As great a race as Penticton is, if people don’t sign up, it will be replaced by the half ironman. I have done it many times, and am signed up for 2024. Unfortunately the people in the BC government whose job it is to put out the fires don’t have the horsepower to embrace the challenge, and as a result racing in late August in dry conditions becomes a situation where you are relying on luck. I flew in to Montreal last year to do Tremblant and even the day before the race, conditions were perfect. It wasn’t until 2:00 Am in the morning until I awoke to heavy smoke that I knew the race was not going to happen. The day before, or a few days after and it would have happened. The race just unfortunately fell on the worst day possible and got canceled. Penticton also used to be a same year qualifier, now it gets delayed for 13-14 months. If it were held end of June and same year qualifier, much greater chance the race actually takes place(forest fire wise), and the numbers would probably support it to remain an Ironman.
As we all know, Canada is a massive country. It is like the difference between having an Ironman Russia Moscow and an Ironman Russia Vladivostok on the other end of the trans Siberian railroad , in effect two worlds apart. Or 70.3 Oceanside and 70.3 Atlantic City, which are literally two worlds apart in the same country. Ironman Canada Penticton competes to get most of the crowd from western Canada and western US. Even for Canadians Penticton is a pain to get to (between flying across Canada and then renting a car from Vancouver or catching a connector flight to Penticton or Kelowna. There is not easy way to get there, so when IM Placid came along it gave a pile of us the option to drive from Eastern Canada to Placid (I did Penticton 6 times before Placid came along, then did Placid 11 times)…and then when locals in Placid got belligerent with IM athletes, and I had more flexiblity, I started going to do European races which I could do literally for cheaper than driving to Placid with their rip off rates. In any case, Placid gave those of us in the East an option during peak Ironman participation and then Tremblant and Placid gave us two options during peak Ironman particiaption and then Penticton got too big for its boots, killed the goose that laid the golden egg and thought they were bigger than Ironman (which clearly they were not), and then with the detour to Whistler (I did that one twice too) and a pandemic in between, we have what we have.
Less Ironman athletes racingMore options around the world for full distanceMore people racing 70.3the allure of Penticton’s course and the town is lost (there are not enough old timers telling newcomers that it is the “go to event outside of Hawaii…which it was for a long time”
As a local in Ottawa I hope IM Ottawa survives. We have the dynamic of Woodlands Texas and Frankfurt helping us…an Mdot event in a reasonable size city that shuts down for a day, versus putting an Ironman in a resort town that eventually grows to hate Ironman athletes after initially welcoming them. That’s also why I think Nice is a great spot for our worlds…let’s give it time. We can’t succeed well as a sport when we take over towns. Bigger cities can absorb us for a day or weekend since bigger cities are always having an endless stream of pro sport events, biz conventions, political conventions etc…we just become another novelty act in the endless circus sequence in those towns (ex: this year in Nice they have Paris Nice, IM/70.3 France Nice, the Tour De France finish due to Olympics in Paris, IM Worlds in the sports that people around here generally are aware of).
I think the world marathon majors work well because they are in large cities that just shut down for a day and 364 days a year it is biz as usual.
Let’s see if Ottawa can capitalize on the same dynamic. A long time ago the race director of the Ottawa Marathon was a 10,000m olympian in Seoul and Barcelona. We raced the international 10,000m circuit and several world marathon majors. Him and I were in biz school together and he said, “Our city has to bring the model to the Ottawa marathon”. Eventually he quit his job as an engineer at Nortel (haha easy to do) and just took over the event and made it into what it is today (not a world marathon major, but the biggest race weekend in Canada). Our mayor in Ottawa has raced that many times so he saw the value of bringing a similar event in Ironman Canada Ottawa.
All that to say, I don’t think Ottawa hurts or helps Penticton, I think the race is trying to survive on a different dynamic than the smaller tourist town IM destination (ex Placid, Penticon, Kona, Tremblant). Its more in the category of Frankfurt-Barcelona, Nice, Woodland/Houston. That’s why I think it can have legs to survive for a while.