my experiences at Placid left me wondering how/why the community puts up with IM.
1 Like
I’ll never go to Hawaii, if the sport is to expand it needs to cope with that. 
As a business man Nice makes a lot of sense and addresses all the problems Kona presents.
I’d like to eventually see a global rotation; US/Kona, Europe/Nice, Africas/Lanzarote, Oceania/Busselton
Until then it’s driven by tourist numbers so Nice wins hands down.
3 Likes
Kona is the one. I agree.
But Kona is every year less Kona.
It was never cheap, but it was never so expensive.
It was a party, where all athletes, brands and media wanted to be… it seems that it is not anymore valid.
They say that 2019 and earlier, the athletes received plenty of giveaways, free service from bike brands, etc…swimsuits, free oakley lenses…
… now a t-shirt costs 65usd and from this… to the infinite.
Kona is kona, but it will never be Kona again.
3 Likes
It is really a sh#t world championship course for AG athletes.
Swim-Draft-Run!!!
Why bother with the swim and bike at all?
I am a strong swim bike triathlete. I think I would fair better in a stand alone marathon!!
You swim 54 and hold 280 watts for 5:00 hours!
You get passed by 350 dudes illegally drafting- who swim 1:05 and hold 230!
And those same as dudes start the run fresher!!
280watts for 5 hours?! You need to work on your cda 
5 Likes
You are right that they are probably a minority - or the race wouldn’t happen at all.
However, my point goes way beyond that:
- to a level, whatever the reason, some locations are more or less welcoming than others and it should be taken into consideration in selecting the WC destination
- my point about not being cycling friendly goes beyond the welcoming of the community.
I’m not sure what others think, but cycling on the (super dirty and rough, at times very narrow) shoulder of a highway where massive trucks go at 100+kph doesn’t feel enjoyable or safe at all. - finally, I like cycling (and triathlon) also because of the environmental, sustainability, and lifestyle aspects of it. Go to Nice and you can walk/cycle/take a tram everywhere. Go to Kona and you end up driving a SUV everywhere, even within the same mall.
Of course flying athletes is never going to be “sustainable” but it isn’t black and white and driving everywhere isn’t a lifestyle I like.
1 Like
Bragging about riding 5 hours on 280 watts. Literally everyone would be starting the run fresher than you 
4 Likes
It’s true!!
I am the dumbass riding on my own, or at a legal distance behind. Pushing unnecessary watts.
But these comments kind of prove my point!!!
It’s freaking windy in Kona.
Maybe not so windy, if you are one of the super-duper majority, that are illegally drafting!!
Nice is an honest course.
Nothing less honest than the Kona bike course!
It’s basically a draft legal race!!
1 Like
Even IM know this… you just have to look at the hype they generated prior to Nice (this years womens race) as they only really started promoting the race 7 days out. The mens Kona race has been promoted almost a month out.
I had the same thought. Every two years, if that helps with Kona locals.
Lange’s plea to DeRue:
“And also to you Scott, we really miss the women, so please bring back the women to our race. So that would be much appreciated as well.”
However, and each person’s ear is individual, his use (ack EFL) of the word “our” struck me.
Bring the women back to the men’s race (“our race”).
They can start after us, get less coverage than the men’s race, have men’s interviews and presentations take precedence over ‘our’ battles back from the Energy Lab for the win and places, provide the after show at the finish, and even athletes in the top 10 be overtaken by age groupers, confusing the ‘world championship’ image.
It would be great to have a World Championships with both men and women competing in one place, but that venue needs capacity to run the race on different days (at least two days apart for both staff/volunteers health and organisational reasons), tourist infrastructure to cope, a benign attitude locally to SBR, and preferably a sensible environment for an extreme endurance event (as opposed to an unsafe one for those athletes running in midday/afternoon temperatures/humidity).
1 Like
I’ve had the good fortune to be in a position to listen to what my customers say they want and the ability to steer the ship to provide my customers with what they say they want. And the reality is, the reason why (some) Kona locals dislike Ironman is the same reason why (some) Hawaiian locals on every island dislike tourists.
If Kona came every other year, the Kona locals would still be super grumpy. Why? Because tourists still come every year, because their houses and food is still very expensive, because they see these amazing mansions all around them taking up the beachfont, and feel they got left holding the short stick.
That happens on every island pretty much, regardless of Ironman. It’s not as if on Oahu or Maui the locals are happy with tourists (actually many are ok, but that’s true in Kona too).
The difference is that Ironman is a great big target that can be attacked in one fell swoop. Take away that target and…? The customer (grumpy Kona locals) will complain about something else.
We actually have empircal data on this. We skipped two years of Ironman in Kona. When it came back after two years, the locals were grumpy. We can say it was because of two days, and yes that might have exacerbated it… but the grumpy voices didn’t suddenly reason to themselves, “hey, we just had two years with no tourists pretty much, so let’s pull together for these two days and welcome all the people who stayed away in a real tribute to the aloha spirit.” (actually, I’m sure some did… but we’re talking about the grumpy ones)
So, you can stay away for two years, you can make nearly everyone else stay away for two years in the process. And when you come back, the complaints will be exactly as if you never missed a beat.
2 Likes
So I just came back from my honeymoon. We did 2 days in Waikaloa and 3 days in Kona town at King Kamehameha Hotel (Ironman Operational HQ!). Somehow three days there was the same as Marriott Waikaloa.
Race week, both places were booked out, and obviously with surge pricing. If I’m ever going back to the Big Island I won’t stay in Kona Town because it’s just hard to get around really. And I also would come at a different time.
