I have now done 5x 70.3 Ironman events and 1x 140.6 Ironman event. My 70.3s were between Muskoka (x3), Tremblant (x1) and Victoria (x1). My full Ironman was Lake Placid (x1). I have an Ironman (M-dot) tattoo on my calf. It’s big and it’s red 
I have seen so much criticism of the brand and business. I just cannot understand the criticism. The events are extremely well organized. The support from communities is incredible. The volunteers?! Amazing.
When I was doing my full in Lake Placid it blew my mind how well organized and detailed everything was. I think the prices are justified, even if they are expensive. I also believe these endurance events are life changing. The lifestyle they bring to athletes and communities is often extremely healthy and balanced.
Re the tattoos and its criticism: I come from a soccer background with a heavy European and South American culture behind it, trust me…the tattoo thing is very prominent - clubs, symbols, players, religious aspects, etc - all related to soccer and various brands.
Why all the criticism? What am I missing?
I have now done 5x 70.3 Ironman events and 1x 140.6 Ironman event. My 70.3s were between Muskoka (x3), Tremblant (x1) and Victoria (x1). My full Ironman was Lake Placid (x1). I have an Ironman (M-dot) tattoo on my calf. It’s big and it’s red
I have seen so much criticism of the brand and business. I just cannot understand the criticism. The events are extremely well organized. The support from communities is incredible. The volunteers?! Amazing.
When I was doing my full in Lake Placid it blew my mind how well organized and detailed everything was. I think the prices are justified, even if they are expensive. I also believe these endurance events are life changing. The lifestyle they bring to athletes and communities is often extremely healthy and balanced.
Re the tattoos and its criticism: I come from a soccer background with a heavy European and South American culture behind it, trust me…the tattoo thing is very prominent - clubs, symbols, players, religious aspects, etc - all related to soccer and various brands.
Why all the criticism? What am I missing?
Your subject line and your actual post pose very different questions that I would think produce very different answers.
Jocular response: “Why so sensitive? Does your wife work for them or something?”
Rational response: “Any brand faces criticism. One such as Ironman that uses different teams to produce events in diverse locations likely faces more criticism than others due to the large number of variables involved in delivering a consistent level of service. The brand’s ability to manage consumer expectations around this variability and to respond to criticism in a fair and balanced manner are core competencies.”
Regarding specific things, absolutely. For example, their policies about no refunds or transfers seems foolish. When races are sold out, and somebody wants to transfer to another race, it seems like good business sense to allow a person to transfer (refund some, but not all of original registration) so that a waiting list person can enter. This would increase race participation and revenue.
I agree on how well the races are run. That aspect and the venues are great.
i’ve been racing tri since i was a kid, in the '90s. i’ve done all kinds of events from small to big, and lots of other multisport/endurance events too. this year, though, is the first year that i’ve done any IM-branded events: 70.3 switzerland, and 70.3 muskoka.
overall i agree - they were a good ‘carnival’ in the sense that they’re big and there’s lots going on, and the support is very good. on the other hand, they’re quite expensive relative to other races, so they ought to bring plenty for the price.
my gripe - that i’ve made elsewhere - is that i constantly felt squeezed by IM. the athlete’s guide for switzerland was 70 pages long, and fully half of that was ads. the pre-race video briefing had commercials in it. race package pickup required us to walk out of the arena where we had already registered, and through the gift shop.
i took my world’s slot at muskoka, and paid the (fairly steep!) price for marbella on the spot. a month later i get an email asking me to register for world’s. i thought i already had, but logged in anyway. turns out i had to click through 16 - sixteen - screens offering me different pieces of IM merch, travel packages, medal engraving, etc - and then pay a spanish federation fee to race. every country i’ve raced in has accepted my home-country race insurance (and/or rolled it in to registration). but for some reason IM couldn’t find a way to do that in their ~700 fee, and couldn’t get the spanish federation to recognize foreign insurance at a world championship.
all of that kind of stuff leaves me feeling nickel-and-dimed, and takes some of the fun out. i’ve enjoyed my IM events well enough but likely won’t be back to their events after world’s - just interested in having other kinds of adventures in multisport, i think!
Have you ever raced a non-IM event, especially a half or full?
Ironman is not triathlon. I get the same sort of race experience without the brand, in an event with 4,500 people racing various distances, for $150 (for a half distance race).
race package pickup required us to walk out of the arena where we had already registered, and through the gift shop.
“Exit through the Gift Shop” is something we as a family say so often, I just might put that on my tombstone (if I have a tombstone… I’m undecided about that for the moment)
In addition to what others have mentioned, one of the criticisms was Ironman’s approach to “competitors”. Ironman was known for:
Scheduling races in a similar timeframe and location to existing races, such that the existing race would get fewer competitors and not be financially viable.Buying up existing races, then either dropping them completely or dropping them from 140.6 to 70.3.
Now obviously Ironman is not “at fault” here; we are. We could have chosen to keep supporting the independent races, but enough of us (and I plead guilty) chose to support Ironman races.
