IRONMAN’s Decision Will Mature Well

January 9, 2023

By a solid 70-to-30 percent majority Slowtwitchers favor keeping the IRONMAN World Championships in Kona only, men and women racing on a single day, even if that means only half as many qualify and I’ve heard your reasons.

Mostly it’s a case of honoring history and not diluting the magic that happens on that Island on that day. Also men and women who, as couples, race that race now can’t because each location excludes one gender. There is some concern that the womens race won’t have enough heft to prevail on its own. Will the sponsors show up to a womens-only event? Will enough quality women qualify throughout the age groups? Will the race even fill to sufficient capacity?

Nevertheless I remain convinced IRONMAN’s World Championship decision is best for almost all of us. It’s also best for IRONMAN and while we might have valid gripes about that brand from time to time I don’t have a problem with IRONMAN succeeding.

IRONMAN’s event in Kona is and has been a federation-accepted and -honored World Championship. Nevertheless, here is what I’ve heard for most of that event’s existence in Kona. It’s a “self-declared” World Championship. It’s not a true World Championship because it doesn’t move locations. It’s only a test of who can prevail at that distance on that course in that climate in that place. It’s hard to ignore those critiques! Kona has always been a legally acknowledged yet only partly-vested world championship in my opinion – halfway between a monument and a world championship, as if cycling’s world championship was contested on the Paris Roubaix course every year.

Let’s remember that European athletes are the fastest IRONMAN finishers in Kona many or most years but we will never know how many forewent trips to Kona over the decades because of the expense and opportunity cost (2 to 3 weeks off work, away from home). With the mens and womens world championship races alternating between Kona and Nice we honor three groups of disenfranchised athletes: those perennially forced to travel halfway around the world; those who are very good at this distance but perform better in different climates; and women.

When I raced it in 1981 it was simply the IRONMAN World Triathlon. It wasn’t until 1983 that it became the IRONMAN Triathlon World Championship and that’s what it remained until 2005 when the word “triathlon” was struck from the title to become the IRONMAN World Championship. I and many others over the years have stuck “Hawaiian” in front of the name and I honestly don’t remember why. But I think IRONMAN has – by design or accident – correctly named its property. It’s not the Hawaiian IRONMAN, it’s the IRONMAN World Championship and you can put it in a suitcase and fly it to the world’s premier athletes rather than making those athletes always travel to a location difficult for almost everyone to get to. I’ve been waiting 40 years for the IRONMAN to grow up and it finally has. This premier race simultaneously remains in Kona – honoring its history – while graduating into an event that belongs to the world.

I have one more thing to say at the risk of mansplaining and it’s my admonition to the women who participate in the IRONMAN World Championship. Many of you don’t remember when 5 of the top 7 biggest triathlons in the world were womens-only events. Only the Chicago and Wildflower Triathlons could rival the popularity of the Danskin Triathlon Series races, with as many as 6,000 women competing in one race on one day. I don’t believe more women have ever competed in a single triathlon than during the womens-only Danskin era. There’s something special that happens at that kind of event and I encourage IRONWOMEN (you were officially called this when I raced Kona in 1981) to lean into this. My one regret will be the lack of women at the mens-only championships (that will be a loss) but the men will make do. I’ll eat my bike helmet if the womens championships don’t delightfully overperform expectations.

[IMAGES: Are of the Nice IRONMAN Provided by IRONMAN]