The article answers that question.
The guy has done three or four other Ironman races in the past couple of years. Canāt help but wonder if he pulled this shit before or if this was an isolated situation.
Also canāt help but wonder who is watching his kid while heās out doing 100 mile bike rides.
To add fuel to that fire back in May he was arrested for violations of the family court act.
He doesnāt sound like heās winning many father of the year awards.
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Also a latch key kid. My sisters and I would roam all over town even cross town lines on our bikes completely unsupervised. No helmets. No phones back then. It was wild. Unsupervised for hours. We even played in the woods far from home with other kids from the neighborhood. While completely unsafe (I canāt believe we never got seriously hurt or abducted) I actually donāt regret it. Maybe all that biking as a kid is the reason I was drawn to bike racing, marathons and later Ironman. Who knows. But Iām digressing
I have a 10 yr old niece. If it was her left alone all day at an Ironman VIP tent, she would have been glued to her devices. I just got a text from my sister how horrified she was that her daughter was watching two different things on two different devices at the same time. She even has her own youtube channel. At age 10!
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Leaving your children in the car in the winter to go inside a bar seemed perfectly normal a few decades ago
Judging by the replies here Iām guessing that would be a no go now a days? 
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And back then we didnāt have any phones/devices. We had to endure shitty local radio or beat the crap out of each other.
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And in many states, requires licensure too.
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2 parents working 12-16 hour shifts , during summer break at that age i was out on my own too. 2 years ago i worked for pre/after school program that had a long waiting list with kids in this situation
this lol
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Contract it out with a local day-care who already has facilities, staff, and insurance. Ironman takes a 20% on the top (or maybe 50%? 
), and calls it a day.
Might be easier to find in your big city venues than your more rural areas, but they could start somewhere.
Europe you canāt bankrupt a company or individual with lawsuits like you can in the USA. The liability insurance/legal marketplace is ruining a lot of businesses that have some degree of inherent risk.
Signed, XC coach who just sat through another meeting where the strong suspicions I got that the purpose of the meeting was to cover the athletic trainer and directorās butt and shift responsibility to the coach. Not much interest in student-athlete well being, just ensure the legal boxes are checked and their hands are clean.
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I think an arrest is too far here. Obviously I donāt condone leaving his kid, but nobody was in any imminent danger and kid knew where dad was - one the race course. Fine him, ticket him, cite him, etc., but arresting seems over the top to me.
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Entirely dependent on the law of the jurisdiction.
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You should do itā¦
This is over the top stupidā¦ but I bet that kid was having a good time 
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If you contract with a local daycare provider, it might be handled the same way a daytrip for a daycare provider is handled. Iād say itās doable, a pain in the ass added to a long checklist of pains in the ass to handle on race day, but doable.
I doubt they would get a conviction:
I am thinking of the many all day events I did at that age either alone or with my friends with parents busy doing other things. At age 9 I was given the go ahead to take public transport to school and back and meander in the wild world paying for my bus fare and getting home. Sometimes on the way back from school, Iād take a detour to the park and not show up home till 6 pm and my parents had zero clue where I was and no one even got worried. But in any case, I get the world is different today. In todayās world all the guy needed was a friend to tag along for the trip.
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One thing is certainā¦
āPeople who live in glass houses shoukd throw patties, not stones.ā
I am certain even without mobile devices when I was 9 years old in 1974, if my dad cut me loose for a day in Lake Placid, Iād have a blast, probably explore the Ausable River and Iād probably have crammed in a Whiteface climbing summit and gotten back and figured out a way to earn money for lunch by sweeping the floors or washing dishes at the local diner !!!
Having said that, when my son was 9 no way heād have pulled all that off (he was in Lake Placid in 2005 watching, but was with family haha). By the age of 15 I was riding my bike solo with camping gear from Montreal to Vermont and back self supported doing overnite trips.
It definitely was a different world!
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What kind of moron for a parent thinks it is okay to leave a 9 year old by themselves (ie no one known to the child looking after them or no one having taken responsibility for caring for the child) whilst they do an Ironman?
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