Nice, Fance, will host the 2023 men’s edition as the co-host of the VinFast Ironman World Championship.
The men’s race will take place Sept. 10 while women will race on Oct. 14 in Kailua-Kona as was previously announced by race officials after Hawaii County assessed and declined a future two-day running of the prestigious event.
In 2024, the men will rotate to Kona racing on Oct. 26, 2024, while the women will rotate to Nice and race on Sept. 22, 2024. The rotation will continue through 2026 with Nice and Kona acting as co-hosts for the pinnacle event in triathlon.
“In 2022, we saw the power of a two-day Ironman World Championship, one with dedicated race days for professional women and professional men. We believe in this concept not only to showcase the depth of both the women’s and men’s fields but also to invest further into the growth of the sport of triathlon. Nice, France, as the European birthplace of long-course triathlon is the right place to showcase this evolution,” said Andrew Messick, president and CEO for The Ironman Group. “We are grateful to Mayor Estrosi and the City of Nice, who share our vision of creating a world-class championship race for the men in 2023, and then the women in 2024.”
The 2022 Ironman World Championship marked the first time in the triathlon’s over four-decade history that the event was held over two days. The decision to race on Thursday, Oct. 6, and Saturday, Oct. 8, 2022, was made to accommodate some 5,256 athletes who’d qualified since 2019 for the prestigious event that was postponed in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
While the race was a success, it was contentious among locals, many of whom were stuck in hours-long traffic back ups amid Thursday’s race as well as other issues in the days leading up to the largest running ever of the world championship.
The first Ironman was held as a way to challenge athletes who had seen success at endurance swim, running and biathlon events. John Collins, a Naval officer, and his wife, Judy, combined the three toughest endurance races in Hawaii — the 2.4-mile Waikiki Roughwater Swim, the 112-mile Around-Oahu Bike Race and the 26.2-mile Honolulu Marathon — into one event.
In February 1978, 15 people came to Waikiki to take on the challenge with 12 completing the race. In 1981, Ironman moved from Oahu to Kona where traffic hazards were lower and the island’s barren lava fields presented more of a challenge to athletes with winds gusting up to 60 mph in areas and temperatures averaging in the high 80s and low 90s.
The event quickly grew from 15 people in the first race in 1978 to 1,381 participants in 1987 and over 2,500 prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced organizers to postpone the event in 2020 and again in 2021. In May, the 2021 Ironman World Championship in Utah shortly after officials announced the return of Ironman to Kona in 2022.
According to the Ironman World Championship Race Director Diana Bertsch, an economic impact study conducted by Ironman in 2019, found the race contributed $72 million to the local economy, up from $25 million in 2006. Roth estimated in October that the two-day race would contribute $100 million to the local economy.