Is a 70.3 in Poland the start of something big?

August 9, 2014

Today Ironman announced a deal in the works for months, the Herbalife Ironman 70.3 Gdynia. It’s in Poland, near Gdansk, and like a lot of 70.3 and Ironman races in Europe it is an existing race that has grown to a size of 1,500 athletes prior to this announcement. It will qualify 35 athletes for the Ironman 70.3 World Championships.

The 2014 edition of the race just concluded and is now set to take place as an Ironman 70.3 event on August 8, 2015.

This race represents a nexus between two powerful forces in triathlon: Ironman and Herbalife. The latter has a strong triathlon sponsor presence in a number of stand-alone classic races such as the Nautica Malibu Triathlon and the Herbalife Los Angeles Triathlon. Herbalife’s Chairman and CEO, Michael O. Johnson, is a hard core endurance junkie and if he is not at any press announcement for this race he might be excused, as the Leadville 100 MTB race takes place today – another race Herbalife sponsors and one in which he is almost certainly participating.

That’s not the only Herbalife connection. The race organizer for what will now be the Herbalife Ironman 70.3 Gdynia, Konrad Szałkiewicz, is the country director for Herbalife, covering Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

It might be interesting to see how Mr. Szałkiewicz, Mr. Johnson and Ironman leverage their relationship in the two countries formerly joined as Czechoslovakia, and perhaps beyond. (This assumes Mr. Johnson is involved in the sponsorship of this Poland event versus Mr. Szałkiewicz handling the deal entirely out of his office.)

Former Eastern Bloc countries are one obvious path to growth for Ironman. Prior to this the only such country with an Ironman presence was Hungary. Finding enough participants in Finland, the Baltics, Poland, Western Ukraine, Belarus, Slavic states like Slovenia and Croatia, would not be a challenge, as so many of participants in these races come from countries with currently underserved race populations, notably the UK.

The problems are finding safe venues and ways to offset the lack of typical CVB funds that help make an Ironman production work. Sponsors like Herbalife can help make a race pencil for Ironman.

Piercing the East Bloc is not a luxury for Ironman, but an imperative. If Ironman does not convert or incept races in these countries Challenge certainly will (and it will anyway – it’s going to be a race for venues between these two brands). With this race Ironman has an early lead.