Even with it easier to qualify to Kona these days, there are still mop or bop male athletes that aren’t close to getting to Kona and probably never will by qualification. These are the legacy people.
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With the men, Nice is also still going to require a good day at the office to be able to go on qualification. Which, again, still feeds the legacy pool.
From a historical perspective: the current method of qualification for two days of racing is far more in line with precedent of entries for IMWC than where we were towards the end of the one day Kona cycle.
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I’ve heard that some legacy members are “invited” to Nice WC2025. Has IM trouble to fill Nice again?
Yep
A lot of legacy guys and ladies started the process many years ago when qualification was harder, I’m not sure that when you are at 8 or 9 races, you would stop going down that path; there are a load of races and AGs where you might get lucky with a 14 hour finish time and still get to go to Kona, but many many races where even now that isn’t possible even in today’s less desired + more slots easier qualification environment - and many legacies probably don’t want to go to Nice - it probably didn’t exist when they started the process. And not everyone wants to go chase a slot in say Langkawi, Subic or IMNZ - some people only want to race Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Kalmar, etc - where the competition is quite tough and roll downs even going deep still requires some fairly quick times in most AGs.
I do agree that the switch to 2 days and twice the slots is killing the potential interest in legacy especially for women who now find it much easier; who knows what will happen 2026 onwards; if it goes back to 1 day then women especially in some AG qualification will be very tough. I know 2 guys from my country (Thailand) going to Kona last year, there is no chance they could qualify in any race they have entered to get to the start line in the last couple of years based on their times and the races they want to do.
I’m not sure too many races are going to roll down to 14+ hours. New Zealand was a perfect storm this year for a few reasons. Lots of fast people had just visited there last December for the 70.3 championship, and probably didn’t want to go again 3 months later.
I looked at the app just now.
Men: 545 finishers / 65 Nice slots.
Women: 172 finishers / 35 Kona slots.
Many of those were NZ locals, for travel reasons mentioned above. And then there’s the exchange rate and length of travel to France reducing the demand for men’s slots even more.
The increased race price appears to be hitting the demand threshold. I also think a lot of people don’t want to do a second IM build in a year anymore.
If they want more competitive AGers at the championship races, they should just go back to allocating some IM slots to a few of the 70.3 races like they used to, and dump the validation race requirement.
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The price of the world champs entry fee is insane. Can anyone explain why it is almost double a normal IM race fee?
Because people are willing to pay it
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Let’s look at it this way. You take all the normal costs of a race and then increase them by flying out more staff, increase the number of night stays, per diem budgets, building out more transition areas, signages, etc. Add in the increased pro prizes. Increased broadcasting fees, etc. etc.
Do all that with a fixed number of racers – and the price needs to go up a lot. If Ironman took the approach of subsidizing the WC with all their race entries, they could increase every race entry by a trivial number and then just have a small race increase for the WC.
But the full cost of the entire WC is born by the same number of racers. Really, I suppose what ends up happening is the reverse, the profits generated from the WC end up subsidizing the qualifying races that don’t have a lot of attendance.
Why does a world champs need more staff? What broadcasting fees/difference is there to the normal pro series coverage? As for it subsidising races with less attendance again this doesn’t make much sense-most race are sell outs, or are you saying a lot of the races are running at a loss and the WC fees plug the gap? Doesn’t fly with me…
When you go to a World Champs, it seems to be an all hands on deck event and everyone in the organization is there. You can say that they don’t need to be there, and should just run the world champs like every other event.
Regarding the sell outs you’re right. I’m thinking of a lot of races that haven’t sold out in years past. With IM consolidating races in some markets (maybe just North America) it’s been pretty rare that the full distances have sold out.
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Basically if your a female , and hang around at roll down you will get a spot
14 hrs plus or not
There is just way more spots available now than ladies that want (or can) go to Kona (and even more so nice)