70.3 Worlds move to Chattanooga
Ironman announced today that the 2017 Ironman 70.3 World Championships will take place in Chattanooga, TN, and thus return to the USA after 3 years of traveling around the globe. It was also announced that the 2017 event will take place over 2 days, with men and women racing on separate days.
From 2006 to 2013, the 70.3 World Championships were only held in the USA, first in Clearwater, Florida until 2011 and then in Las Vegas, Nevada through 2013. In 2014, the race moved to Mont Tremblant, Canada, and this summer the event traveled to a different continent and took place in Zell am See/Kaprun in Austria, much to delight of the European athletes and fans.
The 2016 race will travel to the Southern Hemisphere to the Sunshine Coast in Australia and then, as announced earlier today, return to the USA in 2017.
Chattanooga, TN already hosts a very popular 70.3 event, and the city also offers a full distance race. The Ironman event just took place this past weekend, and now there is this news from the town known as the Scenic City.
It was previously announced that the championship race will be a two-day affair, with the professional and age-group women racing on Saturday, September 9 and the professional and age-group men racing on Sunday, September 10, and that information is now official.
“Since 2006, the Ironman 70.3 race series has grown exponentially around the world and has seen global success with the annual change in host region of the Ironman 70.3 World Championship. I am thrilled to announce that Chattanooga, Tennessee has been selected as the host city for 2017,” said Andrew Messick, the CEO of Ironman. “Chattanooga is a first-class city, fully qualified and well-equipped to deliver an exceptional event, and we look forward to providing our athletes with an unforgettable championship race experience.”
That means that Chattanooga will have 3 Ironman branded events in 2017: the 70.3 race early in the year, followed by the 70.3 World Championships, and then the full Ironman in the late summer.
Judging from the signs put up last week in Chattanooga by main sponsor Little Debbie, it is apparent that the town has embraced the sport.