I think that we’ve lost a lot as a community. Races like Savageman, with tough bike courses, are gone. Instead we have downhill swims and relatively flat bike courses like 70.3 Oregon.
Savageman was always on my radar to do one day and it never happened. That looked like such a fun race. Too bad.
you’re right, they’ve built the best repeatable mass endurance event production company in the world and they should be recognized for that. triathlon should be proud we were and are a part of that. IRONMAN is also the dog that caught the car. their zeal to be the biggest and most profitable has caused a lot of grumbling from their customers and the race communities that tries to exist around them. they’ve squeezed their own customers, their partners (sponsors, licensees), their hosts cities, and the multisport ecosystems in those areas they produce races. when you hear the protests it’s the result of that squeeze.
contrast that with, say, challenge roth, where there is no complaints. what’s the difference? in my view the difference has been the ownership structure. challenge is privately held. IM’s sale to providence equity partners in 2010, the subsequent sale to the chinese, this created tremendous pressure on IM’s management to print money and the most spectacular example of the havoc that can wreak is the squeezing of a partner to death (tri bike transport) that created a huge financial problem for the owners of TBT, and for IM, and for IM’s customers. a second example is the expo, where IM’s revenue team squeezed everyone out of it.
IM’s current ownership is kinder, i do believe. also, i think it’s current president understands what i’m writing above so (for example) you’re going to see the expos opening up as partner contracts renew and exclusivity clauses are struck from those agreements. there are structural reasons IM has been a corporate dick, but i’m starting to see the unraveling of that.
I have now done 5x 70.3 Ironman events and 1x 140.6 Ironman event. My 70.3s were between Muskoka (x3), Tremblant (x1) and Victoria (x1). My full Ironman was Lake Placid (x1). I have an Ironman (M-dot) tattoo on my calf. It’s big and it’s red
I have seen so much criticism of the brand and business. I just cannot understand the criticism. The events are extremely well organized. The support from communities is incredible. The volunteers?! Amazing.
When I was doing my full in Lake Placid it blew my mind how well organized and detailed everything was. I think the prices are justified, even if they are expensive. I also believe these endurance events are life changing. The lifestyle they bring to athletes and communities is often extremely healthy and balanced.
Re the tattoos and its criticism: I come from a soccer background with a heavy European and South American culture behind it, trust me…the tattoo thing is very prominent - clubs, symbols, players, religious aspects, etc - all related to soccer and various brands.
Why all the criticism? What am I missing?
It’s stats a local race or small company may have a race with 200-600 racers so if 10 % of them have a gripe .
20-60 and only 2-6 go on the internet to whine. No one listens as no one else has this issue.
Ironman races have 2000 per weekend and multi events per weekend. So about 200 will have some gripes .
20 will go online and comment and be in raged . And others will add their experience which this is so many doing Ironman you will hear more voices.
I mean how can you understand a gripe with someone doing the local middle of know-where triathlon . And if the middle of know-where tri commented back they they would prove the athlete likely was in the wrong but they won’t, and Ironman won’t because they don’t care.
I have a ton of athletes that have had lots of issues with small races and big races, car traffic issues, aid station issues.
I expect Ironman to be a safer course for the$$$ and more competition focused competitors, that’s it .
No cars or well controlled.
Local races are cheap but I expect and do cars in my way alot. Have to ride safe over performance.
Who are they going to complain to when them paid $100 to do a sprint tri . that grandma pulled out of her driveway and went 20 km per hour down hill .
But when people do a $1000 Ironman they want it all perfect that day and will look to blame the races issues over them , just like runners blame their shoes a lot .
I’ve seen so many Ironman tattoos especially on their ankles and calves. Who get a tattoo of brand? McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Nissan, Ford, Hoka, PetCo, Apple, LG… There are thousands and thousands of brands out there yet people want Ironman tattoo, so I think they are doing just fine. Usually, people with complaints voice their concern, so it appears they have a lot of problems, but actually not. It is ok to criticize because Ironman can learn from some of the legit complaints. Race directors bust their ass to host great race so my hats off to them, staff and volunteers.
There are lots of critiques and every individual is going to have their own perspective/ issues or outlook.
The big two issues I see:
#1. The watering down of competition and the lack of attention to competitive rules.
Races have become rampant with rule violators, drafting, doping and the like with little to no follow through and recourse by IRONMAN.
At the same time IRONMAN has moved away from the mass or wave start and towards a rolling start across the board which kills the ability to “race” the event for many.
These things kill the race environment and lean towards a crowd that is more focused on completion vs competition and this is going to anger a large portion.
*we should all care about the rules and doping piece including the completion crowd
#2. The consolidation of racing and the emphasis on longer events.
This one is not necessarily IRONMAN fault but rather a byproduct of them chasing their own success, but they can still be faulted.