I think one of the issues with the World Championships, because it is Hawai’i, and because this sport tends to have high net worth individuals racing in it, and it takes a ton of money to qualify and then race Kona. (Maybe it takes less for Nice, idk) You end up with an even smaller subsection of people who can get to the Big Island for that period versus the normal tourist. Hawai’i’s economy is built on tourism, the industry generates in excess of 20B of revenue now. But let’s get into the kind of tourist that shows up during the World Championship.
Hawai’i is expensive, so generally upper middle class and upper class folks are the tourists, and they already tend to be snobbish. Well now these people aren’t spending just a couple of days, but they’re taking over the town not for one week, but for three weeks. We checked in on Thursday at King Kamehameha last week and there was a bike box allen on one of the balconies and I just wondered how that guy ate for two and a half weeks. Food options are decent, but not really for someone who is training and tapering into a race, so now I understand why so many rent houses and villas. Like my diet was just destroyed for nine days, had poke at least 6 meals and you’re not getting many vegetables!
Then consider that a lot of restaurants are “high end” and the ones that aren’t still aren’t cheap. But let’s circle back to the type of tourist, already talk about wealthy folks…now let’s discuss that 75% of these people are non-American, and non-Americans will be looked at as worse by the locals as they will not speak much English in some cases and they will most importantly not TIP as well or likely to tip a much lower amount. Consider again that this is a tourist economy.
So if Triathletes take over the town for three weeks and they tip far less than the average tourist, you have a big part of your problem right there. I guess this is why Sebi and Daniela started going over to Maui for the pre-Kona camp, less people.
Locals will always be grumpy in tourist destinations, it’s our job as the visitor to be respectful of their home.
Now two days of racing, I don’t know why so many people talk trash about this course. I drove most of it, and also calling it flat was funny. The Climb to Hawi may not be the Nice mountain climb, but it’s not a flat and fast course by any means. Then you have the Marathon course. I think the issue is that really for most of it you are exposed for most of it, and it is HOT. I have been in humid places and I think racing this would do a number on ya, so respect to @E-Dub 's article about meeting Kona.
I saw so much cycling on the Queen K even a week out, you had so many dudes who were way too serious cycling all the way to Hawi. Wild stuff. But consider, that the Queen K is the one road into work for a lot of people, and Ironman shuts it down. It also pisses off the rest of the tourists who are staying in Waikaloa Beach and Hupana Beach, right?
But I remember Rugby folks trying to tell me Vegas 7s was better than LA 7s, for who though? For years the NASCAR race was the same weekend and no one knew Vegas 7s was a thing. Also the athletes hated Vegas. So do you want the World Championship in a place where no one knows it’s going on or do you want to be the most important thing in Town? Because Ironman is Kailua-Kona, Ironman is the Big Island. When I was there and I saw folks training, I felt it. I felt all the mythology. The idea of moving the World Championship every year and creating a regular race (what’s the smallest race field, but continuously operating Ironman?) which might last a year. I don’t think the World Championship will get the same buzz and that buzz is required for this sport to grow. I can tell you, in K-Town, you knew that it was Ironman time. They had lamp posts signed everywhere.
“HOW SPECIAL WAS THAT?”
(The thread can be salvaged 
)
1 Like
I don’t think he meant on the same day. I think he meant same location.
Also, keep in mind he’s not a native English speaker. He might have said “our” simply because the interview was happening in Kona or “our” in the sense of triathlon community- not implying that the race belongs to men.
I believe the quote comes from the press conference (minute 37:45)
2 Likes
I took at that as saying Kona is Triathlon’s World Championship and women not being there takes away from the experience. Triathlon and running are the only sports I’ve competed in where men and women compete on the same course at the same time. He definitely didn’t mean that the men owned it.
2 Likes
Aww man. I adore Bob and I’ve been listening to his interviews since 2012. He still finds ways to bring up Mark Allen and Dave Scott and after all these years its making me cringe a bit. There have been many other rivalries and races over the years. No one is going to win 6 times in a row again the sport was still young. Even in other sports heck even auto racing the 80s 90s may be the last decades where this Epic “one man / one woman wins 6/8 world championships.” There is such a global talent pool now. Look at the Olympics and basketball. So many of the top NBA players are from Europe and grew up even watching NBA games since the 1992 “Dream Team” I mean - Victor Wembanyama had a San Antonio Spurs jersey when he was a kid in France.
1 Like
I thought this article by David-Millar on Pro-cycling’s NO business-model has a read across to Kona / IMWC.
The most interesting part of inside glimpses I get at other sports is how disfunctional they all are for one reason or another.
The point of the Tour being a cultural phenomenon while Kona has become less so is key.
At some point in the past Hawaiians connected and we’re proud of Kona. I think where IM has failed is not that it’s a profit making event, but that they just haven’t managed to get the Hawaiians engaged as part of their identity across the generations.
IM has their various marketing word play initiatives that are great to pay honor to the culture, they pay various groups in donations and for services, but the people of Kona need to start seeing Kona as “their” race like the French feel about the tour.
TdF is a 3 week long virtual vacation to France. (The NBC feed is absolutely awful, it’s all commercials and human interest stories, I’m talking specifically about the world feed. It’s the equivalent of baseball in America).
6 hours of cycling commentators talking about the race, the riders, the landscape, the country, past races, anything that comes up. All set against a backdrop of one of the most beautiful countries in the world, which they make sure to highlight the very best things.
Kona, when you can even find it to watch, doesn’t do that very well. It’s the equivalent of the NBC America feed. A 2 hour short filled with 1.5h of human interest stories. Show the race, show the vistas, show Hawaii.
Nobody goes to Hawaii to watch Kona except families. Thousands go to France every year to watch the tour.
Also-- does IM Kona actually do anything for Hawaii tourism? Like, are the people going for Kona adding tourist population to the island, or just replacing non-racing tourism on those days?
2 Likes