Wild idea, why doesn’t Ironman just go up the road to Cedar City? The Panguitch Lake Resort is roughly 50 miles to Cedar City. There are 20+ hotels in the area and a regional airport serviced by Delta.
Just a thought, maybe Scott Derue reads slowtwitch.
Arguably the best volunteers in triathlon
Probably not very specific, but it should read some in the STG community. It’s my back yard.
I literally had my neighbor, a cattle rancher tell me how upset he was that his trailer of cows was being slowed down this last race while he was waiting in traffic, then he remember that I was probably out there in the course and he started thinking how cool it was that so many out of towners come to the race and do this hard stuff.
He only softened his response when he had that personal connection.
The other stuff is perhaps not clearly worded, but the point is people overract (thread is proof) when sensitive topics make headlines in politics and then suddenly the things they can control in their sphere get cut back on. The point is they can’t control that foreign film funding and the myriad of other spending issues that drive them bonkers. They can gripe about the local race that affects traffic.
I’ve actually served on a small town city council. This kind of stuff came up all the time with events. “Why are we spending money on this…” and the one thing that arguably can be a massive benefit gets slammed because it’s an easy target when they are mostly upset about other things.
I’ve never had any desire to race STG, even though it’s only 2 hours away from me, but I’m still sad to hear this.
There is no doubt they know all about that area, two of their 20+ year top employees live there(and 8 time Kona champion!))
Like I pointed out earlier, it is the entry numbers that are most likely the concern, and making the race even harder(higher altitude) just makes that number go down. They need a pancake flat venue, which of course is not anywhere near StG…
The one good I can spin out of this race closing is it will put the pressure on Ironman to bring back Las Vegas (if the community is interested). That’s a little easier on the race logistics for most people. But the bike course isn’t necessarily any easier.
If they could find the right route and wanted to be in a more populated area, Utah lake up in Provo would be a good area. The successes of the BYU runners lately have a lot of endurance sport support in the area.
@Bryancd glad I am going to St. George this year. Next year, fly up to Ottawa Canada and I will take you to 70.3 Mont Tremblant which is 1:40 hrs drive away. It is an awesome 70.3 (and it gets 2500-3000 yearly too).
On a plus note, you can do Wildflower instead. Terry Davis’ daughter is putting it back on. I am not sure my unstable running can handle that course anymore (St. George is about as hard as my run legs can take), but let’s see
Me too! And I would definitely consider Wildflower as an alternative.
Bring back the 70.3 Worlds course or a variation where the run can be in Lake Las Vegas instead of Downtown Henderson. That was a great bike course out in the Park. I was not impressed with that T100 course.
You may know this, but they had a full IM at Utah Lake in 2002, which started and ended in a duathlon after the winds picked up just before the swim started. They made it a 70.3 the next year, but only the pros swam. Again, due to winds picking up and making the lake to dangerous to swim for many. After that, a local RD hosted “The Utah Half” out there for many years. The bike course made its way just past Lincoln Beach (out and back). I wish they still had that race.
I enjoyed the T100 course a LOT more than the locals did!
The rumor while we were there though was that it’s likely the AG bike course does head into the park so…hold on to that for the T100 next year. If you were there you know there’s no way they could do what they did this year again.
Slowtwitch is telling me that it’s 18 years since you last posted… I think that must be a record.
Wasn’t there a fatality that caused the race to be canceled?
Originally published at: On the End of the Road in St. George - Slowtwitch News
By now, you’ve probably heard the news — the 2025 edition of IRONMAN 70.3 St. George will be the final IRONMAN event in the city. Local officials have called this a mutual parting of the ways, citing “the 17 IRONMAN events hosted during the successful partnership leave a profound, positive legacy, and Greater Zion will continue to be known as the ‘Land of Endurance.'”
It is a stark reminder that we are merely visitors in many host communities, and that we can, in fact, wear out our welcome. IRONMAN’s own release says as much, directly: “Demands of the event, including rising costs, increasing populations around race routes, and continued pressure on resources compelled Washington County officials to evaluate all options. With input from community partners, they concluded that after a long and successful run, IRONMAN’s time in St. George would be celebrated and the 2025 edition would be the final one.”
