.

My personal opinion is that Hawaii sent a message that they are not as “open for business” as rural southern Utah. Messick told one of the biggest lies I’ve heard in a presser for IMWC when he said that two day events have been a huge success at 70.3 WC’s. Like last fall?

The problem, which Kona is about to find out, is that you get twice the hassle for the same revenue stream. If lodging is 100% occupancy, restaurants are 100% occupancy for a one day event, what is gained by closing roads and rerouting traffic, calling for volunteers, and inconveniencing your tax base all weekend for one more day of slightly higher revenue? Basically the ladies come in a day earlier and the guys leave a day later, so maybe two days of higher demand?

It’s just plain greed and no one is calling them out because Covid caused pent up demand.

If they lose Kona, that’s a huge battle lost in the war against Challenge and PTO. They sell thousands of entries every year to participants who are trying to legacy qualify for Kona. Not to mention the AGer’s who are constantly searching for the perfect field to break into a top 10 and qualify for Kona.

Without the crown jewel and a huge piece of continuity to their history and essentially the history of the sport they become another overpriced event organizer.

All I know is when the 70.3 Worlds were held in Vegas each year at every roll down I went to in Australia by the end they said who wants to race in Vegas and the few people that got up received a spot and may have taken 6 hours??? In 2016 when the Worlds were on the Sunny Coast in Australia getting a ticket to that was a hotter item than Kona that year.

I think rotating the 70.3 worlds was to get a more global interest in them be it more so in the geographical area that year where as everyone wants to go to Kona! I've raced 4 Konas and one 70.3 Worlds. I was to Race 70.3 Worlds in NZ 2020 until the rona came along and now deferred to 2024 but travelling too far for one doesn't excite me. I like Kona as there is basically no home ground advantage and I have unfinished business on that course where as some where else? Meh not so much...

I'm a racing to COMPLETE person of all distances and IM Fl will be my first full. I'm very much a rotate it around though.

But it's kinda similar thoughts - I feel that if it's rotated I'd have a better shot of going to Kona to race the course and I honestly don't care if it's a WC or not. I just would love to race the iconic course. IM LP is another one I want to do for being do iconic and if Florida goes well enough, I'll be doing that in 2023 assuming the town doesn't can the race.

I feel a mix up between WC and just a regular race is a good idea; but since it's a good idea, means it wouldn't be profitable enough for IM.

Yeah I have been racing 70.3 Worlds since Clearwater in 2008.I have done almost every race that has been held here in the US but have never traveled overseas for a Worlds race even though I qualified for them. I have also done Kona 3X but I might consider traveling or an IM WC event someplace else. I would also happily race a St. George IMWC race. Personally if I am going to travel to a different country, I'm going there for a vacation, not an event.

---

-Of course it's 'effing hard, it's IRONMAN!
Team ZOOT
ZOOT, QR, Garmin, HED Wheels, Zealios, FormSwim, Precision Hydration, Rudy Project