I think we all know they were selling the women’s only day but underneath they hoped and thought it would bring in more money. If what is being said is true, I guess it didn’t pan out.
On a facebook thread I was JUST TODAY talking about LiveAid between Wembley Stadium (THE OLD ONE) and JFK Stadium. For me the coolest part of this was Phil Collins playing in Wembley and taking the Concorde across the pond and then showing up in Philly and playing again the same friggin day in JFK and back then I was in the Air Force so an aviation freak so having a concert split between Wembley and JFK with a Concord flight along the way…well you can’t top that.
Having said that, I think only a few of us will remember the venues…but here are the 20 minutes that changed music forever (in my mind the World championship performance from Queen and Freddie Mercury (RIP) in maybe the top championship musical line up in one day all time…hey if they could split between Wembley and JFK why not Nice and Kona) :
1 Like
Just a thought.
Every new endeavor requires investment.
If the untapped market for triathlon is in our women frields, and family, then perhaps the profits from all gender racing worldwide through the year can be invested partially in money losing championships.
And MAYBE the upside in global registrations more than cover a money losing women’s race. If I was running Ironman, I would be willing to be fired by the board to try this out. That’s the jobs of CEO’s…take a bet to grow things, and if does not work, you get fired and if you grow you are rewarded.
No risk, no reward. It may piss off a bunch of people along the way, but changing a 40 year old biz inherently means many disgruntled stakeholders as you try new things. The only thing certain is the world and biz environment changes. All sports and corporations adapt. Do ya all remember a short time about IM 70.3 Odessa Ukraine was in the picture. Same thing with IM 70.3 Tiberias and 140.6 Israel. Kind of sucks but the sport evolves around everything.
We could end up with a sport that is doing just fine, with no Kona in the picture just like there is no Penticton in the picture, no Lake Biwa Japan, no IM in Roth, no IM in Forster. The sport is doing fine in all those countries without the original versions that arrived in the 80’s
1 Like
I have a special connection to JFK Stadium & LiveAid
https://forum.slowtwitch.com/t/keith-richards-biography/759709/5?u=randmart
Stefani Germanotta took her stage name from a Queen song
I don’t think anyone would hire a CEO who takes bets with a billion dollar company 
People hire CEOs who can plan for profitable growth and mitigate risk.
Actually this is what boards do if they want to grow a company. Growing from here to there is always a bet. It is never deterministic. The only thing determinstic is doing biz as usual in defence mode and even that is tenuous. They bring in a CEO, who either implements the bet of the board, or they bring one who will try something new, and they back her/him until it is proven or it fails.
If the goal is to protect an existing cash cow biz, milk it and pay out dividends, then sure, the caretaker person who comes in has handcuffs on and is instructed to take zero bets.
But really you are either eating and expanding or you’re being eaten. By definition nothing is static.
The question is whether IM’s board wants to grow and try new things or defend what they have.
As none of us were in the board making the decision and the mandate for the new CEO, I guess we sit back and see what shakes out.
Overall if we look at numbers Kona + Nice on any given year, this is bigger than a single day Kona and we have not yet really seen the effect of all those who raced Nice going back and telling all their friends about the experience and encouraging others.
We just had one cohort go through Nice on each of the men’s and women’s side.
Is the investment of adding the Nice location adding up to more people racing worldwide? Minimally 1000 extra men per year are going to a worlds. That’s not a bad thing. Are there 50,000 extra men around the world registering for a chance at those extra 1000 slots? is it 20,000? Is it 10,0000? Is it 5000? What about for the women?
If we look at the single race in Nice in isolation it may not make us fans happy, but at an overall participation level and connection to the brand, at the gross participation level, it this a win?
For the hard core people who have been around, they want everything the way it was, but there hard core experience may only be 5 years old, 10 years old, 15 years old, and really only seen a few transformation cycles in the sport.
If you got to see all the change over the last 25, 30, 35, 40+ years, you are used to this.
Remember the first Ironman “tradition” started in Oahu. Then it moved to Kona. In the 80’s the deepest competition was in Nice, not Kona until Ironman decided to have prize money. The Nice distance was 4km, 120km, 30 km. On that course it made it more raceable for the masses.
Sadly the Ironman distance won out. That’s actually too bad for the sport. I think you’d have much more participation if the longest distance was 4/120/30
Would Ironman ever consider cutting back to only 5-6 races that are the full 140.6 and roll back the rest of the “long distance series” to 4/120/30km (in miles that would be a few km short of 100 miles, so how about 3/125/32 (roughly 2 mile swim, 75 mile, 20 mile run). We have IM70.3 how about IM100 and just nuke the majority of the full IM races that are declining and are just plain harder to get volunteers for. Is 140.6 as sacered as Kona is sacred?
As their slogan goes “anything is possible” and perhaps the IM100 distance serves a better participation and racing sweet spot (by the way, some of raced the Old world’s toughest tri in Lake Tahoe that WAS a kona qualifier and it was 2/100/20 miles…at elevation it took the same amount of time as full IM…my time at Tahoe was identical to my time at Penticton).
3 Likes
i think it was 2 kona nice cycles and to be honest anything less makes no sense.
2 weeks ago the consensus was the new st website is shite this week its already quite positive …
some is in german but overall this was rather positive feedback from some of the slowest finishers .
