At a press conference Thursday, Ironman CEO Andrew Messick addressed the “State of Ironman.” Messick talked about this year’s race, the continued global growth Ironman has seen and what the future holds.
Here are some of the highlights:
On the 2014 World Championship race:
We are looking forward to an extraordinary race on Saturday, from the professional to our age group races. We truly believe Saturday will be one of our most competitive races we have ever had, from the professional men, professional women and 26 age group champions that will be crowned on Saturday.
On the overall state of Ironman:
We are in a vibrant, good place right now on a global basis. We are in a phase of remarkable growth. We had 24 new races in 2014 between Ironman and Ironman 70.3. Those races were in South America, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Europe and in North America.
We continue to see more athletes racing and more athletes joining and engaging in the sport of triathlon. We are privileged and humbled to be able to create a platform for people to continue to race around the world.
2015 will be fundamentally similar for the overall growth of our sport. We expect nearly 20 new races in 2015, many which have been announced and many which we will be announcing in the coming weeks and months.
We believe as we continue to provide extraordinary opportunities for athletes at age group and professional levels to compete around the world and we are excited about the prospect that we are seeing in parts of the world that are less developed.
We are expanding strongly into South America where we have got a large pool of athletes. At (the Ironman World Championship), Brazil is a top 10 country in terms of providing age groupers and we think there continues to be great opportunities for there to be Ironman racing in South America.
On changes to professional races:
From a professional racing perspective, we have made a number of structural changes that we believe will help and promote professional racing in the years to come.
We have concentrated prize money and points and moved races earlier in the calendar with a two-pronged strategy of having our top athletes compete against one another more, earlier in the season to be able to drive sponsor and media interest. Also by having these races earlier in the season we increase the likelihood our top athletes will be at their best and at their freshest at Kona in 2015.
We believe we have a lot more to do with our professional athletes and that is going to be a major point of real emphasis for us over the coming year.
On changes to the 2014 World Championship start:
One of the big changes at this year’s race relates to age group women. Twenty-eight percent of our field in 2014 is female. It is the highest proportion we have had, and the highest absolute number of women we have ever had racing with us. This race, among Ironman races, is the race that has the highest proportion of women in any race we have anywhere in the world.
We have created a separate start for age group women (in 2014). As we looked at the results of the last few years we have seen that by having our age group men and age group women start together, it had a profound impact on the 13 women’s age groups that are competing for their own world championship. We believe that having separation between age group men and age group women will create a fairer, better race for the more than 600 women who will be competing on Saturday.
On Ironman’s growth going forward:
We are highly, highly focused on helping to bring new people into our sport, which we think over time, will help everyone who has an interest within the sport of triathlon.
We have a lot of initiatives and a lot of momentum right now. We are pretty happy about where we stand, and our attention right now is on making sure that the 2,100 athletes that we are going to have on Saturday all are in a position to have the race of their lives.
On improvements and changes:
With one exception, I think the 70.3 World Championship in Mont-Tremblant was a total success. It was a great venue and a great showcase for the race. It was great to get it out of the United States for the first time in 36 years. The area where we can do better is the management of the bike course, a little on the pro side but mostly the age group side. We weren’t as good as we needed to be. We will be a lot better on Saturday. Part of our messaging to our age group athletes is that we are going to be a lot tighter on the bike course, and athletes need to respect the rules.
We are in the middle of a process right now where we are partnering with the (International Triathlon Union) on creating a consolidated set of long-course rules. The rules that govern almost all of triathlon racing, almost everywhere in the world, are the ITU set of rules, which were drafted and designed largely for short-course racing. Our belief is that a long-course set of rules should be different.
Part of our conversation with the ITU is whether we should be expanding drafting penalties from four minutes to eight, or 10. From our perspective, is that there needs to be rules, there needs to expectations and there needs enforcement. We intend to focus on all three.
Ironman also announced a partnership with Lifetime Fitness and five new races as part of the Ironman European Tour, which include Gloria Ironman 70.3 Antalya in Turkey, Ironman 70.3 Gdynia in Poland, Ironman 70.3 Staffordshire in the United Kingdom, Ironman 70.3 Dublin in Ireland and Ironman 70.3 Pula in Croatia.