It is not the first time we’ve seen this scenario play out. We have detailed the significant back-and-forth that occurred in Lake Placid before a new contract was finally signed. There is the ongoing saga of what used to be known as the Malibu Triathlon and who will eventually produce a triathlon there. And, of course, there’s Penticton and the back-and-forth between race production organizations that occurred there.
And now St. George joins Penticton in the ranks of former races.
To be fair to St. George, we’ve run out the carpet hard there. Since first debuting as a full-distance IRONMAN in 2010, there have been 17 races in 14 years there, including three World Championship races in 13 months (2021 70.3 Worlds, 2021 IM Worlds held in May 2022, and then 2022 70.3 Worlds). Since being one of the first races to bounce back following the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 10,000 athletes have taken to the race course in St. George. It’s a lot of people in short order.
And St. George is changing. The population of the city has grown by 31% since IRONMAN started racing there in 2010. It’s the fifth most populous city in Utah, the only one of those cities located outside of the Wasatch Front, and the fastest growing metro in the country. There’s roughly a 1:1 population ratio if you factor in the surrounding communities that make up the metropolitan statistical area. St. George is, by and large, smack in the middle of the size of communities that typically make up IRONMAN courses in the United States these days — and with that come special challenges.
It’s often medium-sized communities that are the most challenging to produce events in. In smaller towns, it’s easy to show direct economic impact; permitting is easier to pull together; there’s fewer disruptions to the population as there’s simply fewer people to deal with. Meanwhile, in large city races (say, Sacramento, as an example) — there’s an expectation of life disruption for something. Permitting might be expensive, but there is infrastructure available to handle the surge in population of a race coming to town. But, ultimately, the race is “just another thing” going on in town.
Speaking as someone who’s been around since St. George first joined the calendar, this one hurts more than when we lost other challenging courses like Tahoe or Penticton. I think a lot of it comes down to how nearly every person who I’ve talked to has raved about the course and community; it’s always been a race that I have wanted to try and make fit in a schedule, but never have made it work. And now there’s only one more opportunity to make that happen.
The lesson, as always: don’t wait. Sign up. Do the thing. You may not get the chance tomorrow.
That 2012 full was bananas.
I don’t know about a full in Las Vegas. I take your word that there has been a full distance race out here in the past. After all, I’m still fairly new to the triathlon scene. But there are really only two locations for the swim: Lake Mead and Lake Las Vegas. LLV was the site of T100 this year and it did appear to be a decent swim course. The advantage is that the water is cleaner and being a small man-made lake, weather should have a smaller impact on the lake. The down side is I think it would be hard to put on the full 2.4 mile swim without having to resort to laps.
Lake Mead is a different animal entirely. I swim out there often. The single biggest issue with Lake Mead is the entry and exit to the water almost has to be “Boulder Beach”, which I assure you is much more boulder than beach. I believe the organization would be compelled to do some type of preparation to get the surface suitable.
Then there’s the bike course. It’s not terribly hilly, but then again, that would depend entirely on how it was structured. Two laps or three laps heading into Henderson?
I saw the run course out at T100 this year. I wouldn’t do it. Far too hilly for me. But I hate hills. They’re just brutal on my knees now.
Finally, both Lake Las Vegas and Lake Mead are going to be unpredictable for weather. Depending on the time of year, almost assured to be sunny. But both temperature and weather can vary wildly on the same weekends from year to year.
We are talking about a 70.3 to replace St. George. We had one back in 2011-2014 or so that was 70.3 Worlds swimming at LLV, biking into Lake Meade, and ending in Henderson where the run was a 3 loop in town affair.
Would say that St George probably got what it wanted out of it’s association with Ironman, People said; St George is beautiful, but easier than Sedona let’s move there!
That sounds like hell.
There was a fatality, but I wouldn’t say that was the reason the race was canceled. The decision was likely influenced by two years of microburst winds disrupting the swim, creating unstable conditions. Utah Lake is shallow, and when the winds pick up, the water becomes dangerously rough.
RIP, John Boland
Will you be there?
We’ll have an expo booth and will be racing - make the most of the final year of one heck of a race venue (and eat a ton at the Farmstead bakery!)