Seems like with Nice locked in for 2026/2028, and 70.3 worlds not back in North America since St. George 2022, there is an opening for North America and with St. George perhaps not ready to bid again, there are plenty of Canadian locations that have organized IM races and have venues with tough bike courses with 1000m of vertical and runs that can be in the 200m climbing range and good water quality too, major airports nearby and lots of hotels.
So all you Canadian triathethletes, share your thoughts. I excluded Victoria, but I guess no more complex for international athletes to get to than Whistler or Penticton
I was opining in the other thread that an ideal 70.3 WC course here in Ottawa/Gatineau would be to start the swim in Lac Leamy, do a lap of Gatineau park, and then run along the canal (1 loop of the current IM course). T2 and finish in Majors hill park but you could also do right in front of Parliament Hill for the optics and put the big hill right at the end like they did for 2014 in Tremblant.
Lac Leamy works - it’s already the start of the Gatineau triathlon and would allow for a counter-clockwise tour of Gatineau park - up Pink Lake and Fortune, down Black and Pink. Not sure if you throw in Champlain or not, but the views would be worth it if you set up a commentator at the top and have them call pro names as they go by. You could then do 30km of flat on one of the parkways (Etienne Cartier?) to round off the distance.
It’s probably too hard a course to sustain interest for a normal 70.3, but for a WC it would work well - put a few harder climbs in the first half of the bike course and it breaks up the draft packs. Then the back half is mostly flat.
It also shows off all the top tourism areas of the capital region - the current IM hits parliament hill and the river/canal but obviously misses Gatineau.
The only catch is that the roads in/out of Gatineau park aren’t so great. Also, while us locals can dive bomb Black without using the breaks, they might want to put in some slowing mechanisms for everyone else
My present home town of Mission.BC. Ticks all the boxes. Lakes a plenty. Elevation to sort out the pretenders. 80 minutes to the airport. Not a vibrant triathlon community but the geography works
Your course would totally work. Or (hang on for a second), they could just do the swim downtown in the canal. That water has been open all year for swimming at Dow’s lake and would make for better spectating and logistics, with T1/T2/Finish in the same place. That water cannot be any worse than the water in the Canal at Roth !!!
Mayor Mark Sutcliffe and Ottawa Board of trade would totally be behind it, assuming that the race organizers of IMCanada are not working this plot with the City and Ironman. With 140.6 worlds locked into USA, Ironman may be more amenable to a 70.3 worlds not in USA (AGAIN)
@timbasile no I don’t know of any plan of the IM Ottawa team (and Ottawa Tourism) to put a bid in, but I can ask a few people to TRY !!! Not that it will make a difference if I ask, but all conventions and events that can bring revenue to the city are positively reviewed. The first IM Ottawa WAS a financial success (at least for the City), so a worlds SHOULD be of economic interest