The long term success of our sport is not dictated by the one and done crowd or the crew that does a couple IRONMAN races and disappears rather it is about athletes finding long term enjoyment in the sport. This is most likely to happen by racing short, local races at a lower cost and a lighter physical toll.
IRONMAN has a tendency to kill these smaller races and puts an emphasis on race distances that are simply not right for many people to engage in with long term success.
This combo is potentially detrimental to the long term health of the sport. If you kill off the local sprint races you are going to remove a large swath of the population who will never jump straight to a 70.3 or 140.6. These races are both entry level and the long term path forward. A brand like IM only cares about the current bottom line (which again is fine, but not great for the sport)
IM can go fuck. The races may be fun and well organized, but they suck so much ass on the customer service side of things. I’ve had to go to my cc company twice just to get my money back after IM lied about the Flex90 benefits I purchased. I’ll (hopefully) race Indian Wells at the end of the year then be done with IM entirely.
Is it really fair that they force other race organizers to sell their race to them and/or run them out of business?
I know this for a fact.
Yes, they put on a good show but you pay for it. I’m not willing to support them. There are thousands of people that will so they haven’t missed me at all.
Many moons ago I organized Multi sport races and know the pain of what goes behind the scenes to pull off the production and not lose money in the process. So generally I don’t complain about any race directors, I just offer them inputs from a consumer side on what can be changed and solutions on HOW (versus just complaining). I find Ironman brand events to be best in class for overall quality. You pay more, but in my experience, it is worth it (I have done 31 Ironman brand fulls, over 100 halfs, and 200+ other races (so almost one third of my lifetime events are Mdot).
As is the case of anything in life, if you do something in volume around the world, you’ll make a few poor decisions here and there and will be rightfully criticised. The collective of complaints against Ironman reflect the rollup of global errors and rollup of global squeeky wheels but something like 40 years later if they were sucking overall, they would not have the volume of entrants around the world, so look at that volume to understand how many people generally like the events.
Regarding specific things, absolutely. For example, their policies about no refunds or transfers seems foolish. When races are sold out, and somebody wants to transfer to another race, it seems like good business sense to allow a person to transfer (refund some, but not all of original registration) so that a waiting list person can enter. This would increase race participation and revenue.
I agree on how well the races are run. That aspect and the venues are great.
I’ve thought about this and the best I can figure out is the transfers have the potential to create some chaos in an already chaos prone business of herding 1500+ cats. The benefit/revenue of creating a nice seamless bib transfer is not greater than the cost of overhauling their website/cart process to manage this. And Ironman is a commitment that as soon as people get close to race day they get nervous and want to pull out, and most consumers are more likely to show up because they don’t want to “waste” their money. Sunk cost fallacy is something that can work to the advantage of one of the parties sometimes.
I would assume, some day when IM remakes its website experience to order races, they will integrate some kind of withdrawal/penalty/transfer fee option. But large organizations struggle to redo large pieces of technology like this and often prefer to ride it out until the wheels fall off and then replace it.
Ironman as an event organizer is top notch. You rarely see issues with events on the ground and kudos to them.
Criticism usually come from how the company operates as a steward for the sport, since they are also functionally replacing NGB’s and have massive dominion over the sport of long course triathlon.
Some of the choices they make seem to focus on short term profitability with encouraging growth of the sport as a distant concern.
you’re right, they’ve built the best repeatable mass endurance event production company in the world and they should be recognized for that. triathlon should be proud we were and are a part of that. IRONMAN is also the dog that caught the car. their zeal to be the biggest and most profitable has caused a lot of grumbling from their customers and the race communities that tries to exist around them. they’ve squeezed their own customers, their partners (sponsors, licensees), their hosts cities, and the multisport ecosystems in those areas they produce races. when you hear the protests it’s the result of that squeeze.
contrast that with, say, challenge roth, where there is no complaints. what’s the difference? in my view the difference has been the ownership structure. challenge is privately held. IM’s sale to providence equity partners in 2010, the subsequent sale to the chinese, this created tremendous pressure on IM’s management to print money and the most spectacular example of the havoc that can wreak is the squeezing of a partner to death (tri bike transport) that created a huge financial problem for the owners of TBT, and for IM, and for IM’s customers. a second example is the expo, where IM’s revenue team squeezed everyone out of it.
IM’s current ownership is kinder, i do believe. also, i think it’s current president understands what i’m writing above so (for example) you’re going to see the expos opening up as partner contracts renew and exclusivity clauses are struck from those agreements. there are structural reasons IM has been a corporate dick, but i’m starting to see the unraveling of that.
Race prices rise a bit over the years, but that’s expected.
My biggest complaint is the partnership with Nirvana booking up all the nearby hotels - which for some races there are few options. You either pay their jacked up rate or have a fairly annoying logistical headache just to race.
IM can go fuck. The races may be fun and well organized, but they suck so much ass on the customer service side of things. I’ve had to go to my cc company twice just to get my money back after IM lied about the Flex90 benefits I purchased. I’ll (hopefully) race Indian Wells at the end of the year then be done with IM entirely.
