I’m with Dev. Whistler is the perfect venue. Plenty of accommodations and things to do. Relatively easy to get to. Very challenging bike course even without the climb back from Pemberton that was used for the full. The run was no picnic either. Not that it was necessarily hilly but it was a constant up and down without a lot of flat sections.
I am going to be so disappointed if its not Whistler now! Its a fairly big trip from the UK, I went there 8 years ago on my honeymoon and have been dying to go back, to tie in with 70.3 Worlds would be so epic!
Whistler is an awesome venue (I did the full in 2014 and 2015), but perhaps this is just a bunch of us on ST wishing for the venue with no real validity. But the place can have a championship caliber bike and run course with a championshp caliber finish area and resort experience with reasonabley good flight connections and no more painful to get to from Europe than St. George (vegas) or from Asia or from South America.
I am heading to Penticton next weekend for the last IM race there (I am doing the 70.3). When Whistler was first announced, back around 2012 (for 2013), I felt it would be a far superior overall venue to Penticton, which I maintain to this date, (and I did Penticton full 6 times) , but Whistler was just too darn hard a course for full IM (I have to look at my files, but believe it had 2300m of vertical on run alone) . For half IM, a 1200-1300m vertical bike is just fine especially for championship.
But I think its just us making up fantasies about a Whistler venue!!! (short of me flying down to Tampa and pitching it and then getting on a plane to Vancouver an driving up to Whisteler and getting all the officials in Whistler to back it…seems like the wheels should have been in motion a year ago to make it happen)
Whistler was hard but not THAT hard lol - I had 6066 FEET on the bike and 1375 ft on the run in 2013. And the run got easier after that. I remember the first year Trevor Wurtele won (pretty sure) in like 8:47 or something and we were all that’s crazy…what a hard race. Then Marino came over, went 8:15 and I just thought - oh…that’s the next level haha.
Still…whistler was epic for all the years I raced it for sure.