From the article:
" [I said something was going to have to be sacrificed in this question] The women, the history, the rotation, the numbers? They picked the women."
More accurately, Ironmen picked the women first. Most women picked staying at home instead.
I would bet that the price of Kona goes up to two grand or more
I respect her work and her opinion, I just don’t agree and that should be fine. She’s objectively wrong about proportionality.
I agree with her take. I actually wish IM had just come out and said, " while in theory we’d like to give women their day, in the end it doesn’t make financial sense for us". I think that would have been the more honest answer. As I mentioned above, I’m dubious about the use of polling and only a couple of years of registration numbers to draw conclusions. Increasing women’s participation in full distance is a long-term initiative and IM decided it’s not worth the investment. I’d rather IM admit that than say “we’re giving people what they want” while claiming economics never came into consideration.
Economics did come into the equation - they said that once people hit their WCQ, a high proportion of them fall out of the regular IM customer base. (Its in the infographic that was posted either above here or in the other thread)
Part of this is also explicitly keeping Kona exclusive - keep the carrot dangling so we’re all chasing the dream.
I suspect part of this is that they were using the WCQ as a lure to get more women doing back to back Ironman distance events, or to jump up from the 70.3. Well if that’s the case, then yeah - the target group is obviously going to take a break.
They don’t need to state that it’s inherent in the fact they are a business and not a charity. But they also did very clearly state they believe they are losing female participants not gaining them and attribute some of that to the split WC. Seem’s DeRue was pretty transparent in their decision making process.
I was going based on this quote from DeRue in Triathlete:
"DeRue insists the decision is not a financial one. “A two-day format, regardless of location, is going to create more revenue because there’s more athletes,” he says. “The piece that most people forget is that there’s costs associated with that as well. It’s quite expensive to produce two events in two locations, from an economic perspective. The economics actually – and I say this with all sincerity – never came up in this decision process.
“We said that from the very beginning, as a team, we were not going to make this decision based on any form of economics. The truth is, we actually lose money on world championship events, and we consider it an investment in our brand. We consider an investment in the community. The production value of world championship events exceeds any other triathlon event in the world and we are committed to continue to elevate that experience and that production value.”"
He doth protest too much.
The word is the the local Municipal Gov’t in Kailua-Kona was adamant that there would be NO two days of racing going forward- full stop. This was a complete brick wall for them. Now I heard some rumblings that there was to be a change in the local Mayor and or Country Political leadership and that there might be a softening of this stance - but apparently that does not seem to be the case!
It’s wild that triathletes revere Kona despite the town not responding in kind.
Not a whole lot to add…other than to ask those ‘in the know’…is there truly absolutely no way for WTC to work out a deal with Kona to have a two day event like they did in 2022? It seems like the ultimate solution. Offer more $$ to the town for the inconvenience??
OK I guess that answers my above question, you beat me by a few seconds… 
We do this when I work the Commentary for really big Track & Field Meets like the Canadian Track & Field Championships - My co-Commentators focus on the goings on, on the track, while I focus on the Field Events exclusively. That way when we cut to the Women’s Long Jump - I can quickly story-tell, exactly what’s going on in the women’s Long Jump!
A lot of Hawai’i locals barely tolerate regular tourists, and sometimes outright hate them. That aloha spirit! Makes me wonder when, not if the govt gets pressured to cancel Ironman once and for all.
We hate the tourists…but love/need the jobs and $$$ they bring is pretty common for any major tourist destination. The gripe is common, any real change is rare. From a branding perspective, I think IM needs Hawaii but not necessarily Kona (after all the race started on Oahu). There are probably other options in the state that would jump at the chance to get some off-season tourist spend and international media coverage, and can still provide the Hawaiian vibe.
Just looking at the pic with this article…we’re in Nice, but IM is still projecting the Hawaiian vibe that is core to the brand.
@rrheisler I am coming in on this after several comments.
here are my thoughts
I am personally happy that 70.3 worlds will go back to Nice on alternating years, that is awesome and we’ll have an all women’s day at least at 70.3 worlds
FFS what a load of dribble. They couldn’t give away female slots for a single day WC. People just love to complain.
Yeah I re-read it and it’s infuriating. In my social media feed it’s noteworthy the same people who advocate for equal participation numbers also advocate for trans women competing in women’s sports, which is a curious contradiction of priorities.
Except they are still going to support Women for Tri spots. We don’t know yet to what extent or how those will be distributed, but they can be very impactful. If for example they allocated 10 WfT slots per race that would effectively ensure each women’s AG got at least 2 slots.
I also challenge the notion that the women’s coverage will inherently suck. I think they are well aware of the scrutiny they will be under to deliver exceptional coverage of the women’s race. So I expect that aspect of the coverage to overdeliver. My hope is the media savings they are achieving through re-consolidating will be applied to delivering the enhanced women’s coverage.
This was a common theme in text exchanges with (female) friends today. It will be the same few women going every year. There are some former pros who race as AGers and if you are a woman in one of those age groups, you are SOL.
