Small N sample size, but I asked as many locals as I could what their friends thought about Ironman and how they feel about it coming back to the island every year.
The response I always got was along the lines of “look this island needs tourism. It’s the only meaningful industry we have. Yes a few odd and very loud people hate it - but by and large it benefits this island and the majority of people understand that and want Ironman here” (yes there’s sample selection bias and yes they’ll be more friendly to an athlete than a 3rd party observer)
Folks told me that 2022 was just a shit show. If you hate Ironman, leaving the town for a day on a Saturday is one thing. But having to deal with it Thursday AND Saturday is a whole other challenge. 5000 athletes w/ families was simply too much for the island to absorb.
Not sure what’s controversial about it. IM gives more slots to women for Nice and they don’t take them.
IM concludes there aren’t enough women to race world championships they have to roll slots deeper than there are racers.
What are you going to tell me? That women have unique life circumstances that make accepting slots difficult? Ok, but that doesn’t change the reality of offering a product for a customer who doesn’t want to buy it.
If Ironman said that they really believe the 18-22 age group needs support to get to world champs and so they are going to triple the number of slots to that AG and as it turns out those slots just roll across the entire AG and don’t get taken up…shouldn’t the conclusion be there’s not enough interest from that AG? Might be that (as is the case usually) the younger age athletes can’t afford to do world championships. Ok, well that should help IM to determine that they are offering the wrong product to them.
It’s clear that Kona is the more sought after championship for men and women, and the women will likely sell out Kona next year, but still they are rolling to the bottom of the age groups and beyond for Kona. Which means there’s just not enough of a female market outside of Kona to make it happen (unless Nice proves different if the rotation continues).
Anyway, it’s entirely reasonable to put some responsibility back on our sisters out there – they want female pro athletes with better financial support? Well, but the products they are promoting! They want their own race day? Well, accept your slot and race!
If you can’t because you have kids or other health circumstances etc? Totally understand…then the product isn’t for you.
Eh, first five years were in Clearwater Florida. So they definitely built a product while also not “investing” too much. Then three years at Lake Las Vegas, another place I’ll never travel to lol.
Do you think Ironman has 6 more years of willingness to invest in a split location and or Nice? I certainly have no idea. What will be telling is 2026 the final year of the Nice contract. Will the number of women choosin Nice dramatically increase by then?
Let’s call a dual championship for men and women being say 6000 athletes (be it 70.3 worlds, two races in one location or Kona+Nice split). This means in two years you have 12000 athletes racing a championship.
Compare this with 2019 and earlier. That was 1500-2500 kona slots, so if we are liberal let’s call tihs 5000 championship slots to give out every two years.
In other words, 7000 more entires are available every two years. From what I see this weekend at IM California there were 100 slots given out between the two genders to two races. That compares to 30 slot races between two genders at many races before 2020, and even today many 70.3’s only get 30-45 slots between the two genders.
So what does this do?
Well let’s say there are 4-8 slots in an age group versus 1-2, now anyone who finishes in the top 20 has a chance at a rolldown. In the 1-2 slot race of yesteryear (or current 70.3’s) you pretty well have to finish top 3 for a shot (maybe).
If 20th place has a chance at a rolldown, the guy finishing 30-40th place is thinking, “hey if I can shave xyz minutes off during this winter, get lean, i have a shot”.
This dramatically changes the retention in the sport. If the people finishing 10th to 50th place feel they have a chance at a worlds slot (wherever it is), it keeps more people in the sport. That is a good thing. It does not change the pointy end top 3 group. They still win and get slots, it’s just everyone behind them who feels they can partake in worlds.
That’s a good thing for the health of the sport. Making it so exclusive that it is always the same 'repeat “my kona slot people” (as if they are entitled to their annual Kona slot, but often I have seen pointy end people talking that way) is not great for the sport.
For context to add to what you are saying in 2011 shortly after he because CEO he went to watch IM Frankfurt. They brought up the “all time 10x Frankfurt finishers”. Andrew told me, "when they brought these guys us, I could see they live and breath the culture of IM, but I could eyeball and see they would never be the types who would Kona qual, which is why I started the legacy program, because anyone who gets to 10x, 11x, 12x…deserves to be on the Kona start line because they have invested in the sport).
Item number two was in 2012, Messick came over to Mont Tremblant and did IM Tremblant. He raced with the race number of an athlete who died the week before in the swim at IMNYC (link here: Carrying The Fallen - Slowtwitch News)
In any case after he finishd in tremblant that year, he said, "this is a championshp venue and by the next year, 70.3 worlds was moving from Henderson Nevada outside the USA for the first time to Mont Tremblant!!!
Aren’t you basically saying that you want to perceive it to be difficult, but still be able to luck out via rolldown?
I think what you and others appreciate isn’t that it’s hard - but that’s it’s hard and accessible at the same time.
That’s the cleverness of the rolldown system. Most people aren’t there at rolldown to know how much it truly rolled down.
If there was no rolldown I wonder if people would still be as attracted to the qualification system.
It would literally be the same 2 athletes qualifying every year. (Some obv do get tired of the costs and distances of Kona, especially if they’re not from the USA.)
However, the truth is that even with 5000 slots, it’s still 3% of participants of IM events in a given year that get to attend the IM world championships. That’s a tiny fraction by any account. It would still be pretty exclusive even if it was double or triple that.
I qualified thanks to Covid slots in 2021 and thanks to rolldown in 2024. I still know very few people in real life who qualified for the IM world championship (Kona or Nice). I’m sure some people on Slowtwitch are part of ultra competitive triathlon clubs and have a different perception but that isn’t the norm.
