Where there’$ a will there’$ a way.
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Yet this entire situation would counter that whole statement. The local community was making bank by having 5k+ people race in Kona in a ~4 day period, and yet the money wasn’t worth the hassle/stress/inconvience.
Having a Kona WC over a month there wouldn’t really make it any better than the current setup as your still doubling your cost and only getting ~2500 people per race. The only way it’s financial viable for IM is to keep it in as short of a period that the locals allow, thus you can have a “2 races for the price of 1”; back to back weekends would basically be about the longest you could use the same resources for both races.
Idea for pros.
If a male pro is passed by a female on the bike they are out.
Solves that problem quickly.
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If it hasn’t been done in the past, it can’t be done in the future. Got it.
Why not answer how many you realisitcally think can be added by extending the pier or whatever “creative idea” you think they should do. Again give me an actual number. Anything less than ~5k athletes essentially never solves the problem that you keep bringing up.
So instead of coming up with vagueness, talk reality. They need ~5k race to solve the male AG revenue problem that you are presenting. Which would mean basically let’s just call simple math, double the size of the pier. Quick google search said the locals have created a govt working group to figure out how to improve the use of the facility and the vandalism/unlawful activity. Doesn’t sound like there would be any need or push from the locals to permanently expand it, and the materials/labor cost to build and tear down to the needs of getting it built for 5k athletes would likely be financially irresponsible.
Any temporary structure would easily need to be likely scaffolding built into the seabed to help support the temporary structure. Due to the dept of the bay right there (deep enough to support cruise ship usage/ mooring) , that’s not necessarily an easy / inexpensive project.
Proposed working group to address Kailua Bay/Kailua Pier management moves forward : Big Island Now.
In a previous thread someone proposed an elegant solution of a temporary second story. Seems wild, but crazier things have been done. As I said, you can also simply explore other locations in the Kona area for the race.
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Of course as I said, just go bulldoze 1/2 mile of lava rock and build an entire transition 30 miles from the current location. Let me know how that goes with the locals, cus there’s probaly no ocean front piece of land that can house ~5k people within the city limits. We are after all talking about a tourist location that every single piece of usable beach property will have already been taken.
That would be fun to see, having to watch Blu and Knibb run up and down stairs to cover the entire length of the transition area on both 2nd and 1st floor of T area, for “fairness” etc.
Womens bikes on the pier, mens bikes in the parking lot on Kuakini highway. Boom, double the number. The point is it’s not my job in a blog post to solve all the logistical hurdles of getting more people there. The reality is, it’s possible to figure something out that’s not any more impractical to than, "shut down the main artery of the entire west coast for a couple thousand people to bike once a year.”
What parking lot on Kuakini highway to house 2500 bikes?
Please locate that for me, since we are talking about realities here apparently.
There looks to only be 1 vacant lot nearish the hotel, beside the car dealership.
Step 1, open browser
Step 2, go to Google maps
Step 3, Type in Kona
Step 4, Take a break from so much effort thus far and watch a short course race to reinvigorate your mind that anything is possible.
Step 5, Go back to the maps and select satellite mode.
Step 6, Look for places where the ground is black and there appears to be a Lot of colored shiny rectangles parked there.
Step 7, remember that Ironman involves running
Step 8, Stop being a naysayer and watch another short course race to inspire you that anything is possible.
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Answer 1 question though. If it’s that easy and a reality, why has IM not done this in the past 30 years?
I’ll hang up and listen.
Cheers
I won’t answer until you complete step 8
And let me remind you, we are talking about IM. A business 1st corporation that if they could have already put ~5k people in a 1 day race, it would have 100% already been done in this location. You want to talk about reality…this isn’t your local mom and pop running a business, this is a million or billion dollar corporation, they would have easily gobbled up every piece of property (rented/leased local business properties for the week(s) of Kona) to get more people on the island to race.
What race did you watch so quickly?
Remember how they couldn’t fit more bikes on the pier then remembered they could move bikes…holy crap…off the pier?
Respect that is the dumbest post I have read for a good while.
Tomorrow is still April and so more than 2 months ahead of the first 70.3 with qualifying slots for the 2026 70.3 World Championships.
Whenever we hear, this announcement has to be a combined one revealing the venues/dates for all three races (in date/time order):
- 70.3 World Championships
- IM World Championships (men)
- IM World Championships (women)
If the later two are on the same date IRONMAN have to find a way of ensuring the women have a fair race unaffected by [insert cohorts here]
And if Kona, 2500 amateurs of whom only 1500 max men.
@devashish_paul Please would you humour my pedantry by editing the thread title to spell “announcement” correctly.
Hotel carpark plus lawn plus tennis courts is approximately 2x-3x the size of the pier. Ref Google maps satellite view
If hotel and guests and IM tent registration l could be convinced to move a bunch of stuff elsewhere assuming half the carpark and hotel grounds it would be theoretically possible to cut carpark down in half then fit +2,000 bikes and 2nd set of transition tents etc. Whether there are zoning regs etc stopping this I don’t know. Not even sure +2,000 needed as there are probably other limits including accom, ppl on course, stations, volunteer numbers etc.
Easy to have 2 transition routes and segment by AG. Relatively.
If most hotel guests are tri related can enforce off site parking. Don’t need expo or registration here.
I presume there is some reason why this solution hasn’t been pursued before.
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They also use that parking lot for the welcome and awards banquet. But it is very large and I think of all of options being thrown out there, this makes the most sense. You can’t really use another parking lot down Kuakini, it’s just too far north of the swim exite.
Same issue with St. George. There’s a point where the logistical squeeze isn’t worth the revenue juice for small, tourist driven communities.
@BDoughtie and @Lurker4 Maybe you are both too young. When the pier was damaged they moved T1 to the King K parking lot, which is probably big enough for 5000. That can be done, but that is not the problem.
The problem is that at the WC too many competitors come out of the water in too tight of a bunch. That ends up way over crowding the bike course. This was a problem pre-wave starts with 1800 starters. Adding the Kukini hill hill helps break things up, but that really is not enough even with the wave start.
Now, you could move the first pro wave up as far as daylight would allow - maybe another 15 minutes at most. But, you would have to have 3 hours or so of waves to space things out enough (ok, maybe 2). That would push the cut-off close to 2:00am. That could be done I suppose.
You guys seem to be arguing over the TA, but that is really not the issue. Solve the bike congestion and then you make have a solution.