I agree two rounds in each location for each gender would let the experiment play out.
As for the part that 2 weeks ago everyone thought this website is shit and now the thought is is it good, well, maybe that’s just me brainwashing people. Generally I am comfortable with change and adventure (or you don’t join the military at age 17 to do different stuff potentially in combat zones that stupid politicians send you out to). I kind of like 'figuring out new things" and even then I get “comfortable with old things”.
But I have seen the old story of “the community is tired with Ironman/triathlon” play out over and over and over again. At some point you can’t fight it, just like a partner who does not want you. You try for a while, but then its time to move on.
Kona as a community does not want our dual race format. Talking to the majority of women who raced their own race at 70.3 worlds and Kona, they want it. It is more important to please all those women triathletes than to please Kona. The rest of us guys will get over it.
I don’t see anyone complaining that 70.3 Worlds is way over in NZ this year, and next year it is in Spain and the year before in Finland. Now we accept it. Sure as hell beats the gong show in Clearwater, but WTC had to start somewhere.
1 Like
I suspect that they’d (hopefully) make a decision on the WC soon - Women are now coming into the 2025 qualifying cycle, and if they decide to move the WC away from Kona you’d want your customer base to know that ‘this is the last dance’ before you went ahead and made any changes.
I realize that IM often doesn’t work like this, but if they ran out the 2025 qualifying cycle without telling everyone that they wouldn’t be back in 2027, you’d want to know about nowish so you could plan a KQ run next spring/summer.
I think a decision will have to be made and announced by august or early september of next year. That’s when the qualification period starts for kona/nice 2026. I get the feeling we won’t see women in Nice 2026.
Ironman has a four-year contract in place to rotate the women’s race between Hawaii and Nice until 2027, but if it fails to make the women’s event in Nice an attractive enough proposition, is there wiggle room to move the World Championship elsewhere?
“There is an understanding that this has to work for us and we agreed after two years to evaluate whether it was working,” Messick added. “If we needed to exit we probably could. Whether that would destroy our relationship with Nice and we’d ever be able to do Ironman France again would be a giant question. I think Nice believes that the [world championship] race was a tremendous success – and they are not wrong. It was an amazing success. So, we’ll see.”
so the question is would they ruin a good relationship for a few euro
1 Like
If IM truly lost money on the women’s race in Nice, I don’t see them returning in 2026. It’s not like they didn’t try to get women to come Nice. With all the slots they made available, I’m not sure what else they could have done. And I don’t think they could do much more in the next 2 years to really see an uptick in 2026.
1 Like
fair enough you are not the only one that would think so.
i would say if ironman would be willing to break a relationship with one of its more welcoming host cities for something like 0 to 500 k then you would have to worry a lot about ironman .
1 Like
the Iroman CEO said the Nice contract actual ends 2025 . So we could see a change for 2026 possibly.
If I was Ironman I would scrap the Womens race in Nice. move it to Barcelona. give them a fast course and another great reason to travel.
I hope they’re not reading this, or else they might ruin the world championship race.
But if they are, they might consider that moving the 140.6 WC to Barcelona, if it were to replace IM Barcelona (will the city host two a year?), would really have to sting financially as the current race is so popular.
After 2025, I think 2 WC’s in separate locations are over. I think we will see 2 day race in the same location or a 1 day race in kona.
2 Likes
There are two nice races a year .
But I mean 2026 . As Ironman ceo said nice 2026 is not contracted.
After that see what happens? 2 Ironman world champs is tough on any city . One you need time to change transition over so a day between therefore a week day race which is hard on cities and then also the place hosting the race has to have a proper city and hosting size.
This is why there are really only a few options Ironman can pursue after the current cycle ends (assuming that split WCs are unsustainable)
-Move back to Kona, but on a 1 day model - as per previously.
-Rotate the WC, either on a bid basis (as with 70.3 WC) or with 4-5 semi-permanent locations (one can be Kona)
So again, IM has to choose between staying anchored to Kona and their commitment to giving women their own day. I’d wager that their commitment to women is stronger than their commitment to Kona - especially since they can just continue to run an IM Kona outside the WC anyway (which would solve legacy and any outstanding demand that the Kona course has outside of its WC status)
OK looks like flip flop. Just a few weeks ago IM Canada Ottawa in Aug 2025 said it was Kona slots for men 2026 and Nice for women in 2026.
Now this is what it says:
2025 VinFast IRONMAN World Championship Qualification Slots
The 2025 IRONMAN Canada-Ottawa event offers Age Group Qualifying slots to the 2025 VinFast IRONMAN World Championship event in Nice, France for men on September 14, 2025 and Kailua-Kona, Hawai`i, USA for women on October 11, 2025.
Now it is men in Nice 2025 and women Kona 2025. Nothing about 2026. @TimBasille looks like the women will be happier. It is a super tight turnaround for men to Nice 2025 from Ottawa 2025 (barely 5 weeks). Based on this Nice 2026 probably is not contracted.
Nice (and possibly other locations) is superior to Kona in many respects: central location, scenic views, hard ride, accommodations, nice people, easy to travel to, food options, family friendly. The list goes on.
But there is one more attribute: Which location is closer to Kona?
On that one Kona wins, and that’s all that matters.