The exclusivity of the world championship is a subjective perception issue. There’s no “right” number.
The issue with Nice is that it’s in less demand right now. There’s no arguing it, everybody agrees.
But also, in 2023 IM has had to allocate all its slots in half the time. Some races had hundreds of slots. That really exacerbated the perception issue.
My point wasn’t that they’d continue for 6 more years split between Kona and Nice - no one is arguing that the current format is a good idea. The two viable options are really only a 1 day Kona (maybe 50/50 gender representative) or a 2 day bid type travelling (or semi travelling) WC as we see with 70.3.
My point with the 70.3 WC is that 10 years later, it’s completely unrecognizable from those days at Clearwater and LLV. In fact, by the time it was a a year or two later, the whole thing had taken on a life of its own. By the time you get to South Africa, people were already complaining that the slots were being given away. And this was 4 years later that you had enough of a following that people were now complaining that they rolled too far! In the 2-3 years it had developed a brand sufficiently enough that people were complaining that a hard to reach destination was devaluing it!
do people think ironman could milk kona more if you first had to qualify for coninental champs and the best from there qualify for kona .
this to me sounds like to the only way how to maintain a 1 day kona race. by adding la ayer under it .
at the end of the day the continetal champ races are a joke atm and this would be a way to make them meaningful
top 30 percent form last world champ qualify directly for next years conti champs if they want. and top 10 from each age group at worlds get a free entry for next years world champ if they want .
But that is NOT what’s happening. They had 2269 men finish Nice in 2023 and 1384 women in 2024. That’s 3653. Even with DNS/DNF that’s not even close to 6000. If they were getting 6000 per year or were clearly on that trajectory, then all their problems would be over.
thats roughly 4700 to 4800 paying customers. so in a 2 day one location event most likley already more profitable than a one day kona, and that is year one
so i guess since you say its about profit and not mystic kona loses out.
and i think the first indications are that nice does not roll down as much as in the first cycle.
i think 2024 it was 18 european ironman s and 15 north america
and 2025 its 20 for europe and 15 for north america.
and i guess you have to calculate that into the location ie not only is north america not anymore the biggest market but its losing market share.
ps it seems to be 19 full ironmans in europe and 10 in north america for 2025 so ignore numbers above .
Int’l athletes care for Kona, maybe even to the larger degree. All die hard Kona AG preachers (and practitioners) I tend to follow are int’l indeed.
70.3: roll downs for oversee destinations is very deep but 70.3 is easier and much more people race it so it will always sell out. Does it translate to “world championship” status? Clearly at PRO level it was always less important vs Kona with top pros repetitively skipping it to focus on Kona.
Not sure long distance Worlds is possible logistically on two consecutive days and “race-brake-race” format is high hurdle for any local community anyway. So it may boil down to what’s better: separate men / women or one day race and than you try to play with starting schedule to give women enough spotlight.
Obviously there are more barriers to women’s sport than just the number of slots - but part of this effort is also if you invest in a community, it pays dividends.
Going back to 1ish slot per female AG or relating the FPro race to sideshow stays isn’t helping either, though.
Just some stats. I’m sure someone will tell me I’ve missed 1 or 2.
Edit: The below are finisher numbers.
European races in the last year 16. Total Participation 28148. Ave 1877 per race
North America races in the last year 10. Total participation 17664 Ave. 1766 per race
Oceania races in the last year 4. Total participation 4004. Ave. 1001
Asia races in the last year 4. Total participation 3244. Ave. 811
IM South Africa 469
IM Brazil 1322
EU 51% NA 32% Oceania 7% Asia 6% Africa 0.9% South America 2%
This is why you have to give it time and ideally have both races in one location. Time is needed for things to sell out. Today is not 5-10 years from now. Right now the big issue is dual location. You keep going back to the numbers in the last two years, but right at the top of this thread we saw a solid take of Nice slots (did all the slots get taken ? If so it is a success because it means enough people care to go. Does not matter if it went to 1-2-3-4 or 1-2-9-25). You still got 1-2 showing up and reality is that everyone in Kona or Nice who is not top three in their worlds age group is cannon fodder anyway because they are nowhere close to the podium. They are equally occupying a space on the pier or promenade and padding Ironman’s top line for the exact cost structure of the podum people.
I think there is truth to what both of us are saying. Some international athletes care about Kona some just care about racing anywhere. Do the latter add up to enough to make a business.
Let me cherry pick an example from my age group. The guy won the Tour de France Green Jersey and he won the Polka Dot Jersey, former Vuelta winner, winner of points classification in all three grand tours and Kona finisher (Laurent Jalabert).
Looking back the last few years, Jaja went to IM World’s in 2022 in St. George and walked - ran a 5 hrs marathon, then in 2023 he went to 70.3 worlds in Finland and placed 5th, then he goes to Nice and wins the age group, and this year it appears he had a slot and was registered for Kona but did not race.
But the guy seems to be happy to just go race all over, Kona or no Kona does not matter.
Again, a cherry pick of a European guy in my age group!
europe got 2 new ones for 2025 leeds and le sables so it looks like 19 this year so you might have missed one as it should have been 17 last year then
the 10 seems correct for north america
Les Sables seems to have replaced Vichy which had 561 finishers last year.
Leeds is a general replacement for Bolton although it wasn’t on last year.
Ireland and Finland are on there still as TBD plus the Women’s world champs in Nice is down as a European race.